Green Options » green buildings

World’s Tallest Green Building?

Zachary Shahan — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:03:13 +0000

Taiwan’s Taipei 101 was the tallest building in the world from 2004-2007. Now, it is looking to become the world’s tallest GREEN building.

The building’s owner, Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFC), is putting in $1.9 million to give this 101-story building a green makeover.

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Brooklyn Bowl: World’s First Green Bowling Alley

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:38:18 +0000

Picture a bowling alley, and you likely come up with images of tacky shoes, greasy food, and lots and lots of beer bottles. Energy efficiency, reuse and recycling, and local food probably don’t come to mind at all — we’re talking about The Big Lebowski, not Garbage Warrior. Brooklyn Bowl, which opened in July in New York City’s Williamsburg neighborhood, is out to change those associations, though. On Tuesday, the bowling center, music venue, and restaurant got a boost in those efforts from the U.S. Green Building Council, which awarded Brooklyn Bowl LEED certification.

So, what’s does it take to get a bowling alley certified as a green building?

Bamboo lanes? Organic cotton bowling shirts? Low-VOC antiseptic spray for the rented shoes? Nope… Brooklyn Bowl took practical steps to create a chic entertainment venue with a low impact.

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Smarter Cities ~ Project of the Natural Resources Defense Council

Lucille Chi — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:17:43 +0000

Have you heard about NRDC’s Smarter Cities?

“When thinking about the urban environment, more often than not problems come first to mind. Less commonly thought about is the potential presented by cities, potential to rethink and reshape their environments responsibly.

Today urban leaders—mayors, businesses and community organizations—are in the environmental vanguard, making upgrades to transportation infrastructure, zoning, building codes, and waste management programs as well as improving access to open space, green jobs, affordable efficient housing and more. If they succeed in making their cities more efficient, responsible and sustainable, what will result will be smarter places for business and healthier places to live.”

Find out what is smart and green near you. Join the team and start reporting the success of your city!

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Simran’s Eco-Friendly Home Makeover Comes to Oprah.com

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:26:05 +0000

Buying your first home is both nerve-wracking and exhilarating. Imagine the heightening of both of those emotions if you choose to 1) buy an older house full of character, and 2) jump right into green updates and renovations upon purchase. You’ll then have a good sense of what journalist, professor, and good friend of sustainablog Simran Sethi is going through right now… she recently purchased an 84-year-old home in her adopted home town of Lawrence, KS. Unlike the rest of us, though, Simran’s inviting the world in to watch the process of greening her new house: on Monday, she posted the first entry on a new blog at Oprah.com.

Home renovation isn’t a task for the feint of heart, and Simran readily admits that her own hands-on experience is limited:

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Coco Eco Bed and Breakfast in Australia

Lucille Chi — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:58:02 +0000

Coco Eco is an award winning bed and breakfast named both after the area it is located (Coconut Well, Australia) and the ecological principles that it embraces such as:

solar powered facilities
black & grey water recycled and purified in Wastewatergarden®.
plantation & recycled timbers
solar passive design principles
building footprints designed to minimize impact on local flora and fauna
reduced use of chemicals & PVC products
recycling programs
organic vegetable garden & free range eggs

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Homes of the Future with Tom Schey of Minimal Productions

Sean Daily — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:30:49 +0000

GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily speaks with Tom Schey, President of Minimal Productions. Schey is now leading green home building in Southern California and is the author of an upcoming book on fun ways to green up your life. 737conserve is an incredibly advanced, beautiful intellectual home. One of the most advanced smart homes ever built. The structure will most certainly generate more electricity than it uses. A home that embraces water and energy conservation in ways not yet part of the residential building landscape.

[Courtesy of our friends at GreenLivingIdeas.com]

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Prefab Resources, Tiny House Ideas, and Small Dwelling Design Links

Lucille Chi — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:59:23 +0000

Check out the prefab community blooming online these days! Tiny House Village is trying to connect communities of creative small dwellings. Ideas are abound for these eco communities with Resources For Life’s Small House Society.

Tiny House design has a great set of resources all linked here as well. Check out the plethora of architectural resources,

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Summer Sustainability Series on Urban Gardening in New York City

Lucille Chi — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:02:06 +0000

There is a brilliant sustainability series on urban gardening (Alive Structures and roof garden tutorials will be featured) in New York City this summer put on by a non-profit called New York Restoration Project. There will be four talks, every other Thursday from 7 pm to 8 pm, in NYPC’s Toyota Children’s Learning Garden. All of them are open to the public.

Where? Toyota Sustainable Summer Series Toyota Children’s Learning Garden 603 East 11th Street, New York, NY

When? July 30, 2009 from 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

What? Sarah Seigal, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. She will give a short garden tour and speak about the garden design, specifically the shade tolerant planting palette she created for this garden.

What else? Refreshments at the end of each event.

NYRP works exclusively in New York City managing community gardens to help ensure their liveliness in each community. Keep reading for more details on the series in August and beyond…

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5 Products to Green in Your Everyday Life

Zachary Shahan — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:33:29 +0000

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg occasionally writes posts on new, innovative green products (see Five Greenish Products You’ve Seen on TV and Five More Greenish Products You’ve Seen on TV). Rather than try to steal his thunder, this post looks at some basic, simple, green products that can make your everyday life many times greener.

Staying away from the topics of food and transportation, which are probably the biggest daily products you could green, here is a list of products you use everyday.

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Cities Worldwide Should Follow Los Angeles’ Example of ‘Coal-free Electricity’

Mridul Chadha — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:27:01 +0000

Los Angeles’ Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has announced that his city will not buy electricity produced in coal fired fired power plants from 2020 instead the city will switch to cleaner energy sources to fulfill its power demands.

California has no coal-fired power plants and Los Angeles will stop buying coal generated power that it buys from other states. The 40 percent power that comes from coal-fired power plants will be taken from power plants running on cleaner sources like natural gas, nuclear energy and hydro power. This is in addition to the city’s energy efficiency plans under which it seeks to reduce energy consumption by 1 percent every year for the next ten years.

Los Angeles has set a great example for the big cities which are busy economic centers with huge energy demands. Energy consumption in rapidly growing cities of the developing countries is growing at astronomical rates. Usually the simple solution is to produce more energy, set up coal-fired power plants since coal is easily available and cheap. However, long term solutions to this energy problem are often overlooked. Countries eying faster economic growth must explore such alternatives and work to develop them as they hold the key to the problem of not just energy consumption but rising carbon emissions and climate change as well.

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The 10 Greenest Cities in the U.S.

Tom Schueneman — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:36:10 +0000

The Mother Nature Network has just published their list of the ten greenest cities in the United States.

There is as yet no official criteria set by the EPA for determining a city’s “greeness,” MNN considered key areas to measure the effectiveness of a municipality’s efforts at carbon footprint reduction, including air and water quality, efficient recylcling and management of waste, percentage of LEED certified buildings, acres of land devoted to green space, use of renewable energy, and easy access to green products and services.

And the MNN winners are:

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Greening Hollywood: Sony’s Sustainable Culture

Paige Donner — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:13:51 +0000

Sony Pictures Studios believes in creating a culture on their Culver City campus. For CEO Michael Lynton and Co-Chairman Amy Pascal this includes a culture of environmental responsibility and sustainable stewardship, according to Jon Corcoran, VP, Corporate Safety and Environmental Affairs and John Rego, Director, Environmental Sustainability for the movie studio.

During a recent tour of the facilities, they each pointed out that education and employee awareness were key to behavior changes when it comes to environmental stewardship. This philosophy is in keeping with the Japanese tradition of creating an employee culture, a loyalty that reaches beyond the standard employee-employer structure, and one that gives and takes both ways. [Pictured: John Rego, Sony Studios; Paige Donner, Greening Hollywood; and Jon Corcoran, Sony Studios; photo by Ann Burkart]

Case in point: On June 29th, as part of Sony Studios “Links Green Series” they hosted a lunch time “Residential Solar and Hybrid Car Program,” presentation. This is an incentive program, offered through the studio, that gives employees a check for up to $5000 when they either buy a hybrid electric vehicle or install solar voltaic panels on their residence. This incentive “payback” is above and beyond the State and Federal tax incentives. Believe me, I asked. Don’t everyone blast your resume off to Sony Pictures Entertainment now!

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Sears Tower Reaches for Heights of Efficiency With $350 Million Retrofit

Leslie Berliant — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:43:31 +0000

The Sears Tower loomed large during my childhood in the Chicago suburbs. I remember when it opened in 1973. We took a special trip downtown to see it. According to my aesthetics as a seven year old, it wasn’t very elegant and I preferred the John Hancock Tower with its swanky restaurant on the 95th floor and proximity to Marshall Fields. Then the company my dad worked for was bought by Coldwell Banker, a subsidiary of Sears at the time, and his office was moved to the Tower. I spent some quality daddy-daughter time there, and one memorable summer got paid the incredibly generous sum of $8 an hour to take the train to the city every day, do some filing and hang out downtown.

But the Tower, in my mind, never had much to distinguish it other than a great view from the 103rd floor, its height of 110 stories and the convenience of the train station. But now everything is changing.

By the end of the summer, it will no longer be the Sears Tower. It will be called the Willis Tower, named for the global insurance broker. But more importantly, the building will undergo a $350 million efficiency and renewable energy retrofit that will reduce the base building electricity use by up to 80 percent - 68 million kilowatt hours annually or 150,000 barrels of oil every year. The retrofit will also create more than 3,600 jobs in the Chicago area.

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Greening Hollywood: Produced By

Paige Donner — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:38:09 +0000

Saving the planet through story is how Arianna shaped the green panel she moderated at the Produced By Conference held at Sony Picture Studios over the weekend. The Conference was put on by the Producer’s Guild of America and co-helmed by the legendary Gale Anne Hurd.

If a person’s clout can be measured by the resources they can commandeer, then Hurd is most certainly still at the top of the Hollywood heap. Not only was the Sony Pictures Studio lot supremely pleasant to stroll around, but volunteers were everywhere to assist with even small things like fetching water. Seriously.

And Sunday’s complimentary lunch featured no less than 10 honey wagons set up to serve the likes of lobster rolls, shrimp tempura and teriyaki flank steak. Hurd commented to me that people were already asking her when next year’s conference was going to happen and said that “we didn’t even think we’d pull this one off!” They expected 600 attendees - 900 paying producers showed up.

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SUNfiltered: Do Solar Panels Belong on Historic Buildings?

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:22:59 +0000

If you’ve spent any amount of time in buildings with historical significance (and you probably have), you recognize that such structures are more than the sum of their physical parts. The confluence of design, material, and human action that occurred in those buildings allow you to step out of time momentarily, and experience how past generations imagined the combination of form and function as they created a built environment.

Now, imagine those same buildings with solar panels on the roof. Does that take away from the experience?

» See also: Low cost solar panels and energy efficiency retrofits through group purchasing.
» Get Sustainablog by RSS or sign up by email.

The New York Times‘ Green Inc. blog dove into that question this morning, and attempted to dissect a hot debate among preservationists. From Al Gore’s Nashville mansion to a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed cottage in Wisconsin, the preservation community is wrestling with “where the line is between acceptable and unacceptable green improvements.

Read the rest at the Sundance Channel’s SUNfiltered blog.

Image credit: Bill Fitz-Patrick and whitehousemuseum.org

Green Talk Radio: The Growing Market for Green Real Estate

Sean Daily — Thu, 07 May 2009 11:00:39 +0000

GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily talks about the burgeoning industry of green building and the qualities of a green real estate property with Greg Reitz, Principal and Founder of REthink Development.

[Courtesy of our friends at GreenLivingIdeas.com]

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Green Talk Radio: The Not So Big House

Sean Daily — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:00:54 +0000

Sean Daily, Green Living Ideas’ Editor-in-Chief, discusses small home living and the growth of New Urbanism with Sarah Susanka of Susanka Studios, author of The Not So Big House.

[Courtesy of our friends at GreenLivingIdeas.com]

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Earth Day Events: Vertical Farms and Green Roofs Now at Exit Art in NYC

Lucille Chi — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:54:35 +0000

A project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics) at Exit Art, “Vertical Gardens is an exhibition of architectural models, renderings, drawings, photographs and ephemera that depict or imagine a vertical farm, urban garden or green roof.” The exhibit features over 20 projects, both imaginary and real, by artists and architects envisioning solutions for building greener urban environments.

Details for the FREE two-day event (featuring eco architects, artists, professors, and poets) at Exit celebrating Earth Day 2009 are as follows:

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Building America and the Builders Challenge, the DOE’s Guide to Improving Energy Efficiency

Leslie Berliant — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:34:56 +0000

If you have never heard of the Department of Energy’s Building America initiative, started in the 1990’s, start paying attention. With tax incentives for home energy efficiency and the addition of the new Builders Challenge initiative, started in January of 2008 this program is likely to become increasingly popular.

Building America works with research teams that include builders, manufacturers and technical experts to develop technologies and strategies that lead to improved home energy efficiency. They also created the Builders Challenge; builders that agree to join the Builders Challenge commit to constructing homes that rate 70 or better on the EnergySmart Home Scale (E-Scale).

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Low Impact Living: How the Stimulus Bill Can Help Green Your Home

Low Impact Living — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:50:45 +0000

If you’ve long longed to green your home but never felt you had the money to do so, get ready to take action. Obama’s new stimulus plan, signed into law last Tuesday, might give you just the extra financial nudge you need to undertake that eco-project you’ve had in mind.

First of all, the new stimulus plan will give you a tax credit for 30% of the costs, up to $1,500 total, for these eco-improvements on a property (via Associated Press):

Getting new energy-efficient furnaces, air conditioners, or windows
Replacing leaky windows
Putting more insulation into attics.

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