BuildingGreen Report

News Analysis

September 1, 1996
Salvaging Native Plants

In a unique effort, a native-plant nursery, landscape architect, and Habitat for Humanity affiliate have teamed up to salvage native plants and use them for landscaping low-income houses. For a year-and-a-half, Roy Beaty and his Willowell Nursery in Tigard, Oregon, have specialized in native plants, and beginning last... Read more

News Brief

September 1, 1996

Closing off streets to cars to create pedestrian malls doesn’t always work.

Land Use Digest, published by the Urban Land Institute, reported in its May 1996 issue that Chicago is joining such cities as Eugene, Little Rock, and Norfolk in reverting pedestrian malls back into regular streets. Merchants have complained in these cities that... Read more

News Brief

September 1, 1996
A Beautiful Product Guide

The Natural House Catalog: Everything You Need to Create an Environmentally Friendly Home, by David Pearson. Simon & Schuster, 1996. Paperback, 286 pages, $23.

This sequel to David Pearson’s popular

The Natural House Book uses a similar format—beautiful, high-quality photos and clear, concise text—... Read more

News Analysis

September 1, 1996
New Urbanists Sign Charter

At the Fourth Congress for the New Urbanism, held this past May in Charleston, South Carolina, more than 200 participants signed a charter that defines, for the first time, exactly what new urbanism is. The charter was developed in part to dispel criticism that new urbanism is really just a mild form of suburban... Read more

Op-Ed

September 1, 1996
Questioning the Savings from Grocery Rehab

This is a great tale, but I don’t believe it. The article [

Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 10-11] implies that insulation and airsealing dropped 30 tons (106 kW) of peak load from this 17,000 ft2 (1,600 m2) building. Nor do I believe the peak load of only 20 tons (70 kW) for this building. Indiana has hot... Read more

News Brief

September 1, 1996

An innovative section of highway near Los Angeles with “congestion pricing” is considered successful after six months of operation, and it could be the wave of things to come. The July issue of

Planning described a 10-mile segment of Route 91 with two lanes in either direction, known as FasTrak, in which tolls vary from $0.25 during the... Read more

Case Study

September 1, 1996
Patagonia Building a Model for Green Planning

The newly built Patagonia distribution center and office facility in Reno, Nevada, benefits from leading-edge environmental analysis and planning, even within its conventional form. Designers of the 184,000 ft2 (17,000 m2) building, the Miller|Hull Partnership of Seattle, Washington, used a... Read more

News Brief

September 1, 1996
The Bible of Rural Land-Use Planning

Rural by Design: Maintaining Small Town Character by Randall Arendt. Planners Press, American Planning Association, Chicago, IL, 1994. Hardcover, 460 pages, $86.

This hefty volume is a detailed and comprehensive guide to land-use planning in rural America. In clear language with excellent examples and... Read more

Product Review

July 1, 1996
Steel I-beams are designed on the basic principle that most of the stresses on a beam are at the top and the bottom. Open-web trusses and joists extend this principle much further, using only spaced diagonal members to connect the top and bottom chords. In between these two options are

castellated I-beams—essentially, regular I-beams with much... Read more

News Brief

July 1, 1996

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1996. 445 pages, hardcover, $34.95.

A handful of individuals have played truly dramatic roles in improving the relationship between our built environment and the natural environment.

Near the top of that list is Ian McHarg, a Scottish war hero who went on to found the landscape architecture program... Read more

News Analysis

July 1, 1996
The new 310,000 ft2 (28,800 m2) corporate headquarters for battery maker Duracell International in Bethel, Connecticut implements many green building strategies. The $70 million building was designed by Herbert S. Newman & Partners of New Haven, with green consulting support from RPM Systems, Inc. The building is heavily daylit, and materials... Read more

Op-Ed

July 1, 1996

Now that we at

EBN have finally the caught up with the trends and have created our own website, we can slow down long enough to ask: Why are we doing this, anyway? Didn’t we have enough to do just publishing on paper? At least the courts have struck down Internet censorship, so we don’t have to worry about getting in trouble for... Read more

News Brief

July 1, 1996

A one-square-foot sample of low-e glazing, representing the one billionth square foot produced, was recently presented to Christine Ervin, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy by Mike Koenig of Andersen Windows and Jim Larsen of Cardinal IG. The presentation was in recognition of ongoing support provided by DOE of window... Read more

Op-Ed

July 1, 1996

I’ve worked the last 25 years on developing parts of what is now called “Eco-design,” under the belief that healthier buildings, lower energy use, and less ecological impact were important. This was only to discover recently that all this time I was still looking at things in isolation rather in their ecological interconnectedness!

What I... Read more

News Brief

July 1, 1996

Schuller Corporation, a publicly traded manufacturer of fiberglass insulation based in Denver, Colorado, announced on May 17 that it is acquiring NRG Barriers of Portland, Maine, one of the nation’s leading producers of polyisocyanurate foam insulation. Both Schuller and NRG have been leaders in improving the environmental characteristics of... Read more

News Brief

July 1, 1996

Nuclear proponents have often pointed to the low electricity prices in France as evidence that high reliance on nuclear power keeps electricity prices low. But by comparing

pre-tax electricity rates, that claim is dispelled. According to the May/June issue of

World Watch Magazine, the three European countries with the lowest pre... Read more

News Brief

July 1, 1996

by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 700 Montreal Road, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0P7, Canada. 235 pages, paperback, $29.99.

Unlike many other green building material directories, which list only preferred materials, this book covers preferred materials and conventional materials side-by-side. It is not a product directory in the sense of... Read more

News Analysis

July 1, 1996

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) manufacturers representing 70% of the EPS industry recently joined together in April 1995 to form a trade organization, the EPS Molders Association, to more effectively promote their products. According to the May 1996 issue of

Energy Design Update, this development should help solve one of the biggest... Read more

News Brief

July 1, 1996

The pilot lights on gas-fired fireplaces waste a lot of energy. That’s one conclusion of a recent study by Skip Hayden of the Combustion Gas Research Laboratory of CANMET and Consumers Gas, a major Canadian gas utility. Fifty-two homes with significant use of gas fireplaces were surveyed; 38 of these had continuous pilots. In the homes with... Read more

Feature

July 1, 1996
Dru Meadows, manager of the Green Team at BSW International, a large management, real estate, design and construction company, evaluates and specifies many new and alternative building materials. Many green materials she sees don’t get specified, and it isn’t because the products aren’t good. Often it is because the novice manufacturer doesn’t... Read more