Topic: Sustainable Building Design

A Different Shade of Green

Can a green building be green without LEED certification?READ»

Sustainable Architecture?

Wikipedia has a great summary of what sustainable design really is. The statement "Sustainable architects design with sustainable living in mind" is very true, and very important! It brings attention to the fact that if ...READ»

Independence Station: The World's Greenest Building?

The world's greenest building might soon be located in the pioneer town of Independence, Oregon. Independence Station--a 57,000 square foot mixed use facility--is on track to receive the highest LEED rating ever awarded when it is ...READ»

Portland, Oregon Giving "Feebates" to Green Builders

Portland, Oregon officials think they can entice green builders with a new "feebate" program. Under the proposal, developers of commercial buildings that measure 20,000 square feet or larger will be charged up to $3.46 ...READ»

What's Even Greener Than LEED? The Omega Center

An educational center in New York might be the world's first building to earn a tough, ultra-green designation.READ»

Habitat for Humanity Greens Low-Income Homes

Sure, LEED and Energy Star-certified houses are great, but they can never make a difference on a large scale until low-income homes are included in the mix. Habitat for Humanity aims to bring green housing to all income levels with a ...READ»

The Brooklyn Navy Yard Goes Green Collar

Industrial facilities conjure up images of smokestacks and pollution, but the Brooklyn Navy Yard is planning a series of sustainable buildings that could change how we think about urban industrial parks. First up is the ...READ»

Taipei 101 Skyscraper to Be World's Tallest Green Building

The Empire State Building may be set to become the world's most famous green office building, but the Taipei 101 building in Taiwan is gunning for the title of "World's Tallest Green Building," with $1.8 million in upgrades that ...READ»

The Green Standard?

LEED buildings get lots of buzz, but the point is getting lost.READ»

Faultless Towers

Real-estate moguls know there's good money in green buildings. But the little guy can play too.READ»

The Greening of Pro Sports Arenas

What do the Miami Heat, Atlanta Thrashers, and Atlanta Hawks have in common? As of today, all three teams play in LEED-certified arenas. The Philips Arena in Atlanta, Georgia and the American Airlines Arena in Miami, Florida became ...READ»

Green-washing, through Green Design

It's not only the virtuous who are jumping on to the green-building bandwagon: Companies hoping to burnish spotty track records are hopping on as well. The blog Green Building Elements did a helpful service, gathering ten of the ...READ»

Feedback

Letters. Updates. Advice.READ»

Edward Norton's $9,000,000,000 Housing Project (that's $9 Billion)

The actor's "family business" has helped shelter tens of thousands of Americans. Now it is taking on the credit crunch with innovative financing and a green-building initiative.READ»

• High Point: Seattle's Green Community
• The 10 Best Social Enterprises of 2009
• The Social Enterprises of the Year

Green Housing on the Rise Around the Globe

Green building is booming even more than expected, indicates a report released today by McGraw-Hill Construction. In our July/August issue, senior writer Linda Tischler reported that 10% of all U.S. housing starts will include some ...READ»

PNC Bank Building Largest Green Living Wall in U.S.

Green roofs are a growing trend in the U.S., with buildings as diverse as the California Academy of Sciences, Minneapolis' Target Center and the New York Mets' Citi Field adopting roofs topped with dirt and living plants. But PNC ...READ»

LEED Feedback

LEED by Example Your article on LEED ("The Green Standard?" October) asserts that the point of LEED is getting lost, but then misses the point itself. The U.S. Green Building Council's mission is market transformation. Your ...READ»

America's Greenest City

The Rust Belt city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, takes on a green patina -- and finds that it boosts businessREAD»

We're going green

Here at Fast Company World Headquarters, we're looking ahead to . . . our brand new world headquarters. In March, we'll be moving downtown to 7 World Trade Center, the rebuilt version of a tower destroyed in the 9/11 attacks five ...READ»

Why Architecture Needs to Take Advantage of Natural Resources

Environmentally conscious vernacular architecture is making a comeback, says Autodesk's John F. Kennedy--and there are hundreds of millions of existing buildings on the planet that need to become energy- and resource-efficient.READ»

Enterprise Community Partners Bringing Energy-Efficent Homes to the Masses With $4 Billion Project

It's easy enough to make fancy new homes energy-efficient, but what about the millions of poorly-insulated American houses that are already standing? And what about future homeowners and renters who can't afford the upgrades to ...READ»

Save on Air Conditioning in Deerfield Beach


Replacing traditional roofing with “green” plant-covered roofs could, in an urban area the size of Detroit, reduce energy use and capture carbon each year on a scale equal to removing 10,000 mid-sized SUVs or trucks from the ...READ»

Super-green and Super-fast: The Vitruvian Building System

In exactly one month, open voting will begin for Google's 10^100 contest, that asked inventors to come up with ideas to change the world, and help as many people as possible. You can already find some of the ideas online; one ...READ»

Vancouver's Six Acre Garden Rooftop Now Open for Treehugger Conventions

This week, the Vancouver Convention Centre pulls the sheet off it's new, redesigned building, and it's most striking feature is up top: A sprawling, six acre green roof that'll be the largest ever, for a non-industrial ...READ»

Propaganda Alert: Study Tries to Debunk Green Building

The New York Times let us down this week when it uncritically recycled a report on green building that was clearly skewed by the interested party commissioning it. The study issued by the Commercial Real Estate Development ...READ»