Green Building Revolution

The next architectural phenomenon will be the integration of design and sustainability. On my little tour of M.Arch schools the most striking project I witnessed was RISD's solar decathlon prototype house.

The competition for successful, reproducible, and sustainable designs is widespread and powerful. The ecoMod project at University of Virginia is another example. Even if many of the ideas out there relating to green construction are still underdeveloped - there is little doubt about the surge in interest and work on this front. This 'P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.' project is one idea that needs further work.

There are several examples of projects that are migrating large-scale sustainability practices into the real world. These early attempts at a greener building pattern will teach the development community a lot about future building practices. A proposal in Portland, Oregon might be the largest scale any green project has attempted.

This movement has a long way to go. Finding ways to utilize existing and alternative energy sources, reusing water, reducing emissions, and finding more ways to attain social responsibility are all trial-and-error processes that cannot be solved all at once.

PS - check #7 on this list of the best "green schools" in the country.

All that Sustainability Jazz.

Those of us currently recovering from a Bachelors of Urban and Regional Planning degree program might be a bit cynical about implementing the principles of Sustainability in a real world practice. In fact, we might be very cynical, even hopeless about the very thought of it.

The Denver Post has an article that imagines a future where a neighborhood might survive through the coming increases in energy costs. And it's not as dramatic as some might think - no eco-village where we live amongst the animals. The critical aspect to changing energy consumption is that communities must work to more intellegently use scarce resources. The current pattern allows the individual to make decisions that result in redundancy and waste. Furthermore, the community can plan out methods of extracting energy from new sources (wind, solar, biomass, etc.) that are unfeasable to the individual.

Superbia! is mentioned at the end of the article. Sounds like a good read and something that forward-looking Planning departments should have on hand. Speaking of books on sustainability (in this case on a global scale) I'd like to leaf through Raising Less Corn, More Hell. Really fascinating idea.

Two Tiny Rocky Islands: Nauru and Hashima

Some people might call them ecological or economic disaster sites. I like to think of them as little tragedies stranded out at sea.

Nauru has strip mined phosphate for the past 100 years. The eight-square-mile island achieved independence in 1968 only to face complete economic dependence by 2003, when the mining operation had dried up entirely. There is not a single square mile of arable land left on this dot in the Pacific which is 400 miles from its nearest inhabited neighbor. The cost to restore Nauru to its once-tropical luster is $230 million over the next 20 years.

Hashima claims to have the title as the most densely populated area on earth. Now the rocky outcropping near Nagasaki is uninhabited. Mitsubishi operated the tiny island like the "company towns" of mining operations in West Virgina or the U.P. - all the residents worked for the mine in some fashion. Unlike Nauru, Hashima's population and economy vanished with changing energy demands: coal was out, gas was in and the company closed the mine. (Found on Things)