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Archive for April, 2009

U.S. Representative Blumenauer’s Call to Action: 1,000 Local Public Forums on Livable Communities

Posted in Climate Change, Policy and Regulation, Smart Growth, Sustainable Transportation on 04/30/2009 | 1 Comment »

U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer (Democrat-Oregon) sponsored legislation to improve mobility, reduce miles traveled in cars, and cut down C02 emissions. The Clean, Low-Emission, Affordable New Transportation Efficiency Act (CLEAN TEA) would require communities with more than 200,000 inhabitants to revise transporation plans with efficiency and climate change mitigation goals in mind. Under the draft legislation, new plans would need to include [...]

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Plans for China’s Eco-Cities Scaled Back

Posted in Policy and Regulation, Sustainable Design, Urban Design on 04/27/2009 | 2 Comments »

A number of planned ‘eco-cities’ in China have been scrapped or scaled back due to concerns about their design or implementation. According to Environment 360, from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, one major project — Dongtan Eco-City on Chongming Island, off Shanghai, was highlighted as a sort of utopian green city, but a [...]

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Two New Pavilions in Chicago’s Millennium Park

Posted in Exhibits, Land Art, Public Spaces, Urban Design on 04/24/2009 | 1 Comment »

Two new pavilions to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Burnham’s plan for Chicago will open in mid-June in Millennium Park. Designed by Zaha Hadid, the internationally-renowned architect, and Ben Van Berkel of Amsterdam’s UN Studio, the pavilions will be the focal points of the 1909 plan celebrations. According to the Chicago Tribune, each will cost [...]

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C02 Emission Reductions Under Waxman-Markey

Posted in Climate Change, Policy and Regulation on 04/24/2009 | Leave a Comment »

The World Resources Institute (WRI) analyzed the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that would be reduced through the recently introduced Waxman-Markey Climate Change legislation, “The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.” According to WRI, the 640-plus page legislative proposal could yield a range of CO2 reductions, depending on which scenario is enacted. WRI separated the [...]

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GSA Design Awards for Landscape Architecture

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces on 04/23/2009 | Leave a Comment »

The U.S. Government General Services Administration gives design awards for government architecture every two years, focusing on “work that reflected not simply exceptional architecture or sustainability or construction but married design, art, and construction.” The 2008 GSA Design Award winners were recently announced. The landscape architecture firm, OLIN, received a citation for its work on the Celebrezze [...]

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Brazilian Building as ‘Living, Breathing Organism’

Posted in Green Buildings, Technology, Urban Design on 04/22/2009 | Leave a Comment »

Triptyque, an architecture firm with offices in France and Brazil, designed Harmonia 57, a low-rise building in Sao Paulo, which “sprouts a carefully edited mosaic of flowers, ferns, vines and grasses, inserted into earth-filled holes.” According to Azure magazine, the architects behind the project see it as “brutish, with a primitive inelegance.” Despite its brutishness, the building uses [...]

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Serpentine Pavilion’s Sheet of Floating Aluminium

Posted in Exhibits, Gardens, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design on 04/21/2009 | Leave a Comment »

The Serpentine Gallery in London has announced the design of this year’s ‘summer folly,’ its pavilion in Hyde Park. The pavilion was designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA; previous years’ designs were done by Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry. Sejima and Nishizawa describe the pavilion as a sheet of “floating aluminium, drifting [...]

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Vatican To Become First Solar-Powered State

Posted in Renewable Energy on 04/20/2009 | 1 Comment »

Inhabitat wrote about the Holy See’s new solar power plant, which will cost some EUR 500 million, and be Europe’s largest. The 100 megawatt photovoltaic installation will put the Vatican, the world’s smallest state, in the lead among countries deriving power from solar energy. According to Inhabitat, the installation will provide enough power for all of its 40,000 [...]

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Toronto Considers Mandatory Green Roofs for Some Building Types

Posted in Green Roofs on 04/20/2009 | Leave a Comment »

The City of Toronto is considering a new green roof by-law that would make green roof installations mandatory on certain kinds of new developments with floor space more than 54,000 square feet. The proposal requires the greening of 30 to 60 percent of roofs, depending on building size. If passed, this would be the first green [...]

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Black Carbon, or Soot, a Source of Global Warming

Posted in Climate Change, Environment on 04/17/2009 | Leave a Comment »

Black Carbon, or soot, has been indentified as the number two source of global warming, after carbon dioxide (CO2). According to The New York Times, soot accounts for up to 18 percent of the planet’s warming, in comparison with CO2, which is seen causing 40 percent. Decreasing soot emissions by replacing wood-burning cooking stoves with [...]

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