Greenline | Design / Technology / Sustainability

I am oftentimes skeptical about the myriad of lists one can find out there covering everything from foreclosure rates in metro areas to best cities to fall in love. I have a hard time with most of these rankings because I am a big fan of quantifying results before something is published as truth and [...]

Henry Gifford, in a recent research paper titled ‘A Better Way to Rate Green Buildings’, offers a well reasoned counter assessment of the USGBC’s interpretation of energy efficiency in LEED buildings, specifically those results announced at the 2007 GreenBuild relating LEED certification to energy performance. In effect, he argues that there is disparity between [...]

High Performance Steam Engine - District Energy by the City of Baltimore
Who says that sustainable designers don’t have their work cut out for them? We designers can have a huge impact. Believe me, I have heard the arguments a million times. “Buildings consume X percentage of world energy and we can save X percent of [...]

 
Blobwall is a material and form study by Greg Lynn (’Form’) which explores the definition of modular construction and space separation in the coming century. Design and construction of Blobwall are heavily influenced by Lynn’s work with advanced three dimensional modeling and manufacturing techniques and follow an evolutionary path from his earlier work with biomorphic [...]

Energy in = energy out. Only the format changes. Now that is sustainable.

greenPIX, ‘the Zero Energy Media Wall,’ uses architecture and technology to absorb, store, amplify, translate, and display data, both natural and manmade, in an organic system that responds dynamically to the local environment. Creative programming adds even more layers to the already rich [...]

Sustainability is a simple concept with a varied and challenging means of execution, and it is easy to falter, especially when faced with the myriad of devices, controls and systems designed to make buildings more sustainable. Searching for the latest, most sophisticated strategy for increasing a project’s sustainability does not translate into a sustainable building. [...]

All Paper Recycling, Inc. has created a product called Shetka Stone that can be used for a variety of uses including countertops, fabricated panels, benches and tile. Shetkastone is made from100% pre and post consumer waste paper, including counterfeit money and phone books. The material is scratch, stain, and water resistant and [...]

Litracon is a light-transmitting concrete product able to move light through concrete up to 20 meters thick. The product is composed of roughly 4% optical glass fibers placed parallel within a fine concrete mix. The result in a homogeneous material from exterior surface to center which retains the compressive strength qualities of concrete. The [...]

Alkemi is a recycled aluminum solid surfacing material made right here in Baltimore (Maryland). The product is composite of a polyester-based medium and post-industrial scrap waste soft-alloy aluminum flake fillers for texture. Recycled content is 35% by weight or 60% by volume as certified by Scientific Certification Systems (SCS). In addition, Alkemi’s manufacturer, Renewed Materials [...]

”to make as effective, perfect, or useful as possible“ -Definition ‘Optimize’
The National Aquatic Center in Beijing achieves sustainability through the optimization and integration of its structure, envelope, and building systems. In doing so it tells the story of how a little known problem of theoretical physics, Kelvin’s Conjecture, influenced the design of a prominent international [...]

“The first step in sustainability is to reuse an existing building.” – Michael Furbish, developer of Lucky’s Warehouse

Lucky’s Warehouse is a sustainable adaptive-reuse of an industrial space built in the Brooklyn / Curtis Bay area of South Baltimore. The warehouse was originally built to house a millwork shop and was later converted into a storage [...]

The Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) has just completed a $60 million expansion of its facility which makes it the world’s first LEED certified art museum complex. The 125,000 sf facility is three times larger than it was previously and now includes 18,000 sf of exhibition, an auditorium, a children’s education center, art studios, study [...]

Integrated Environmental Solutions Ltd (IES) has developed a building performance simulation plug-in linking ‘Virtual Environment’ to Google’s Sketchup that ‘empowers energy, carbon, daylight and solar analysis, and much more to be undertaken at the touch of a few buttons, right from the earliest stages of the design process, where the maximal difference to sustainable design [...]

Energy Certificates, also called Energy Passports, are documents that profile the energy performance of existing and new buildings within the European Union. The program was initiated as part of the EU Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings in January of 2006 and will be mandatory throughout the member countries. The goal is to provide [...]

Recently I had the benefit of sitting in on lecture about using plants to treat environmental problems. The lecture was given by Dr. Lee A. Newman, who has been conducting research in the area of phytoremediation for the past 16 years. Her work at the University of South Carolina focuses on using plants [...]

Immanuel Kant, in 1790, described beauty as ’sensory, emotional, and intellectual,’ a synthesis of data which we as humans process when evaluating objects. More recently Abraham Moles, Frieder Nake and Jurgen Schmidhuber, leaders in the field of aesthetics and information theory, described beauty as ‘the option with the shortest description, given the observer’s previous knowledge [...]

Baltimore has a vocal champion for urban environmental issues. His name is Glenn Ross and he has only recently embraced the label of ‘environmentalist.’
You see, Mr. Ross had spent the previous 20 years dealing with sanitation, public health and decent housing as a community activist on the behalf of his East Baltimore community (and other [...]