green building

LEED green-building program confronts critics and growing pains

“I didn’t like the ‘LEED is broken’ part, but I did like the ‘Let’s fix it’ part,” said U.S. Green Building Council President and CEO Rick Fedrizzi, referring to a critique of his organization’s building-certification program that has been much discussed in green-building circles. Green building is growing up. Published this spring by somewhat sympathetic […]

Umbra on preparing for winter

Dear Umbra, With the coming winter, our local news did a story on how to save on heating. The tips included window treatments, lowering the water heater, etc. But those of us in apartments are limited in what we can do. I can feel the cold air seeping through the cracks, and laying towels on […]

Massive planned Vegas complex claims to be sustainable

If you're going to build a gigantically humongous casino/hotel/condo/shopping center megaplex in the middle of Las Vegas, you may as well do it green ... or as green as a project of this size could be in the middle of the desert during a drought.

Brought to you by MGM Mirage, the 18-million-square-foot, $5 billion project will reportedly seek an unspecified level of LEED certification and, The Globe and Mail reports, will be bigger than Times Square, Soho, and Rockefeller Center -- combined.

MGM's claims of "sustainability" are likely more hype than reality, at least in the classic sense of the word, but designers, I suppose, do deserve some measure of credit for going greener than the average megaplex.

Eco-design features are said to include use of reclaimed water, planting of green roofs, and construction of a central power plant to be located on-site (presumably powered by something cleaner than, say, coal). One of the least-hailed features of the complex, though, will be an attempt at some kind of urban density, as well as the creation of a multi-use area amid the sprawl of Las Vegas' strip.

So way to go, MGM! May you and your big-name architects inspire other developers large and small to aim for at least some shade of green.

Umbra on windows

Dear Umbra, I just bought an old house and need to replace some of the windows. Are there alternatives to vinyl windows that will still cut down on heat loss? Noah WinerPhiladelphia, Pa. Dearest Noah, I hope I’ve caught you before you’ve placed your window order, because you are at a moment of opportunity. Window […]

On green building, urban development, and reviving rural America

This is part two of a three-part interview. You can read part one here and part three here.

In this section, Alex and I discuss green building, urban development, and reviving rural America.

Ad features naked men and phallic-shaped sustainable lumber

Imagine my delight at seeing this on the side of my bus: "Choose your wood responsibly," beckons the ad for Seattle's Environmental Home Center, a mecca for green home improvement. (See the full ad in PDF form here.)

Planting the seeds of sustainability in pop culture.

Okay. It is Friday and the last day of Grist's summer publishing break -- which means a little diversion from the more serious posts.

Now, the images below are not conceptual renderings of DestiNY part deux, but pics of Olympus, a fictional "utopian" city featured in the anime movie Appleseed. While I won't go on and rave about this movie as I did with Sky Blue, I did want to mention that Olympus had a few interesting qualities.

One, a million solar roofs that would make Arnold envious. (Okay, so I'm not sure how many there were, but it seemed like a million).

Two, green roofs.

Three, Olympus seemed to be an efficiently dense city.

Four, it is run by Gaia! (So what if this Gaia is actually a self evolving computer network -- they used the term Gaia!)

The Now House

I have a long-standing love affair with modern modular homes, particularly those built with eco-friendly materials and techniques (which is most of them, these days).  I also have a long-standing love affair with the "digital home" movement, wherein everything is wired to everything else and everything is online and the refrigerator knows when it's out of milk and all that.  So I am all agog at the unveiling of the Now House, a modern, modular, sustainable, digital-to-the-hilt exhibition home built using a system designed by Clever Homes, packed with products chosen by CNET Digital Living, and presented by the non-profit Affordable Green Development Corporation (what?  no website?).  

Me want.

The stylish modern, high-tech home is designed from safe advanced green and sustainable materials in a highly integrated manner. It also features the best digital accoutrements, including an intelligent digital network, extensive security monitoring and a consumer electronics system comprised of the "Editor's Choice" award selections provided by CNET Digital Living.

"The NowHouse was conceived to give consumers and builders alike a fully functional example of the advances that have taken place in home construction," said Scott Redmond, project director. "This innovative structure was built using a proprietary panelized construction system featuring patent-pending technologies, construction tools, and processes in over 300,000 square feet of robotic factories which are online and ready to build as of today, at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional home building."

The NowHouse project brings the "best-of-breed" architects, agencies, engineers, state-of-the-art products, technologies and systems together with the public to solve the missing link in modern digitally integrated green, sustainable, efficient systems- built, value-based homes for the progressive world.

The Now House has been built in an SBC Park Parking lot in San Francisco, Calif., and is open to the public through December 20.  If you live in that neck of the woods, you should check it out.

NRDC’s new Santa Monica building may be the most eco-friendly in the U.S.

Do you realize we are gathered in what must be the greenest building in the United States?” Natural Resources Defense Council Executive Director Frances Beinecke asked a crowd of well-scrubbed Californians gathered for the opening ceremony of the organization’s new SoCal headquarters in Santa Monica. Swilling mimosas and nibbling croissants on the building’s sunny, plant-strewn […]