built environment
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New solar cells can be printed right onto buildings
The world's largest dye-sensitized solar cell has just made an appearance. These cells have a couple of major advantages over traditional solar cells: one, they're incredibly cheap, and two, they can be printed right onto the materials used to make a building. Right now they’re being incorporated into girders manufactured by Tata steel.
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Awesome concept design makes buildings into bike racks
Floor space is at a premium in cities — everyone wants to walk, bike, drive, and park their various human- and gas-powered vehicles on the same precious real estate. Vertical space, on the other hand, is available in abundance. And while the obvious use for this space is crazy-ass trompe l'oeil murals, the second-best option […]
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How to build a prefab high-rise
Prefab houses are pretty awesome. Dense living is definitely awesome. And Sustainable Living Innovations is getting the prefab peanut butter in the density chocolate, designing modular high-rise buildings that unfold like cootie catchers. This video shows how it works. The result is a block of modern, open-plan apartments that is LEED Silver certified, and maybe […]
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What the green building industry requires (in one paragraph)
The technology is available. There are loads of talented designers and architects eager to design buildings and places that make more sense than the ones they were born into. What's lacking is money.
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Ruin porn, exurban sprawl edition
A while back, Sarah noted the proliferation of Detroit "ruin porn" -- images and films that depict abandoned houses, crumbling factories, and desperately unemployed masses without showing that intelligent life does, in fact, remain in the city. There's something of a parallel trend for sprawl: illustrations of the overbuilt, over-mortgaged empty subdivisions littering exurban America. The implied message is quite often that these places were built carelessly and are unaffordable, unsustainable, and damn near unlovable.
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Big exciting news about building codes. No, really
Maybe it's more inspiring to look at glitzy new green developments like UniverCity or Vancouver's Olympic Village, but these new energy codes improve every new home by 30 percent, not just the ambitious projects.
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Fix public housing by reconnecting it to the street grid
An aging public housing project faces the same challenge as a ritzy New Urbanist neighborhood -- it's been sliced off from the surrounding grid. Here's how to fix it.
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The future we want
It's tough to make compelling drama out of a happy-green-prosperous future -- even if that's where we want to live.
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The Biggest Loser (of energy waste): UNC dormitory
A UNC dorm tops a Biggest-Loser-style contest between 14 buildings to see which could cut the most energy waste. Hooray!