Green Options

Editor’s note: This week we’re serving up the first ever year end best-of Gas 2.0 series with our most Dugg, most up-voted reddit, most Stumbled, and most viewed stories of 2008. As a special bonus, we’ll finish off the week by handing out the first ever (yet sure to be highly coveted) Gas 2.0 Post of the Year Award.

Ah, reddit. In many ways the cute little bugger is the forgotten genius brother to Digg, and, no matter how hard he tries, his smartness can’t seem to shine above Digg’s trophy-winning varsity jock prowess (if you hung out in the periodical room in high school, you know what I mean). But perhaps this is for the best, because what we’re left with is what civil commentary can look like on the internet when it’s dominated by graduate students, scientists, know-it-alls, and the generally reserved.

And as it turns out, all of those folks enjoy reading Gas 2.0. So, without further adieu:

Last week, in writing about this year’s AIA Committe on the Environment’s COTE Top Ten winners, representing the best “examples of sustainable architecture and green design solutions that protect and enhance the environment,” I asked “Are COTE Winners Too Much of the Same?” While I am certain I’m not alone in that viewpoint, I’ve come across some other perspectives on that question.

One of the jurors from the panel that selected this year’s COTE Top Ten wrote about her experience and some of the things that she saw in the jury. And the question of great architecture versus green architecture was also raised in the AIA weekly newsletter this past week as well. The COTE Top Ten showcases some very attractive buildings with some serious green building credentials (LEED Gold and Platinum buildings and a building that claims “carbon neutral opearations”, to name a few). But the larger question seems to be how much green building and good building design are, or can be, connected.