Blogs & Ecology

Jim Bryant P-I

It's like Lucy in Peanuts, except John Morefield offers architecture, not psychiatry, for a nickel. (sometimes, particularly in residential architecture, they are hard to tell apart). The young architect set up a booth at a farmers market in Seattle and is dispensing advice for a nickel a pop. (Five cents more than a lot of architects get paid for curbside consultations.)

It is a good idea. Mike Lewis of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes:...

We often complain that there is a lot of embodied energy in existing buildings and that they should be preserved and renovated; we have also repeated Donovan Rypkema's comment that architects are overly fond of "green gizmos" instead of simpler technologies. The new Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University has its feet planted in both camps; it is a refab of an old nursing school and it is most definitely decorated with the greenest of gizmos: cute little AeroVironment wind turbines....

TreeHugger doesn't show as many LEED buildings as it used to; they have become almost common, and many, LEED notwithstanding, have "issues," such as being overly large, strange uses, (a LEED airplane hanger?) or boring LEED categories like Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance oops, that's the Mother Ship.

Nic Darling of the 100K house project was asked why houses designed to LEED standards cost more than normal houses and responded that, well, actually, they don't have to, and that they were building a LEED Platinum house that was going to cost less.

If there is one good thing that can be said about this recession, it is that it is bringing out the creativity in people who are using their hands and their brains instead of their wallets to make or wrap their gifts this year.

London based design headhunter Represent challenged the design community "to develop fresh and eco-friendly solutions to the problem, by designing sustainable and totally tape-free ways to wrap a Christmas gift." They are adding a new one every day, and they include lots of clever ideas that will come in handy this frugal holiday season. ...

Image via Yankodesign

It’s difficult to read a paper or search the net these days without coming across come people who have jumped on the great green bandwagon and are pronouncing all kinds of wonderful designs that will make a difference to the world, or save it. So, what do you make of this new invention – a hay phone. Yup, that’s right, a phone made of recycled grass, basically.

That is what Trendwatching, "an independent and opinionated trend firm" with a penchant for inventing words that really grate on the tongue, calls the new services that help households go green. They note that while these firms started up to help people reduce their carbon footprints, their current focus is helping consumers save, or even make, money by going green. As an example, they cite a London firm, Green Concierge:

...

They took all the trees
Put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

-Joni Mitchell...

James Russell, architecture critic for Bloomberg, should have been at the Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design after the age of Oil conference last week, because he certainly has the right idea. He concurs with this writer that the solutions for building in a world with expensive oil won't be high tech but simple and logical, things we have known for centuries and have just ignored. He writes:

Avi at Dark Roasted Blend does a great collection of images of distant worlds, but I was most interested in the visions of space stations from NASA Ames in the early 1970s; notice how everything is so green....

This lovely 9,800 square foot gem has been called "One of the Greenest Luxury Homes Ever Built" and " shows
that high-end real estate can have a small environmental footprint."

A year ago, Preston at JetsonGreen asked "Are we confusing the words "green," "sustainable," "energy efficient," and "small footprint"? You tell me, is this green? Since then, the answer has become even more obvious.

...

photo: Pure Yoga

As a huge yogi, my feeling is that yoga is supposed to bring you closer to Mother Earth. But as yoga has exploded in the West, you can't escape the over commercialization of even this sacred practice. But maybe that is soon to change. Sustainable yoga studios are popping up across the country like Pure Yoga which recently opened in New York. Let's see how pure it really is....

24 years ago HRH got in trouble for calling an addition to the National Gallery a "monstrous carbuncle". He is at it again, complaining about glass buildings with green gizmos on top.

"It would seem, however, that the emergent climate-change agenda seems to have offered licence to another generation of architects and designers bent on further divorcing us - through random and untested building shapes and types - from our deeply-rooted connection with Nature's ordering systems which remain true to the rule of climate and season.

Image Source: REI

The brand new and first-ever REI Green Prototype store built from the ground up is getting ready to open its doors in Round Rock, Texas, just North of Austin. For a store that is known for selling outdoor gear, the new prototype store is geared toward bringing the outdoors indoors. REI is already known for its green retail buildings and its commitment to eco-integrity. But this new shop is the company's greenest effort yet.

Click through for details and a photo tour of the pending LEED-certification building, interior design, and concepts. ...