The green design ideas for this house is a modern structure that was suitable for displaying art-glass collection. These were all accommodated while maintaining modern sensibilities and detailing on the exterior, then transitioning to a more minimalist aesthetic on the interior. The one-story building comfortably spreads out on its large lot, embracing a front and back courtyard and allowing views through and from within the transparent center section to other parts of the home. A high volume screened porch, the floating fireplace, and an axial swimming pool provide dramatic moments to the otherwise casual layout of the home.

The house is mostly low-maintenance, but because the program called for space to display the vast collection of blown glass, there has to be a few bottles of glass cleaner around. The client’s love of glass was paramount to the house’s design, so the house was created to achieve a connection between her collection, lighting, and the changing patterns of incoming sunlight. Display cases with reconstituted wenge wood cabinets beneath add to the geometry rather than detract or clutter it and bring warmth and contrast to the polished, concrete floors.

Sustainable initiatives includes ; pool source heat pump with supplementary cooling tower, natural ventilation, daylighting, LED and fluoroscent lighting, spray foam insulation, sealed attic, tankless water heating, concrete floors and native plants.

Prototype is built in a flood and seismic zone in Stimson Beach, California. The flood-proof home has been Platinum certified by the Marin County green building program and meets FEMA standards of the area, according to Matthew Peek principal at Studio Peek Ancona. It’s green and undeniably contemporary, but it’s also small and showcases indoor/outdoor living without a hitch.

The $90 million building called ” Cleantech One ” will offer about 404,000 sq ft of office space that could house up to 50 green businesses when it is completed by December 2011.

The building will incorporate green features such as solar systems, rainwater harvesting, sky gardens and green architecture, said JTC at a briefing on Monday.

‘If the solutions we implement are successful, we will replicate this throughout the rest of the Cleantech Park and share it with the rest of Singapore and the region,’ said JTC director [Aerospace, Marine and Cleantech cluster] Tang Wai Yee.

JTC launched a design competition for the building last December and local architecture firm Surbana International Consultants emerged the winner from 31 entries.

JTC said Surbana’s entry won for its highly compact design and ecological features, it said.

source: http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_507968.html

“ The Alley Flat Initiative ” exhibition from 6-8 pm. on March 26 at Austin’s City Hall.

The Alley Flat Initiative, conceived in 2005 as a challenge for architecture students to design sustainable, affordable housing in East Austin, grew into an award-winning collaboration between the ” Center for Sustainable Development “, the ” Austin Community Design and Development Center ” and the ” Guadalupe Development Corporation “.

The initiative simultaneously addresses issues of sustainability, high cost of living and urban sprawl in Central Austin neighborhoods through the provision of green affordable infill homes that connect with the smart grid model of distributed infrastructure, while retaining the neighborhood character.

Alley flats are small, detached secondary residential units, often accessed from Austin’s extensive network of underutilized alleys. they are carefully designed to use 40 % less energy and 20 % less water, minimizing the ecological footprint of the building.

The 2 flats completed under the program to date both received the highest rating from the Austin Energy Green Building Program are already being rented to low – and moderate – income households in East Austin. Ten more of these green, affordable units are in some stage of design or development.
The initiative includes not only efficient housing designs constructed with sustainable technologies, but also innovative methods of financing and home ownership that can benefit neighborhoods in any city in the United States.

source: http://www.gogreentoolshed.com/collaboration-between-school-of-architecture-and-city-of-austin-addresses-sustainability-affordable-housing-and-urban

It seems you can build just about anything out of cardboard. Fabrizio of the Italian design magazine Abitare shows us a 10 meter (33 foot) high tower, built by the Institut fuer Konstruktion und Gestaltung at Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck , for an exhibition in Paris.

Developer Tony Case is thinking about hanging onto the green building plan for the long term because we really felt like it’s in our interest to create as sustainable a building as we can,” Case, the owner of Seattle-based Case Design & Project Management said Tuesday.

Case green building plans to build a four-story building with five apartments and six live-work units. More interestingly, he plans for it to meet a strict green building requirements, including that it is energy efficient and produces at least as much energy as it consumes, reuses the water that falls as rain on the site for toilets and laundry, offsets the carbon footprint of its construction, uses local materials, diverts nearly all construction waste from landfills and includes “design features intended solely for human delight and the celebration of culture, spirit and place appropriate to the function of the building.”

There are at least 60 proposed Living Buildings in design or under construction in North America, including Case’s project.

A new study says the Living Building Challenge criteria pay back their added cost within a reasonable period in most cases, compared with buildings with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certification, which is the second-highest level in the U.S. Green Building Council’s rating program.

Another new Washington study, however, says new green schools are not energy efficient to recover their extra costs.

The Cascadia Region Green Building Council’s created the Living Building Challenge in 2006 in “the belief that our society needs to quickly find a state of balance between the natural and built environments,” according to the challenge guide.

The new Living Building Financial study tries to put a price on the challenge by calculating how much more it would have cost to build nine different types of LEED Gold buildings in four U.S. cities to Living Building standards, and how much those buildings would save in the long run.

The study looked at different types of buildings in different climates, with Portland coming closest to Seattle. It found that Portland had a slightly higher energy use than warmer cities like Phoenix and Atlanta, but its lack of extreme temperatures and relatively abundant rainfall saved on systems, reducing the extra cost.

A university classroom building in Portland would have cost 4 percent to 9 percent more, with payback in two to seven years, the study found.

“The combined impact of Portland’s mild climate, plus existing and upcoming incentives for green building and net-zero energy projects, make the incremental costs almost zero,” study manager Lisa Petterson, of SERA Architects, said in a news release.

“The study clearly demonstrates that we can increase green jobs, greatly enhance our energy security, and most effectively utilize federal stimulus money by constructing Living Buildings, especially for those in the public sector where taxpayers are going to own and operate a building for the long-term.”

But the other new study questions the wisdom of extra spending to make schools green.

Schools built to the energy efficiency standard of 2005’s state “High Performance Buildings” law cost about 6 percent more than other new schools, but: “In virtually every school district, there was at least one non-green school that used less energy per square foot than buildings that met the standards passed four years ago,” wrote Todd Myers, director of the Center for the Environment at the Washington Policy Center.

“In Tacoma, where supporters touted the energy savings of Giaudrone Middle School, the building has consistently used about 30 percent more energy per square foot than another Tacoma middle school built the same year but without mandated green standards,” he wrote. “In Spokane, none of the three ‘green’ elementary schools are as energy efficient as Browne Elementary, built in 2002, prior to passage of the ‘High Performance Buildings’ law. This is the pattern elsewhere as well.”

Even in schools that do save energy, he wrote, “the energy savings are too small to cover the higher initial construction cost.”

Much of the savings that advocates of green measures tout is compared with older buildings, those erected to minimum standards or ones with different uses, not with similar, recently built structures, Myers wrote. “Those comparisons are not useful in understanding the true benefits of spending taxpayer dollars on these projects.”

The report comes as the Legislature is considering a bill that would ask voters to authorize the state to issue up to $3 billion in bonds to pay for safety, health and energy efficiency improvements to public schools, colleges and universities. Repayment would come, in part, from the saved energy costs.

“Some investments may make sense, like ground source heat pumps. Other costs will never be recovered, like purchasing solar panels, because the cost-recovery period is longer than the life of the building,” Myers wrote. “Others may cost more, like increasing fresh air and air circulation, but have other beneficial impacts like improving indoor air quality. Without an analysis of the costs and benefits, simply spending money on energy projects does not guarantee future savings.”

Case said he hoped to meet the Living Building standard with an added cost of 10 to 15 percent and did not know how long it would take to recoup the extra spending.

“We just wanted to make sure we got a competitive rate of return on our investment, and it does do that,” he said.

The fact that Case isn’t sure he’ll end up making more money off a Living Building shows that, for him, its not just about the savings

Green building is definitely part of the solution to get real estate and construction sectors up and going again.

Consider some of the compelling numbers and opportunities the White House has been eye-balling:

There are currently 120 million homes, 5.1 million commercial buildings and legions of government office structures in the U.S. today. These structures account for approximately 40 percent of the nation’s carbon emissions and consume 60 percent of its raw materials, so if even a reasonable percentage of them were retrofitted and became more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, we’d be setting a major and super-Keynesian economic multiplier in motion.

Legions of Good-Paying Green Jobs
A recent report from the International Labor Organization indicates that Investments in improved energy efficiency in buildings could generate an additional 2 to 3.5 million green jobs in Europe and the United States, with the potential much higher in developing countries.

Touching Industries Across the Board
Another reason to think green buildings will serve as a dynamic foundation for a broad-based economic recovery is because they touch a wide area of domestic industry sectors and technologies – including steel, solar, software, semiconductors, building materials, lighting, windows, HVAC and construction.

Green buildings could lead us back to prosperity because the retrofitting revolution will enable the battered and broken down real estate sector to survive and hang in despite the property value across the nation.

Getting the Economy Airborne Again
Retrofitting isn’t going to end the foreclosures; but it is going to offer the macro economy a positive jet that will eventually help it get airborne again.

Silicon Valley and the software industry could gain renewed momentum from the green building stimulus, too. Every eco-structure that is built or retrofit will require digitalized automation services and systems to manage the energy efficiency standards and goals on each floor. And, once green buildings start proliferating, I think we’ll look back and agree that they serve as an early adopter market, a proving ground, for a wide range of green technologies that can be applied in other industry sectors across the economy.

Another thing to consider is that green building stimulus is such an important macro-economic driver because of its impact on the global material science market. The development of a cutting-edge clean cement, for example, will almost certainly spur a fresh round of significant infrastructure projects around the world.

The Role of Government
Finally, green building has the potential to kick-start the struggling economy because it brings together the best of the public and private sectors on both the demand and supply sides. The driving and differentiating factor here is the fact that the government owns such a large percentage of the existing building stock in the form of offices, schools and defense department facilities.

The profound impact that green buildings can have on the economy is already evident in the wake of the stimulus bill, which has quickly brought a host of multinationals into the market looking for efficient lighting companies to acquire.

I’m also encouraged by the findings in Turner Construction Company’s “Green Building Barometer,” which indicates that 75 percent of commercial real estate executives won’t let the credit squeeze or shaky economy get in the way of their green initiatives.

Setting Standards
The real and immediate challenge, however, will be making sure that the recently allocated stimulus monies targeted at green building activity actually get spent – and spent efficiently and effectively. I’m especially impressed by the stimulus standards and scorecard that Smart Grid News has done for smart grid projects, and I think the green building sector should adopt and adapt something similar for best practices and best results.

In the end, though, I have confidence in President Obama because I think he knows that re-constructing the deteriorating economy starts at the ground floor and continues all the way up to the penthouse – and the soon-to-be green skies above and beyond.

It seems like governments and financial institutions alike are doing what they can to get homeowners to think green. From going green rebate programs to new mortgage offerings, financing a home purchase or renovation can be a wonderful opportunity to cash in on your green intentions.

For homeowner Mark Raes, when the time came to replace a 25-year-old furnace in his recently purchased home in Toronto, he decided to get an energy audit done just to check out how energy-efficient the house actually was. In the process he discovered that not only could he get a sizable rebate on the furnace replacement, other upgrades would also qualify.

“So instead of just one thing, we decided to do four all at once,” he says. After investing $9,000 in a furnace, attic insulation, a tankless hot water heater and air conditioner, he ended up qualifying for $3,200 in rebates from the provincial and federal governments. And his energy bills now come in at 30% less than before.

It just goes to show that when home purchasers play their cards right, they can tap into a number of incentives to help them start on a greener path.

Above the rebates, borrowers can even get a bit of help from their lenders. TD Canada Trust’s Green Mortgage, for example, offers a 1% cash-back to be used for Energy Star qualified purchases or any renovations / upgrades that make the home more energy efficient.

“Add that to the government incentives, and that can make a big difference,” says Joan Dal Bianco, vice-president of Real Estate Secured Lending for TD in Toronto. “When every penny counts, $2,000 cash on a $200,000 mortgage can go a long way to taking care of some big ticket item appliances or repairs.”

Despite the fact that green building projects can come at a premium, the price difference can easily be realized within a year through energy savings, Ms. Dal Bianco says. “Our studies have shown that people are now willing to spend more on a green home because of the energy savings they get.”

Looking at green options can also help the resale cause. According to a recent RBC Financial Group-sponsored Ipsos study, more than 75% of homeowners believe that green home improvements will increase the value of their home. “A good energy rating [ on a home ] is definitely becoming an important selling and buying feature for consumers,” says Bernice Dunsby, senior manager, home equity financing for RBC in Toronto.

RBC offers a choice of Energy Saver mortgage and loan products that provide homeowners a partial rebate on a home energy audit, or in some cases, a discounted interest rate. “It all depends on the size and scope of the project you are willing to undertake,” Ms. Dunsby says.

Homeowners should be aware of the fact that home energy audits will soon a must if you want to sell your property. Initiatives such as Ontario’s Green Energy Act will require anyone listing a home to conduct a home energy audit. “The government is doing what it can to make sure that every homeowner can achieve a good rating and is as energy efficient as possible,” says Peter Hwang, president and CEO of EnWise in Toronto.

Rooftop gardens, cisterns, windmills and recycled kitchen countertops are featured in green home exhibits at museums in Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

On Thursday in Chicago, the 2,500-square-foot, fully functioning “Smart Home” exhibit will re-open with a new interior at the the Museum of Science and Industry. More than 200,000 visitors have toured the modern prefab home since it opened in May 2008.

MORE >>>> http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/03/museums-showcase-green-building-with-home-exhibits-/1