Buffalo House
Check out Buffalo House by the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Studio 804. This house is sleek, sustainable and has well integrated building strategies.
The sustainable features are:
Cumaru Wood Rainscreen
Enough rooftop photovoltaic solar panels for a net zero electricity supply (90-100%) for an average home.
One on-site 1.2 KW Windspire wind turbine that could produce [...]
Doing Well by Doing Good? – A Research Paper on the Economic Value of Green Building Certifications:
“Doing Well by Doing Good? Green Office Buildings” by Piet Eichholtz, Nils Kok and John M. Quigley is a research paper produced by the Center for the Study of Energy Markets at UC Energy Institute in Berkeley. This very interesting paper:
(Abstract) This paper provides the first credible evidence on the economic value of the certification of [...]
InnoVida Panels – Fiber Composite Panels
InnoVida Fiber Composite Panels are pre-manufactured, load bearing, insulated, and fire-resistant. The system is designed to meet seismic, hurricane, sustainability and budget requirements and are currently being used (as a donation) in the construction of 1,000 homes in post earthquake Haiti. The panels are formed by a layer of polyurethane insulation sandwiched between two composite [...]
100% Daylight for Friends School’s Dining Hall
The lights are off all day! 1,200 students of the Friends School of Baltimore eat, socialize, and study as part of a tight knit community without the use of a single light bulb. Their new Dining Hall, designed by Ziger/Snead Architects, uses an array of 21 skylights to bathe the entire room in 100% natural [...]
Solar Decathlon 2009: Team Illinois’ Impressive 2nd Place
To the casual observer the 2009 Solar Decathlon looked like a competition between the uber high end and slickly built homes of the Technische Universitat Darmstadt (Germany), the University of California, and the University of Ontario. If anything, the glossy aesthetics gave a sense that these teams spent, or were donated, some serious $$$ [...]
Two Passive Houses Win Welsh Eco-Homes Design Competition
Two Passive Houses have won an eco-homes design competition for a sustainable development at “The Works Ebbw Vale” in Wales. The two entries, one three-bedroom and one two-bedroom house, use up to 85% less energy, emit 80% less carbon dioxide, use the sun as the primary heating source, and have excellent indoor air quality. The designs, by bere:architects [...]
Natural Swimming Pools: The Sustainable Pond
Natural swimming pools (NSPs) are a way to blend the sustainability and natural beauty of a pond with the functionality of a swimming pool. NSPs use biological filtration in lieu of the more common chemical or chlorine water cleaning systems used in most artificial swimming pools. The pools generally consist of a swimming area and [...]
The Reinvention of Wood through Sustainable Tech
Wood, arguably the most timeless of materials, is being reinvented (re-engineered) by sustainable technologies to meet the challenges of building in the 21st century. These new wood products attempt to match the desired properties of conventional pressure treated lumber without any of the associated negative environmental and health impacts. Beyond sustainability, the re-engineering of wood [...]
Piano Stairs in Stockholm – The Influence of Design on Behavior
Design adds value. It enriches our lives. Bestows meaning to everyday objects, experiences, places. Design can change our behavior. Below is a series of videos called ‘The Fun Theory’ (rolighetsteorin) sponsored by Volkswagen. It is amazing to watch. Enjoy.
For more information visit thefuntheory.com or rolighetsteorin.se.
Solar Decathlon 2009: R-30 Per Inch! with Vacuum Insulated Panels
(This post is part of an ongoing series reviewing the competition, technologies and products at the 2009 Solar Decathlon. See Team Germany and the Benefits of Imagination for more about the University of Darmstadt house.)
Did anyone else notice that the Technische Universitat Darmstadt house felt more spacious than other houses at the 2009 Decathlon? Roomy [...]
Dockside Green: A LEED-Platinum Development in Victoria, British Columbia
Here is an inspiring video about a LEED-Platinum development in Victoria, British Columbia, that uses New Urbanism, smart growth, green building and sustainable community design principles to create a new urban environment.
More information can be found at the Dockside Green website.
via iGreenBuild.com
Solar Decathlon 2009: Team Germany and the benefits of Imagination
Solar Decathlon 2009 is over and Technische Universitat Darmstadt (Team Germany) has done it again! With a score of 908 out of a possible 1,000, Team Germany clinched the win by just 11 points over the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A tight race between the two Passive Houses. The peloton came in farther behind [...]
Thermablok Insulation Strips – Another Tool in the Arsenal Against Thermal Bridging
Now that the Solar Decathlon 2009 is over I have time to pour over the tremendous number of novel materials, products, equipment the teams chose to install. One of the many, this one used by Team California, is a product used to prevent thermal bridging at wood and steel framing members called Thermablok. The website [...]
Eco-Goats and the Clearing of Invasives
(Eco-Goats and the Clearing of Invasives is part of an ongoing series of posts about a planned LEED-NC 2.2 Platinum project in Baltimore Maryland called The Center for Parks&People at Auchentoroly Terrace)
The Parks&People Foundation had a big problem. The site for their planned LEED-NC 2.2 Platinum project, after many years of being unused, was overgrown [...]
LEED Platinum Building Planned for Baltimore City
Baltimore’s first planned LEED Platinum building is on the drawing boards! The building, to be located on the site of a long neglected city park will serve as headquarters for the non-profit Parks & People Foundation, whose mission it is to ‘(help) to improve the physical, social, and environmental quality of neighborhoods through greening activities [...]
CASE – Center for Architecture Science and Ecology
(above) advanced ecoceramic structural systems
Greenline believes that next generation building systems has the potential to have a profound influence on the sustainability of our built environment. We try to highlight articles we find relevant that lie at the intersection of art, science, technology and architecture and do so with a passion. We take special notice [...]
RETROSolar: Light Redirecting Window Blinds
RETROSolar is a German company known for producing complex aluminum roll formed profiles for the building industry, notably advanced reflector technology for daylighting systems, light fixtures, and dropped ceilings. Design of the systems shows significant research on the part of Retrosolar into maximizing the efficient use of available light through the use of geometrically optimized [...]
A House of Paper: The Artek Pavillion by Shigeru Ban
The Artek Pavillion by Shigeru Ban was built in 2007 as part of an installation at the 2007 Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan. The mobile exhibition space was commissioned by Finnish furniture company, Artek, and forest industry group/paper producer/wood materials manufacturer, UPM. As part of their company philosophies, the two sponsors, beyond just asking [...]
The Human Body’s Heat Plume
Sometimes I forget that we live in an ocean of air. I take for granted that the open space in front of me, or filling our buildings, has a profound affect on my very existance. The gasseous medium we swim through affects thermal comfort, energy movement, and air quality through complex molecular interactions described most [...]
Beijing Blazes with Cooling Towers
The world is fascinated by the sight of a beautiful, modern, piece of architecture going up in flames almost instantly. The pictures, videos, tweets, blogs and news flurries are abuzz with raw feeds for the gawking masses to peruse. Thank goodness for connectivity and distributed networks! But who could have imagined the maelstrom of data [...]
Porous Pavings by Invisible Structures
The development of successful porous paving systems makes it inexcusable to lay impervious surfaces in our built environment. “Pave the planet.” Does that make any sense? Just a quick search will turn up a myriad of porous paving solutions with various consistencies, levels of durability, materials, and finish textures. Some porous pavings look identical [...]
Villa Åkarp – A Positive Net Energy House in Malmö, Sweden
(above) exterior rendering by Karin Adalbert
Villa Åkarp is a positive net energy house (plusenergihus in Swedish) being built outside of Malmo, Sweden. The house, brainchild of doctor of building physics, Karin Adalberth, will generate more energy on an annual basis than it consumes by combining energy conservation, energy recovery and energy generation technologies, an amazing [...]
What is a Chilled Beam?
Above is a striking combination light active chilled beam by TROX
A Chilled Beam is a building conditioning system that uses convection and water to efficiently move energy throughout a building. Chilled beams come in both active and passive varieties but are in no way a part of the building’s structural system as the name might [...]
Greg Lynn Speaks at TED
Greg Lynn, creator of the Blobwall and head of Greg Lynn FORM, lectures on how the development of calculus based tools is affecting the architectural field. He presents a quick history of design from the perspective of whole, fraction and now a more fluid calculus based system of describing shape and even shows off a [...]
