Ziger Snead’s Herring Run Watershed Center Featured in Stormwater Magazine
StormH2O Magazine has a great in depth article on the Herring Run Watershed Center- Baltimore’s first LEED NC Gold certified building. You can read all about it here.
Ziger/Snead’s Classroom of the Future
In the summer of 2009, Ziger/Snead participated in Architecture for Humanity’s Classroom of the Future Open Architecture Challenge. The brief was to work with an existing educational organization to create a classroom design that would best serve their needs into the next century.
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.
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
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 [...]
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 [...]
15 Greenest Cities on the Globe
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 Suggests ‘A Better Way to Rate Green Buildings’
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 Heating in Baltimore
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 [...]
Climate Change Exhibit
An exhibit on the effects of Climate Change opens tommorow at the Museum of Natural History in New York and runs through August 16, 2009.
“Climate Change will use realistic dioramas, hands-on activity stations, and dynamic animations to understand the climate’s response to the build-up of greenhouse gases and explore the repercussions for today’s world and [...]
‘Community Greens’: Greening Baltimore’s Alleys
Above is an aerial photo of Baltimore showing some official green space and some potential alley green space – in green – quite a web if coordinated to work together!
‘Community Greens‘ is an organization which supports the ‘development of shared green spaces inside residential blocks in cities across the United States’ by taking the stand [...]
The Physics-Sun: A Solar Laser in Uzbekistan
A few machines are stunningly beautiful. Some because of their function. Some because of their scale. Some because of their materiality. Some because of their purity of design.
The physics-sun solar laser in Uzbekistan is one of those beautiful machines. The 40 meter tall machine uses 62 large individually controllable mirrors arrayed in a concave shape [...]
Playing the Building: Harmonics and Transparency of Building Systems
David Byrne, co-founder of the Talking Heads, has turned the New York Battery Maritime Building into a musical instrument. Sitting at a old pipe organ, any ‘musician’ is able to sonically explore the complexity of the building’s system without ever leaving the composers seat. A heavy sound may be for structure. A light sound could [...]
Mobius Climber: Playground Equipment of the Future
The Mobius Climber (of course a name play on the mobius strip) by Landscape Structures is an amazing new design for playground equipment. The designers used a textured annodized aluminum sheet as the mobius strip structure that does not become excessively slippery when wet. The aluminum frame also resists excess heat gain so the equipment [...]
Sustainability in an Automobile: Efficient Material Use
Here is a great example of efficient material use in an automotive application.
Building America: Developing Energy Efficient Homes in the US
Building America is a private/public partnership, organized by the US Department of Energy, designed to develop and promote energy solutions for new and existing homes “that can be implemented on a production basis.” Stated goals of the project include:
Producing homes on a community scale that use on average 30% to 90% less energy
Integrate onsite power [...]
A Note from the Editor…
My apologies for the extended hiatus from posting on Greenline. My team has been finishing up the construction document for a small school dining hall. The diminutive project is attempting LEED Silver and is the first project we have drawn from start to finish in Revit Architecture, so in the end it was quite challenging. [...]
Baltimore Green Map Launched
Here’s a great new interactive resource for the residents of Baltimore: the Baltimore Green Map. It’s an online interactive map where residents can research or input ‘green living’ hot-spots in the City. If you’re looking for the best urban hike, look no further! How about a place to buy local produce or products? It’s [...]
Sustainability at the Museum of Art
Recently I was asked to do a presentation on ‘Sustainability’ as it relates to a Museum of Art. The presentation was geared to the museum facility board and included the definition of sustainability, sustainable decision making, unique considerations special to museums, case studies and a conclusion about sustainable metrics and LEED. My co presenter, Mike [...]
Baltimore, place of Yes and Yes
ZigerSnead’s very own Fred Scharmen has a great article on Archinect! The article is titled ‘Baltimore, place of Yes and Yes‘ and is described as a ‘love letter to Baltimore.’ He uses the post as a platform to present an honest and personal assessment of the city complete with its potentials and pitfalls.
The posting [...]
BLDGBLOG Comes to Baltimore
This week Geoff Manaugh, creator of BLDGBLOG among other things, lectured here in Baltimore. He was invited to speak through the AIA’s Michael F. Trostel Lecture sponsored by Preservation Maryland. The lecture was generally angled to cover historic preservation, but to my delight, Manaugh managed to move the discussion well outside the traditional boundaries [...]
Exploding Wind Turbine Video
Here is a great video of a wind turbine self destructing during a wind storm. The strong wind causes the turbine to spin very quickly and eventually bends the blades backward, hitting the support structure. The result is a frightening example of what a poorly designed or malfunctioning wind turbine can do. Turbines are actually [...]
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
The long sighted Scandinavians have done it again. In an effort to plan for major global food crises, planetary catastrophe, or species extinction, the Nordic ministries have built the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to safeguard specimens of the world’s seeds. A Noah’s Ark for plant species. The Vault is located on the extremely secluded Spitsbergen [...]
