BuildingGreen Report

Blog Post

December 21, 2007

Twice each month, BuildingGreen publishes an email news bulletin with current news and product information briefs. Sign up here—it's free. We will never share or sell your email address, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

Read the current bulletin

Blog Post

December 21, 2007

[Clicking an image in this post will load a larger version of the image. A slideshow of the images in this post, and more, is also available. Previous posts in the "Notes from Sweden" series include #1: How They Get Around, #2: Western Harbor in Malmo, and #3: The Scandinavian Green Roof Institute in Malmo.] In Brattleboro, Vermont, I'm... Read more

Blog Post

December 20, 2007

We wish all of you a happy, life-changing year ahead, and thank you for all the good, important work you do and choices you make. We had our annual holiday party for staff and their guests on Wednesday evening; it's something we look forward to every year. If there was enough room, we'd have you all over. That's part of the reason we've... Read more

Blog Post

December 13, 2007
SG Blocks of Charleston, NC, refabricates sea-truck shipping containers into modular construction units, and has been getting buzz on the likes of Bob Vila's show, the NBC Nightly News, and other newsy outlets. It's not an original notion, but they seem to have had the most success so far in commercializing it. Or the idea of commercializing it,... Read more

Blog Post

December 12, 2007

[Clicking an image in this post will load a larger version of the image. A slideshow of the images in this post, and more, is also available. Previous posts in the "Notes from Sweden" series include #1: How They Get Around, and #2: Western Harbor in Malmo.]On a wide-ranging tour of interesting projects, programs, and companies in the Skåne... Read more

Blog Post

December 11, 2007

[Clicking an image in this post will load a larger version of the image. A slideshow of the images in this post, and more, is also available. Previous posts in the "Notes from Sweden" series include #1: How They Get Around.] It's enough to make architects go weak at the knees. I'm not an architect, but wandering around Malmo's Western Harbor (... Read more

Blog Post

December 11, 2007
The answer to this question is... MIT might, but only if it wants to. I went to a "lecture" at MIT a few days ago — part of the "Critical Issues" series put on by, of all groups, the MIT Women's League. (Kira Gould, author of Women In Green would have a field day with this!) The idea for the evening was to present ways in which MIT might think... Read more

Blog Post

December 9, 2007

[Clicking an image in this post will load a larger version of the image. A slideshow of the images in this post is also available.]Despite the light drizzle and the fading light of Sweden's mid-afternoon dusk when I arrived in Lund, it was immediately clear that the prevalent form of transportation here is bicycling. Bicycles are everywhere.... Read more

Blog Post

December 5, 2007
From www.StoryOfStuff.com: "From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the... Read more

Blog Post

December 4, 2007
The latest offering from Wiley's series of books on sustainable design just arrived on my desk: Sustainable Healthcare Architecture by Robin Guenther and Gail Vittori. The book is wide-ranging, with plenty of case studies and essays from green building luminaries. Flipping through its pages, I came across an essay by Bob Berkebile, in which he... Read more

Blog Post

December 4, 2007

Twice each month, BuildingGreen publishes an email news bulletin with current news and product information briefs. Sign up here—it's free. We will never share or sell your email address, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

Read the current bulletin

News Brief

December 4, 2007

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon takes place on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., with collegiate teams constructing solar-powered houses, demonstrating the homes’ functionality to judges, and giving tours to the public. In 2007, for the first time, first prize has gone to a team from outside the U.S.; the team from... Read more

News Analysis

December 4, 2007

Following the tremendous response to its Living Buildings Challenge (see

EBN

Vol. 15, No. 12), the Cascadia Region Green Building Council unveiled its new “Living Site and Infrastructure Challenge” at Greenbuild 2007 in Chicago. This new system is modeled closely on its predecessor, with the same “all prerequisites, no credits”... Read more

News Brief

December 4, 2007
In March 2007, the Research Committee of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) released a report finding that only 0.2% of federally funded research, about $193 million per year, is aimed at green building topics; USGBC then committed $1 million to green building research in June 2007 (see

EBN

Vol. 16, No. 6). In November 2007, the... Read more

Op-Ed

December 4, 2007

The editors of

Environmental Building News, GreenSpec, and the online BuildingGreen Suite are pleased to announce a new resource: BuildingGreen.com LIVE. Structured like a blog but linked to the full range of articles and product listings available at BuildingGreen.com, and to outside resources, LIVE features up-to-the-minute news,... Read more

Explainer

December 4, 2007
Nearly every green publication (including, unfortunately, our own) has, on occasion, confused units of electric power (kilowatts) with units of energy (kilowatt-hours). It’s an easy mistake to make for those who are not steeped in the engineering of energy flows. But the basic principles are not that complicated—and are worth getting straight.

... Read more

News Brief

December 4, 2007

Douglas Farr, AIA; John Wiley & Sons, 2007; 304 pages, $75

www.greenplaybook.orginfo@greenplaybook.orgCombine walkable, transit-served urbanism with high-performance building and infrastructure and, according to author Douglas Farr, AIA, you’ve got

Sustainable Urbanism. Beyond just developing a concept, however, the book acts as a... Read more

News Brief

December 4, 2007

In July 2007, the New Buildings Institute (NBI) released its Advanced Buildings

Core Performance Guide, which outlines cost-effective ways to achieve 20%–30% energy savings in new buildings (see

EBN

Vol. 16, No. 8).

Core Performance replaced the Advanced Buildings

Benchmark, which was cited in LEED for... Read more

Product Review

December 4, 2007
The green building community loves to hate vinyl composition tile (VCT). Along with the PVC and phthalate plasticizer content (about 15% by weight), VCT requires regular waxing and periodic stripping to maintain an attractive, protective wear layer. The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released from just one cycle of stripping and waxing VCT,... Read more

News Analysis

December 4, 2007
On May 4, 2007, a two-mile-wide tornado ripped through Greensburg, Kansas, demolishing 90% of the small town’s structures. Within a week, nearby resident Daniel Wallach founded Greensburg GreenTown (GBGT). Its mission is to provide the residents of Greensburg with the resources, information, and support they need to rebuild as “the greenest town... Read more