BuildingGreen Report

News Brief

November 1, 2005
Green Dollhouse: Creating a Doll’s Eye View of a Healthier WorldEcotone Publishing Company, Kansas City, Missouri, 2005. Softcover, 72 pages, $19.95.

Wonderful Houses Around the Worldby Yoshio Komatsu, Shelter Publications, Bolinas, California, 2004. Flexcover or softcover, 48 pages, $14.95/$8.95.

Green Dollhouse documents the... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005
Lighting for Tomorrow, a national lighting fixture design competition held by the American Lighting Association, the Consortium for Energy Efficiency, and the U.S. Department of Energy, has announced the winners in its second annual competition (see

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Vol. 13, No. 8 for winners of the first competition). All prototypes had to meet... Read more

News Analysis

November 1, 2005
Tokyo, Japan, was the latest venue for the World Sustainable Building Conference (SB05), which began in 1998 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and took place in between in the Netherlands and Norway. As at past events, a wide range of technical sessions and poster presentations featured research and experiences from around the world.

A prominent... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005
Blakely Hall, a community center and town hall for Issaquah Highlands, a planned community near Seattle, Washington, earned two Globes (out of four possible) in the Green Building Initiative’s Green Globes™ green building performance tool in September 2005, making it the first U.S. building to receive Green Globes certification. The 7,000 ft2 (650... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

A September 2005 report from New Ecology, Inc., and Tellus Institute demonstrates that green affordable housing is more cost-effective than conventional affordable housing. The report,

Costs and Benefits of Green Affordable Housing, features case studies of 16 green affordable housing projects around the country and lays out the long-... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

The National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP), the world’s leading organization representing commercial real estate executives, has awarded its first Green Development Award to Corporate Office Properties Trust (COPT) for a 125,000 ft2 (11,600 m2) office building in Annapolis Junction, Maryland. The award was developed in... Read more

Product Review

November 1, 2005
Toto, a leading toilet manufacturer whose toilets have consistently been among the best in terms of flush performance, introduced to North America the Aquia™ Dual-Max™ dual-flush toilet in May 2005. While this toilet has been available elsewhere for five or six years and is the most popular toilet in Thailand, where it is manufactured, according... Read more

News Analysis

November 1, 2005

Cellulose insulation manufacturer U.S. GreenFiber, LLC, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, acquired Bonded Insulation, located in Hagman, New York, in July 2005. The acquisition will allow GreenFiber to expand its manufacturing and distribution presence in the Northeast and in eastern Canada. “GreenFiber has the capacity to turn what has... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

DuPont and Tate & Lyle have begun construction on a $100 million plant in Loudon, Tennessee, that will convert corn into 1,3 propanediol (PDO). The product, also known as Bio-PDO™, will replace petroleum-based PDO in the production of Sonora®, DuPont’s newest polymer, used in clothing, carpeting, plastics, and other products. The production... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

The U.S. Green Building Council, along with the Enterprise Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, the Trust for Public Land, and others, is planning a series of charrettes focused on rebuilding the Gulf Coast. The meetings will be held during the Greenbuild Conference, to take place in Atlanta November 9-11, 2005. Scholarships will allow 30 Gulf... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

In what it describes as the most ambitious energy conservation campaign in U.S. history, the California Public Utilities Commission in September 2005 authorized $2 billion in funding over the next three years for energy efficiency and conservation. The program’s provisions include financing strategies, online energy audits, and consumer rebates... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

P. Ole Fanger, D.Sc., director of the International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy at the Technical University of Denmark and fellow of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (ASHRAE), has won the Pettenkofer Gold Medal, the International Academy of Indoor Air Sciences’ highest honor for... Read more

News Analysis

November 1, 2005

The WatterSaver heat-pump water heater from ECR International (sold under the Dunkirk brand) has been taken out of production due to tepid consumer response despite offering significant energy-savings potential. “We hate to see it go away, but it just didn’t grab enough of the market,” Karl Mayer, OEM sales manager for ECR International, told... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

A 13.6 million acre (5.5 million ha) forest in Alberta, Canada, managed by Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries, Inc. (Al-Pac), has earned certification according to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards, making it the largest FSC-certified forest in the world. The announcement also makes Canada the leading country in the world for FSC-... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

GeoPraxis®, Inc., a company that provides architectural, engineering, and construction software and services, has become Green Building Studio, Inc., taking on the name of the company’s online energy-analysis service. The firm’s utility and real-estate consulting business, including the online EnergyCheckup™ tool, meanwhile, has spun off but... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has signed into law a bill establishing green building standards for certain capital projects. The law, Int. 324-A, requires most new and renovated City buildings that cost more than $2 million to “be built according to green building standards that are as stringent as LEED,” according to an Office of... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

The Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) has expanded its Green Label Plus program, released in 2004 to recognize carpets with low emissions of indoor pollutants, to include adhesives. Green Label Plus supersedes the organization’s older “Green Label” program, which addressed carpets, carpet pads, and adhesives. Before receiving Green Label Plus... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 2 have announced a call for entries in the second annual New York City Green Building Competition. The competition is open to projects built in or designed for specific sites within the boroughs of New York City. Awards will be... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005
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Advisory Board member Russell Perry, AIA, is now at SmithGroup’s Washington, D.C., office, after 11 years with William McDonough+Partners (WM+P). While at WM+P, Perry was project leader for several high-profile, aggressively green projects, including Ford’s River Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan, and the National Collections Centre at... Read more

News Analysis

November 1, 2005
Students from 18 schools in the U.S., Canada, and Spain converged on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in September 2005 to reconstruct the solar-powered homes that they had been designing and building on their own campuses over the past two years. The homes opened to visitors on October 7, and the final phase of the U.S. Department of Energy... Read more