Kaplan, McLaughlin and Diaz), based in San Francisco, has been awarded the prestigious MIPIM Architectural Review Future Projects Award for the design of the Jie Fang Daily News and Media Group headquarters in Shanghai, China. The project employs numerous green systems, relying heavily on natural ventilation and... Read more

The

Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC) was launched in December 2003, initiated by Meeting Strategies Worldwide, of Portland, Oregon. Recognizing that over a million meetings and events, and over 12,000 tradeshows, are held each year, GMIC is committed to “balancing economic, environmental, and community objectives as they relate to... Read more

The Apollo Alliance, a unique coalition of labor, environmental, civil rights, business, and political leaders, has announced its vision of achieving energy independence in ten years. According to a study released by the Apollo Alliance in January, a $300 billion federal investment in renewable energy and green buildings over ten years would... Read more

In a unique agreement, the leaders of four architectural institutions have committed to sustainable design. The “

Barcelona Declaration on Sustainable Design” was signed at the Construmat Fair in Barcelona, Spain by Jaime Lerner, representing the International Union of Architects (and former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil); Paul Hyett, for... Read more

At the beginning of March 2004, the U.S. Green Building Council released a draft of the LEED

® for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) Rating System for review by Council members during a 30-day comment period. LEED-EB is designed to certify the ongoing operations and maintenance of facilities, including upgrades to building systems. It is not... Read more

by Angela Dean. Gibbs Smith Publishers, Layton, Utah, 2003; 136 pages, softcover, $24.95

Homeowners wanting to understand what a green home is and custom home builders wanting to introduce green home ideas to potential clients could benefit... Read more

Continuing a trend of rapid growth, the

U.S. Green Building Council announced in early February that it had accepted its 4,000th member. USGBC membership—which is open only to companies and organizations, not to individuals—hit 2,000 in September of 2002 and 3,000 in May of 2003.

The

Hayward Corporation, which produces FSC-certified wood products and other green building materials (see

EBN

Vol. 9, No. 6 and

Vol. 10, No. 4), has achieved a LEED

® v2 Gold rating for its Hayward Building Systems plant in Santa Maria, California. The 55,000 ft

2 (5,100 m

2) facility... Read more

A recent design team solicitation from the Architect of the Capitol placed a whopping

25% of its selection criteria on the teams’ green design capabilities. “We believe this level of emphasis is a new high-water mark for the federal government,” said Terrel Emmons, FAIA, director of Planning and Programming. The project, being procured... Read more

In an appendix to the draft environmental impact statement for the

World Trade Center reconstruction project in lower Manhattan is a set of sustainable development guidelines that should help green the huge 16-acre (6.5 ha) development. Already, construction equipment on the site is using low-sulfur diesel fuel and high-performance... Read more

The California Division of the State Architect (DSA) has issued an “Acceptance Criteria Document” for zero-water consumption urinal fixtures that is helping to clear the way for nonflushing urinals in California schools and state-owned buildings. With this document, “DSA addresses those sections of the code that were controversial, and says... Read more

The product line includes 34... Read more

The year 2003 tied 2002 as the

second-hottest year on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). All five of the hottest years on record (since record-keeping began in 1880) have now occurred since 1997. Details are available on NOAA’s Climate Data Center Web site, at www.ncdc.noaa.gov.

... Read more

U.S. Department of Commerce Silver Medal for her work. Lippiatt is an economist in the Office of Applied Economics of the Building and Fire Research Laboratory at the National... Read more

EBN... Read more

A study by leading global climate scientist Dr. James Hansen and Dr. Larissa Nazarenko of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies suggests that carbon black (soot) from the

burning of diesel, biomass, and other fuels may contribute more than was previously thought to global warming, especially in polar regions. Soot accumulation on... Read more

by Mark Francis, 2003, Island Press. Paperback, 90 pages, $25.

Another book about Village Homes? I have to admit to being skeptical when I picked up this new title, the first in a series of place-based case studies from the Landscape Architecture Foundation. But

Village Homes: A Community by Design is a real gem, and it does... Read more

Last October’s issue of

EBN (

Vol. 12, No. 10) was another great one. My non-expert two cents on the filtration issue is that the best way to do HVAC in buildings (at least buildings other than single-family homes) is to separate space conditioning, which is an intermittent load, from ventilation, which is always present during... Read more