BuildingGreen Report

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I love people that make, rather than assemble. The old-world built environment had a character of imperfection, a dose of wabi sabi, odd and lumpy bits that represent a connection that's both human and natural.

May 19, 2008

I have a huge amount of appreciation and respect for (and some jealousy of) people plying artisan trades, and had a couple good conversations with AIA'08 exhibitors offering that sort of thing. John Canning & Company goes beyond artisan; check out the featured projects on their website. In my capacity as poster boy for the A Little... Read more

Blog Post

May 17, 2008
Michael Wentz being interviewed after the presentation The AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten Green Projects awards for sustainable design excellence is a big deal, and the nearly hour-and-a-half presentation was standing room only. David Miller and Henry Siegel, along with jury members Rebecca Henn (see her post "How the 2008 AIA/... Read more

Blog Post

May 16, 2008
"Using case studies of recent high performance architecture, this session will identify key strategies required to increase sustainable methods to achieve zero carbon goals by the year 2030. The case studies examine design strategies and processes for the next generation of sustainable architecture, going beyond current best practices through... Read more

Blog Post

May 16, 2008

Sunlight gives us light at no charge, which we can harness in our buildings to reduce our reliance on electrical lighting, while providing a more enjoyable indoor environment. Leave it to an engineer to tell us how much that sunlight actually costs us. Lumens per watt (lpw) is the measure of lighting efficacy, telling us how much light (lumens... Read more

Blog Post

May 16, 2008
An unexpected tower in the hallway... A foundation of the Society for Design Administration (SDA), Canstruction is a design/build competition currently held in cities throughout North America. Teams of architects, engineers, and students mentored by these professionals, compete to design and build giant structures made entirely from full cans... Read more

Blog Post

May 16, 2008

"I kinda liked the expo this year. There seemed to be a lot of stuff." —a guy to another guy

A piece of it. Just a piece.

Blog Post

May 15, 2008
This morning began (for me) with a 7:00 (early!) session called "Legally Green: Legal and Practice Issues of LEED," presented by Betsy del Monte and William Quatman. The room had a capacity approaching 400, and got close to filling up. Betsy's presentation was, for the most part, understandably basic. The big majority of the audience, by show of... Read more

Blog Post

May 15, 2008
Nadav Malin and Scot Horst offered up a great, head-twisting presentation about product certifications called "It's Certified Green But What Does That Mean?" to about 500 people. It covered all the territory in the EBN feature "Behind the Logos: Understanding Green Product Certifications" and more. There may have been some misunderstanding on the... Read more

Blog Post

May 15, 2008
I came to Boston yesterday, giving myself plenty of time to check in at the sprawling Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC) for this year's AIA National Convention before heading out — pretty much cluelessly — to get a closer look at this historic city. I'd been tipped off that the Freedom Trail, a walking tour following a thin red line... Read more

Blog Post

May 15, 2008
I'm no fan of vinyl, but someone (actually a lot of someones) keep buying lots of it, year after year. Why? A recent article, "Vinyl makers push for New Urbanism market," in New Urban News looks at the benefits. Since vinyl is pretty much Evil (I picture it as the smoldering stuff in the toaster oven in "Time Bandits") in the environmental world... Read more

Blog Post

May 15, 2008

Now, having made that snarky comment about white guys in a previous post (for the record, I'm a white guy), I should say that the conference itself has a very nicely diverse attendance. Walking the trade show floor, you're surrounded by a range of ages, what seems like an almost even mix of sexes, and a good variety of ancestries. And not... Read more

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May 12, 2008
(click images to expand) Jerelyn and Alex Wilson of BuildingGreen What kind of truck doesn't use any gasoline or diesel fuel to move heavy materials around the city? A bicycle truck, of course. Back in March BuildingGreen was introduced to The New Amsterdam Project , a bicycle trucking firm in Cambridge, Ma. We tried them out moving our... Read more

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May 7, 2008
The AIA 2008 National Convention and Design Exposition — "We the People" — starts next week Thursday, on the East Coast for the first time in almost a decade. As usual, BuildingGreen will be there. If you are, too, come see us at booth 14079. We also have people involved in a couple sessions. Peter Yost will co-lead an all-day preconvention... Read more

Blog Post

May 6, 2008
If I could adopt a conference, it would be the USGBC Cascadia chapter's Living Future 'Unconference'. As someone who generally prefers to stay behind the scenes talking shop, it was a delight to find myself surrounded primarily by the obsessed of the green building world. Even better, as presenters we were encouraged to bring our own big... Read more

Blog Post

May 6, 2008
As Research Director at BuildingGreen, I dabble in - or dive headlong into - a wide range of BuildingGreen internal and collaborative projects, and am part of the team working to make the GreenSpec product directory as robust as possible. I have every intention of making my bio personalized, but there are too many other fun things to do than talk... Read more

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May 2, 2008

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Blog Post

April 30, 2008
"Green buildings have captured the imagination of many in the mainstream, but for green professionals the time has come to stop designing for mere energy efficiency and start designing to regenerate and restore. And that means taking responsibility for what people do in buildings and communities after they are built." — www.greenmanifesto.org... Read more

Op-Ed

April 29, 2008

The articles fail to mention, however, that windows are not only a source of heat loss but also a source of heat gain. In the north, the best insulating value doesn’t necessarily result in the lowest heating bill. The featured windows employ one or more highly insulating, low-solar-gain low-emissivity coatings. While this is a great choice for... Read more

Product Review

April 29, 2008
Evaporative cooling lowers indoor-air temperatures without the high energy loads of conventional cooling (see page 20). But to get those lower temperatures, direct evaporative coolers have to pull sensible heat out of the air by adding water vapor (latent heat), or sacrifice efficiency with an indirect system mediated by a heat exchanger. A... Read more

Explainer

April 29, 2008
Everyone knows how cool (or cold!) it feels to have wet clothing on in a breeze. As water evaporates, it absorbs heat, leaving our skin feeling cooler. Similarly, cooling towers evaporate water to reject heat from chillers or industrial equipment.

Direct evaporative coolers (also called swamp coolers or desert coolers) use the same principle to... Read more