Topic: Sustainable Design

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»

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»

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»

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»

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»

Why Are the Majority of Things We Consume Inherently Unsustainable?

Although we've made great strides in sustainability--Wal-Mart, for example, has taken a huge step forward by setting a new standard for green manufacturing with its Sustainable Product Index--the majority of products, buildings, and ...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»

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»

A Different Shade of Green

Can a green building be green without LEED certification?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»

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»

Green Guru Gone Wrong: William McDonough

William McDonough, the godfather of green design, has been hailed by everyone from Hollywood to Silicon Valley to the Chinese government as the environmental savior. His radical "cradle to cradle" idea -- in which every product, building, and city is designed in an infinite loop with zero waste -- has earned him the Presidential Design Award for Sustainable Development. He was Time's "Hero for the Planet" and has been profiled in documentaries from Thomas Friedman's "Addicted to Oil" to Leonardo DiCaprio's "The Eleventh Hour." And yet, McDonough may in fact be paralyzing his own design revolution.READ»

100 Most Creative People in Business: #20 - Dawn Danby

Dawn Danby pops upover a Skype connection on the screen of my computer, holding up her laptop to the camera mounted in another. The machine in her hands shows a screen shot of Ecotect, a building-design program that represents the ...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»

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Good Intention and Rounding Errors: Occupational Hazards of Sustainable Design

An occupational hazard of working in sustainable design is the constant reminder that everything has impact. For everything in your field of view, materials and energy were wrestled from the ground and shipped around the earth in ...READ»

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»

Is Good Design Bad for the Planet?

You betcha. As somebody with four iPods -- from a clunky old fat white one from the Paleolithic era, to a sleek new iPod Touch - I’ll be the first to confess that I’m a sucker for a sexy gadget, an easy mark for a cool new ...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»

Sustainable Design: Innovative Designer Thinks Outside of the Box....

Since my last post, I am still thinking a lot about the importance of HOW we design products and develop materials that have a life above and beyond its first.  Many expound the virtues of the closed loop design (also known as a ...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»