The idea of “green” buildings is a terrific marketing concept. But some argue that some green buildings can be a nightmare for those having to work inside high-rise structures lacking heat or air conditioning. (Greenline recently introduced the San Francisco Federal Building by Thom Mayne in an associated post) The new Thomas Mayne designed Federal [...]
San Francisco’s Green Building Nightmare
The San Francisco Federal Building: A High Performance Sustainable Workplace?
The U.S. Federal Building in San Francisco is one of the General Services Administration’s (GSAs) most visible attempts at designing a high performance government building. The project is one of many started following the 1993 adoption of the “Design Excellence Program,” in which the federal government sought to “reach into the private sector to find [...]
Zollverein School Building: Active Thermal Insulation
30°C Coal Mine Water + Radiant Exterior Wall System + Structure = Active Thermal Insulation
The Zollverein School of Business Management and Design building is a model project for systems integration. It uses a sophisticated Active Thermal Insulation system consisting of preheated water circulating through the facade which allows for thin exterior structural walls perforated [...]
Smith House: A Passive House in Illinois
The Smith House, located in Urbana Illinois, is an all electric house built to the German Passive House Building Standard. To achieve the passive standard, architect and owner, Katrin Klingenberg, created a clean, efficient and comfortable house design using many of the passive house design strategies used in German model buildings. She describes the house [...]
Waldsee BioHaus: First Certified Passive House in the U.S.
In 2006, the Waldsee BioHaus became the first building in the United States to be certified with the German Passive House Building Standard. The house, built at the German Concordia Language Village of Waldsee in Bemidji Minnesota, uses about 85% less energy than a house designed to meet the Minnesota Energy Code. For that reason, [...]
The Passive House (Passiv Haus) Building Standard
(above) The original Passive Houses in Darmstadt
The Passive House (Passiv Haus) standard is an ultra-low energy building design system which uses extremely efficient building envelopes to significantly drive down energy consumption in structures. The standard is completely voluntary but does have an extremely rigorous set of requirements that must be met in order to be [...]
One Park: A Vision for Baltimore
One Park is a visionary master plan for creating a network of interconnected parks, boulevards, bike paths, and pedestrian ways throughout the city of Baltimore. The plan was conceived by the Parks and People Foundation of Baltimore as a way to “(allow every citizen) to benefit from a green network of open space.” Their [...]
The Greening of Montgomery Park
In 2003 the doors were opened on the renovated Montgomery Park building in Baltimore Maryland. The 1.3 million square foot building, formerly a warehouse and distribution center for the Montgomery Ward retail chain, stood vacant for over 15 years and was illustrative of the plight Baltimore faced with many older industrial buildings near downtown.
The [...]
How Pond Scum Could Lead to Eco-Friendly Fabric and Paint
Going green is fashionable, but dyeing our clothes has remained a decidedly eco-unfriendly practice. Now, British scientists have developed a way to grow harmless algae to add color to fabric and paint. The algae, called diatoms, are single-celled organisms that are unique because they pack iridescent shells. The hard silica shells act like crystals — [...]