Manuel said:
"This is great news! I hope all cities pass this into law.The practice of using plastic bags just to quickly dispose of them has been going on far t..." [read]
Jay Knecht said:
"What are the performance stats for the Son of Max? ..." [read]
gazelle said:
"@ Dallas:
The book, and the supplementary videos in the "How It All Ends" youtube series, address this in detail, but I'll try to paraphrase:..." [read]
Barry said:
"Kofi Annan has about as much of a clue about electric cars and developing countries as Ann Ann the Panda.
He underestimates the ingenuity o..." [read]
JJ said:
"Very cool. I didn't thought that biodesel might be our future fuel...." [read]
Derek said:
""I guarantee you this will spark huge debates around the world," she said. "We have to delve into this in a way that hasn't been done in a long tim..." [read]
Is it just the economy or is there a real change going on? Michael Phillips writes in the Wall Street Journal about how builders are offering smaller houses than they have in years. The Scarlett O'Hara stairs and two storey halls are out, and the plans are simpler, square-er, and way more efficient. Some might say that it is simply a response to the economy; as one commenter said " In a down economy smaller houses sell, and in a good economy bigger houses sell. Unless we have all become rabid anti-materialists this is just a phase."
Witold Rybczynski could be described as a public intellectual, a prolific writer of accessible books about houses, cities and urban design. He opened the Trudeau Foundation's conference Cities and the Public Sphere: Rethinking the Urban Commons. with the remark that "one of the advantages of getting old is that you can look back in horror and dismay at some of the things that we did as architects and planners."
He then proceeded to look back at the four paradigms of North American cities, and at how things worked out.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Image credit:flickr, recubejim's photostream
World Toilet Day , which happens to be right now, is needed for good reason. Per the WTD website: "2.5 billion people worldwide are without access to proper sanitation, which risks their health, strips their dignity, and kills 1.8 million people, mostly children, a year;" and, "Because even the world's wealthiest people still have toilet problems - from unhygienic public toilets to sewage disposal that destroys our waterways." They are so right. Read on for a disgusting example of why you should be thankful if you have access to a decent one, and if your government keeps the poop works properly operating.
Looking for high-end, luxurious jewelry while being sustainable as well? The pieces found at Sulusso are just that, and so much more. Sulusso is an online marketplace featureing jewelry designers that all have one thing in common - a commitment to social and environmental responsibility. Sulusso offers the best selection of beautiful jewelry made with recycled metals, conflict-free diamonds and ethically sourced gems.
Buildings comprise 40% or more of our emissions in the U.S., so I'm trying to create a personal living situation for myself that might be a model for how more of us could live in the future (at least in cities like New York).
I'm gunning to design a tiny, ultra-green-yet-sleek (almost luxurious in parts), extremely functional, financially smart apartment. I'm in contract for the space and am assembling a team. I have someone who's managing the entire process and an architect-expeditor to help on design, drawings and getting through the permitting process. I need to add an amazing person to the team. Please click through to learn more about what I'm looking for in a green consultant.
"Question everything generally thought to be obvious." That's the motto of Dieter Rams. You may not know his name but you have probably owned something that he designed--he was the former head of design at Braun for forty years.
Considered one of the most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century, an exhibition at the Design Museum in London shows the range of his work. More than 500 products were created whilst he was a designer and then head of design at Braun. The pieces are elegant but simple in function, with no extraneous details or decoration.
One of the most important components of a tightly sealed house or a super-sealed Passive House is a fresh air system. Often they are heat recovery ventilators, and others have used earth tubes running under the home or in the garden. Japan's Geo Power Systems has turned it into a clever system. They call it a solar geothermal system, preheating the air from the solar heat trapped in the ground. The ground is a constant temperature and a comfortable one, so it warms in winter and cools in summer. It has a number of components:
As Jaymi noted in Green Mood Lighting for Starbucks! Switching 8,000 Stores to LEDs, Starbucks is going through a big makeover, and is aiming for LEED certification of all of its stores starting in 2010. With over 16,000 stores worldwide, going green is a big deal.
Corporate Architect Tony Gale used to be Chief Architect for the City of Seattle, the kind of job where you do the tough stuff, working with agencies, communities, entrenched interests and NIMBYs on policy, direction and strategy rather than the fun stuff of designing. It is the perfect background for a job the size of the one at Starbucks. We caught up with Tony at Greenbuild in Phoenix.
In 2002 Allison Arieff and Bryan Burkhart wrote Prefab and started a revolution. Architects and entrepreneurs all over America started looking at prefab differently. Early off the mark were Michelle Kaufmann, who launched her Glidehouse, and myself, launching the Q. It was an exciting time, we were all going to reinvent the building industry. We had so many cute lines- "you don't build a car in a driveway, why would you build a house in a field" and we had to beat all of the other architects and designers off with a stick, there were so many throwing their pencils into the ring. ...
Images via Yanko Design
l
This new invention is fascinating on just about every level--it's an mp3 player for the deaf that translates musical notes into nuanced vibrations. Holding the pillow-sized stereo against your chest, one can feel the rhythms, beats, and melodies--allowing the hearing impaired to fully enjoy music for the first time. The experience is fleshed out even more with the innovative use of LED lights that change color and brightness along with the music. ...
Photos: Paula Alvarado
Argentine sustainable design was on the spotlight last week, when the second edition of Sustentable Festival took place in Buenos Aires featuring more than 100 products in an exhibition. Some of them familiar, some newish, we pick some of the objects and designs that called our attention in these 13 photos. Take a look inside the post....
In the food world there is the debate between "organic" and "local" and the idea of looking your farmer in the eye. It appears that much the same thing is happening in wood- there is certified FSC lumber, and there is local, sustainably harvested lumber where you look your forester in the eye. There is even a National Network of Forest Practitioners that "promotes the mutual well being of workers, rural communities, and forests by supporting individuals and groups that build sustainable relationships between forests and people."...
Greenbuild in Phoenix attracted all kinds of people and products, and of course Al Gore always attracts fans and supporters. Quite a few products on the floor didn't have quite enough information or my photography was too lousy to put up an entire post, So we have gathered them together in a slideshow .
...
A familiar face at San Francisco's Green Festival was Mr. Ellie Pooh, a company that makes paper from elephant dung. Elephants in Sri Lanka are killed for their interference with agriculture, but they interfere with agriculture simply because they're running out of space of their own. By making a lucrative market for paper from their dung, they're given a better chance at survival. ...
Speakman is better known for its luxury shower heads, but it was fitting that in the hot, dry atmosphere of Phoenix, that they demonstrate the latest in evaporative coolers. For those who haven't been following our search for the solar powered air conditioner, when water changes state from liquid to gas it absorbs a great deal of heat. People have been using this fact to build desert coolers for over a hundred years. But the traditional ones added a lot of moisture to the air, which makes it feel warmer because you don't sweat as efficiently. ...
We have been showing toilets with sinks built into the lids of the tanks for years, including home-made and aftermarket plastic versions. Now Caroma gives us a dual flush toilet that they claim will save a family of four 30,000 gallons of water per year over an older toilet.
...
Autodesk says it is "committed to sustainable design" and they certainly tried to show it in their booth, which is made entirely of recycled cardboard, sustainably harvested BC fir, recycled cardboard sonotubes, all treated with a 100% biodegradable fire retardant that makes it possible to build a booth out of paper....
The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) Is now battling in the courts, in front of the Federal Trade Commission, at the US Green Building Council to gain credibility. That doesn't cut any ice with ForestEthics, who never miss a chance to expose it as greenwashed lumber. They ran full page ads in USA Today during Greenbuild, naming the companies that use wood from "destruction as usual" logging with the SFI Label on it....
When you show up at GreenBuild you are overwhelmed by the new, the high-tech, the inevitable "LEEDING the way" slogans, and you see and hear very little about the old and the existing; it isn't shiny. There are a few voices out there in the wilderness that have something to say about old buildings, ignored in this milieu like Richard Moe was last year. Another ignored voice is Steve Mouzon, who designs new buildings that work by learning from the best of old buildings, and writes about them in books and online. I caught up with him at GreenBuild....
Image: St. Olaf Press ReleaseShare
Here is an update on the largest science center ever to strive for LEED Platinum certification: They made it! The St. Olaf Regents Hall of Natural and Mathematical Sciences has been granted the highest level available from the respected Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. St. Olaf thereby cements the record for the largest academic facility in the USA to hold the LEED Platinum status. ...
Before - Typical HPS street lighting, not optimized for ocular sensitivity and energy savings. Image credit: Mesopic Street Lighting Demonstration and Evaluation Final Report, for Groton Utilities, Groton, Connecticut. (pdf)
I'm not really sure this is going to work out. Aesthetic sensibilities of the suburban class you know. Regardless it's a very clever and praiseworthy effort to make the city nightlife more sustainable. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), realizing that the human eye is most sensitive at night to the right end of the ROYGBIV spectral band, have figured out that street light bulbs, redesigned to match that highest of nighttime sensitivities, will save considerable energy: enough to prevent the emission equivalent of over a half-million tons of C02 per year in the USA. If implemented, it will make greener the Goth subculture...
It's an idea that just seems to make a certain amount of sense: cities need streetlights, and cities need places for people to throw away their trash. Streetlights, which must stay on all night (unless they're these nifty sensor controlled ones), are a pretty sizable energy drain. But what would happen if all those people could toss their garbage into bins attached to a new kind of streetlight that could use it as fuel? And that's what we have here today. Introducing: the trash-powered street lamp....
Photo via Unplggd
Sure, sure, there are concerns about swine flu and all sorts of illnesses being spread around right now. And when it comes to public bathrooms, automatic soap dispensers make sense to keep germ-y hands from touching anything before being washed. However, in homes? Simplehuman sensor soap pump is anything but a practical solution for your bathroom....
The King of Motown is worried about what kind of planet his grandchildren are going to grow up in, and loved the idea of Ciralight sun-tracking skylights. They have a little solar panel that runs a GPS-guided mirror system that tracks the sun throughout the day, eliminating the need for artificial light in stores, schools and factories. The Beatles may have covered his song "You really got a hold on me" but the theme song for Smokey's skylight company really should be a cover of the Beatles' "I'll follow the sun" because that is what the Ciralight does....
Source: Dangerous By Design
It's the Jungle Out There!
San Francisco is definitely pedestrian-friendly in many ways compared to many cities, but being walkable doesn't always mean that it is safe. A new report by Transportation for America ranks the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont area 13th safest for walkers, based on an index that takes into account annual pedestrian deaths and the percentage of workers who commute by foot. Our friends at Streetsblog SF dug deeper and found that things are worse than they first seem: "47.7 percent of all traffic fatalities in San Francisco are pedestrians, more than four times the national average of 11.8 percent. The rate of pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 residents is 2.60 in San Francisco, 70 percent higher than the national average of 1.53."...
Furniture made from reclaimed wood, whether it be from the wild or from a collapsing warehouse, expresses the human and natural history of the region it was plucked from. Last week I wrote about Urban Woods, an LA-based furniture shop whose materials reflect the unique environs of California. This week, Garden & Gun (one of my favorite southern magazines) turned me on to Turning House Furniture, a Virginia-based company building impeccable pieces with wood reclaimed from such quintessentially southern structures as an R.J Reynolds tobacco warehouse in North Carolina and the Rip Van Winkle bourbon factory in Kentucky....
Bonnie previously showed Toronto's Pearson Airport's Eco-Design Show in the international section of Pearson Airport. Over in the US terminal, there was an entire display that could have been ripped out of the pages of TreeHugger. Start with the model of the Canuhome, then a display of IDS09: CISTA Green Rainwater Harvesting">Moss Sund's interior vertical garden, a couple of cans of Boomerang paint, a gorgeous table from Urban Harvest and finish off with a couple of Ovopur water filters. So much good green design in one place, put there for the edification of a few travellers waiting for a plane to the States....
This week was a big one for TreeHugger friend Cameron Sinclair as he travelled to London to receive the Royal Society of Arts' Bicentenary Medal. Cameron flew into his home town to pick up the honour, jointly awarded to him and his partner Kate Stohr, as co-founders of Architecture For Humanity. The Medal is usually awarded to 'a person who, in a manner other than as an industrial designer, has applied art and design in great effect as instruments of civic innovation'. This year Cameron and Kate were honoured for "increasing people's resourcefulness". So three cheers for AFH from the TreeHugger team and here are five more architectural stories of the week to celebrate!...
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the weekly archive if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 11.20.09
In 2002 Allison Arieff and Bryan Burkhart wrote 
Images via 
Photos: Paula Alvarado
Argentine sustainable design was on the spotlight last week, when the second edition of 
In the food world there is the debate between "organic" and "local" and the idea of looking your farmer in the eye. It appears that much the same thing is happening in wood- there is certified FSC lumber, and there is local, sustainably harvested lumber where you look your forester in the eye. There is even a 
Greenbuild in Phoenix attracted all kinds of people and products, and of course Al Gore always attracts fans and supporters. Quite a few products on the floor didn't have quite enough information or my photography was too lousy to put up an entire post, So we have gathered them together in a slideshow .
A familiar face at San Francisco's Green Festival was 
Speakman is better known for its luxury shower heads, but it was fitting that in the hot, dry atmosphere of Phoenix, that they demonstrate the latest in evaporative coolers. For those who haven't been following our search for the 
We have been showing toilets with sinks built into the lids of the tanks for years, including 
Autodesk says it is "committed to sustainable design" and they certainly tried to show it in their booth, which is made entirely of recycled cardboard, sustainably harvested BC fir, recycled cardboard sonotubes, all treated with a 100% biodegradable fire retardant that makes it possible to build a booth out of paper....
The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) Is now battling in the courts, in front of the Federal Trade Commission, at the US Green Building Council to gain credibility. That doesn't cut any ice with 
When you show up at GreenBuild you are overwhelmed by the new, the high-tech, the inevitable "LEEDING the way" slogans, and you see and hear very little about the old and the existing; it isn't shiny. There are a few voices out there in the wilderness that have something to say about old buildings, ignored in this milieu like 
Image: 
Before - Typical HPS street lighting, not optimized for ocular sensitivity and energy savings. Image credit: 
It's an idea that just seems to make a certain amount of sense: cities need streetlights, and cities need places for people to throw away their trash. Streetlights, which must stay on all night (unless they're these nifty 
Photo via 
Source: Dangerous By Design
It's the Jungle Out There!
San Francisco is definitely pedestrian-friendly in many ways compared to many cities, but being walkable doesn't always mean that it is safe. A new report by 
Bonnie previously showed 
This week was a big one for TreeHugger friend 
