Green Options

These homes in the ancient city of Maymand, Shahr-e Babak, Kerman-Iran were carved into living rocks 12,000 years ago, representing the peaceful coexistence of man and nature.  The underground homes protect inhabitants from extreme cold or heat in the desert.

See more photos:  Fars News Agency 

The winners of this year’s AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten Green Buildings were announced this week, and there certainly are some very attractive buildings among the lot. Some of these buildings are certified, or in the process of becoming certified, to high LEED standards, in addition to their COTE Top Ten recognition.

But while I’m excited by some of the design presented in this year’s lineup, there are some troubling aspects of the roster as a whole that struck me almost immediately.

As part of their Earth Day coverage, NPR’s All Things Considered  took a look at a LEED Platinum home renovation in Washington DC.  Peter Yost from the green building resource BuildingGreen helped to explain some of the possibly unfamiliar green building terms and explained how the elements of this renovation contributed to its being one of the greenest homes in the country.

While building tours on the radio can’t show pictures, the NPR website has several […]

In the United States, 340 billion gallons of fresh water — or 1/4 of the nation’s total supply — are pulled from rivers and reservoirs every day. (See greenerbuildings.com)

Our taps, plumbing fixtures, and irrigation systems all draw from the same sources of clean, potable water. After being used, most of the water ends up in the sewer system — all of it, at that point, contaminated. Then it is treated and returned to a body of water. This creates a cycle in which unnecessarily large volumes of water circulate through the built environment and municipal treatment facilities. However, in the last decade or so, major strides have been made in reducing the amount of water that must go through such a cycle.

As I mentioned last week, I headed over to Kansas City last Thursday to attend the fundraiser for Greensburg GreenTown, a non-profit supporting Greensburg, Kansas’ efforts to rebuild green after a tornado leveled the town last May. Despite ugly weather, the ballroom at the Scarritt Building was packed for both the world premiere of the Sundance Channel’s web series The Good Fight, and a panel discussion with Greentown director Daniel Wallach, and BNIM Architects‘ urban planner Stephen Hardy. Among the crowd were a number of Greensburg residents, and the event, while informative and eye-opening, served largely as a celebration of these people’s tenacity and foresight in choosing to rebuild their community with an eye towards a future of economic, cultural and environmental sustainability.

First up was Simran Sethi of Sundance’s The Green, who’s become a passionate advocate for Greensburg’s resurgence. In introducing the first five episodes of The Good Fight (which all focus on Greensburg), she not only lauded the people who she’s come to know in making the “webisodes,” but also noted that the town is hardly a hotbed of radical environmentalism: Greensburg was a town of 1400 people when the tornado struck, and, like many mid-American small communities, had been in decline for several decades. The population had shrunk, the per capita income was below the Kansas average, and young Greensburgians were generally looking for a way out. She heard plenty of disdainful comments about “treehuggers,” and several people had told her that they just didn’t believe global warming is a reality.

On Tuesday, April 22, the Sundance Channel will present as part of their The Green series “The Greening of Southie,” a documentary on the construction of Boston’s first green residential building, the Macallan, which is seeking a LEED gold rating. If the idea of watching a documentary on the construction of a condo building doesn’t sound too exciting to you, I cannot recommend this film enough to anyone who is or wants to be a part of green building. It presents the challenges and excitement of building green with equal measures of idealism and cynicism, juxtaposing the suits who see the project as ideas and paper with the laborers who actually have to put the building together. As the project grows, the two come closer to understanding the other side.

Fittingly, the film begins with a group of incredulous workers in hard hats listening to a project manager describe what a green building is. It turns out he doesn’t exactly know himself. “What does it give you?,” “what’s the point?” they ask. “I can’t answer that exactly,” he responds. But the skeptical laborers make jokes, dismissing the whole idea. After the manager explains that the condos will have “double flush” toilets, one man jokes, “I use that a lot - that system. One never seems to do the job.”

AltBuild, the Alternative Building Expo sponsored by the City of Santa Monica, CA, returns for its 5th year on April 25-26, 2008.

Designed to promote green building, alternative energy, and sustainable technologies and practices, the Expo brings together all members of the building and construction community. This includes architects, contractors, designers, government representatives, as well as the interested public. And really, aren’t we all interested these days?

The world’s largest solar kitchen serves up to 38,500 meals per day in Taleti, India. The solar kitchen is a special demonstration project of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Government of India.
Source:  Inhabitat