Green Wonders of the World

Business Week Magazine has a great story on the top green "wonders" of the world. It includes the gorgeous Tjibaou Cultural Centre in New Caledonia by Renzo Piano. It embodies the main ideals of organicARCHITECT: be inspired by the ideas of Nature, not controlled by them.

The main point of the article: "Green building technology has reached a tipping point that makes it more feasible - and elegant - choice for new construction..." How true!

Be sure to read the comments at the bottom of the article too.

Business Week

Green Roof Expert

Interview: Paul Kephart of Rana Creek Habitat Restoration and Living Architecture

Did you ever wonder who the brains were behind the gorgeous green roof ideas of William McDonough or Renzo Piano? Who actually figures out HOW to make those exciting designs work?

Rana Creek is a California-based "Habitat Restoration and Living Architecture" consulting firm. They have worked on the Gap HQ green roof and the California Academy of Sciences, perhaps the two most ambitious and exciting green roof habitats ever made.

Exective Director, Paul Kephart is hailed as a prophet and visionary, especially by the warm & passionate staff. (They tend to be huggers - so be warned!)

He is interviewed in WorldChanging this week:
Full Interview

Do you like the heat?

Thousands of icebergs float off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula after 1,250 square miles of the Larsen ice shelf disintegrate in 2002. It was an area larger than Rhode Island. SOURCE: NASA/Earth Observatory

Although the recent blast of killer heat waves around the world can't be specifically blamed on global warming, scientists DO agree there is a connection.

Human beings have a wonderful way of avoiding things until it is absolutely required. It seems that time is now upon us. There is "no end in sight" for these hotter heat waves, stronger hurricanes and more extreme weather.

What global warming has done is make the nights warmer and the days drier, which help turn merely uncomfortably hot days into killer heat waves. It looks like things are about to get much worse.

Full Story

NASA Global Warming Observatory

Healthful habitats are good business

Healthful habitats are good business
This is a great story on the numerous benefits of gren building on worker productivity and student test scores.

It turns out that the obvious is indeed true: people work better in sunlight, people feel better around fresh air, people enjoy non-toxic finishes; people thrive in green environments. Go figure!

Full Story

West Coast Green Conference

I am speaking at a wonderful conference in September.

West Coast Green is a three-day conference and exposition with 250 exhibitors, 125 presenters and they expect 6,000 attendees.

DETAILS
September 28-30, 2006
West Coast Green
The Largest Green Materials Conference in the Country
KEYNOTES: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Sarah Susanka (author of "The Not So Big House"), and industry leaders Ed Mazria, Peter Yost, Ron Jones, Ann Edminster, Ray Cole and Tom Paladino, and other luminaries will speak.

INFO: http://www.westcoastgreen.com
LOCATION: Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove Street at Larkin
COST: $395 for full conference (worth every penny)
Early Registration Deadline: August 15, 2006
RSVP: http://www.westcoastgreen.com

Register Now

Water Water Everywhere? I don't think so.

California is the sixth largest economy in the world, and our population is growing daily. A byproduct of this is water use. Water is growing to be as scarce a commodity as oil.

The state is expected to add 11 million new residents by 2030, and a majority of them will live in the hotter, inland areas.

What is the main use of the 80-100 gallons of water they consume per person per day?
Not drinking water - but for watering their precious lawns.

The solution?
Stop putting in a green carpet of thirsty grass outside your home. It requires too much work anyway. Aren't you tired of mowing the lawn every Saturday?!
Instead, plant a variety or local and drought-tolerant plants.

SEE:
Xeriscaping
Permaculture
Plants for California

Full Story

and now Newsweek jumps into the fray...

Vanity Fair, Elle, New York Times, Wall Street Journal: all have had feature stories on the greening of America this year.
Al Gore's lecture on Global Warming is heading to being the 3rd highest grossing documentary of all time.

How much more mainstream do things need to get before the Government will do something to help the environment?

Now Newsweek has a feature as well. How long I have been waiting for this time to come.

Full story

George W. Bush Is Dead To Me

Mark Morford wrote a great column today on George W. Bush... but global warming crept in as another black mark for the Bush Administration.

An excerpt:
..how obvious it is that 15 minutes after BushCo leaves office, we will have a radically new global warming policy. In other words, Bush won't do a thing about it in the next two years, despite how obvious it shall become that we are in crisis, simply because he can't risk finally coming out and admitting yet another enormous policy disaster. Not to mention how nearly six years of enviro policy abuse, from air quality to water to forestry to pollution deregulation on all his industrial pals, can't be undone with a smirk and a prayer.

Which is just another way of saying we are currently stuck...

Stolen elections, countless scandals, corporate favoritism... you cannot abuse Americans like that forever. Unfortunately for the world, the global warming issue is not immune to politics. After all, the US is only 4% of the world's population, but produces 65% of the world's greenhouse gases. If our President ignores the issue, we affect a large piece of the world by doing so.

Underground Building

One of students asked me today about "treading lightly" on the Earth and I immediately thought of my mentor, Malcolm Wells.

Look at this image, showing how Malcolm explains what he means by Underground Architecture.

Green development in... Santa Rosa?!

Just an hour north of San Francisco is the site of a wonderful example of green building and planning in action.

The features are no surprise. In fact, I am shocked when new developments IGNORE these ideas.

The 5 acre development will include:
Locally grown food; solar panels on the roof; recycled water for irrigation; 15% affordable units; located next door to a train station...

FULL STORY

SFWeekly Article on Green

Hard to Be Really Green

Matt Smith blasts the past efforts by San Francisco as not strong enough:
San Francisco could quell this environmental discord, and move America toward actually reducing greenhouse gas creation, by taking what might initially look like a step in the opposite direction. We could scrap what may be the city's boldest, most successful environmental initiative, a 2004 law requiring all new city-owned structures to meet the U.S. Green Building Council's stringent "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" (LEED) standard, which rewards developers for amenities such as passive solar climate control and nontoxic carpets.

I agree with his sentiments. While Mark Palmer and Laura Ingall have done an incredible job at the Department of the Environment, their scope is limited to buildings. Who better than San Francisco to make the leap from superior buildings to a better world? We should be pioneers.

FULL STORY

My latest column at GreenerBuildings.com

My latest column at GreenerBuildings.com had some interesting questions this month:

JULY 2006:

Why are mirrors not used more often in green buildings as a way to double the amount of light without using energy?



Based on your previous article, I am installing an earthen floor. I wish to use radiant heating in the floor, but does it use the same tubing and systems?



Do illuminated building exit signs really use much electricity? Are there energy-efficient options available and if so, how do they compare?