By: Johnny Hartsfield

As promised from yesterday’s post, we are sharing with you North America’s first endorsed One Planet Community.  Located just north of San Francisco in Rohnert Park, California, Sonoma Mountain Village is a 200 acre Zero Carbon, Zero Waste mixed-use development lead by MBH Architects for developer Codding Enterprises.  If all goes according to plan, this ground breaking development will cost $1 billion to complete and be staged over the next 12 years.

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

What if we could live our lives like we lived on only one planet?  What if we were smart enough to use the earth’s resources like we needed them for all of eternity?  The reality is, we do live on only one planet - but the fact is, as Americans, our current rate of consumption demands the resources of five total planets. 

“Globally, we are consuming resources and polluting 30% more than the planet can sustain.  Our increasing consumption means we leave less and less space for other species to flourish, and we are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate.”  This is BioRegional’s statement for why we need One Planet Living.  One Planet Living is the “Challenge of our Times”

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New York, NY - May 2008.  The Organic Wine Journal-the world’s leading online magazine devoted to organic and biodynamic winemaking-has relaunched its website with a striking new layout and expanded content.  Celebrating wines that are as good for the planet as they are for the palate, The Organic Wine Journal is reaching more readers than ever before as wine-lovers, chefs and restaurants around the world embrace what the publication terms “responsible hedonism.”

The Organic Wine Journal originally launched in 2006 with the mission to offer its readers an informative but entertaining portal for discovering organic, biodynamic and sustainable wines.  The site has grown to reach thousands of consumers, retailers, winemakers, chefs, importers, distributors and general oenophiles weekly.

Continue reading for further details on The Organic Wine Journal relaunch 

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By Johnny Hartsfield

It’s been three days since our last post but it was a great memorial day break for us - we hope you don’t mind.

A new seven-story condo complex made of recycled steel cargo containers is set for construction sometime next year and should be completed in March 2009.  The City Center Lofts  project will occupy the former site of the 337 Project, a graffiti-covered building that was part of a grass-roots public art venture giving 150 artists a blank canvas to work on.  Although this building will be demolished to make way for the modular lofts, developer Adam Price says that his new project will reflect the spirit of 337 by creating gallery space and panels for artists’ murals on the face of the building.  

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Inner city public transportation may have its problems, but it’s nothing compared to the inconvenient transportation services offered (or NOT offered) to those people living between the major arterials of cities.  The lack of parking facilities along major transportation routes alone is irritation enough to force people to drive their entire commute rather than interchanging with public transport.

A solution to this ongoing problem might lie in the hands of a young designer from the University of Melbourne, Australia.  In his ”Consuming 2032″ design studio, Timothy Moore proposed a unique transitional design that “in the short term increases the availability of parking by increasing the density of space allocated to car parking (vertical instead of horizontal).  His concept is called STAND and is a strategy to “remove cars from street parking and garages into small and slender stands preparing the horizontal plane for a greater density of program.” 

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

A new solar-collection concept has emerged from a partnership between Buro North, an Australian design firm, and  Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL), to generate electricity and educate elementary school children.  The “Solar Shades” are designed  to provide a shaded gathering space for primary school yards while generating energy from a uni-directional solar panel surface.

Funded through a government initiative, these evocative cobra-like  interactive shades explore the visual connection between energy and the environment.

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Using biomimmicry (designs based on natural systems), an Australian firm BioPower Systems has developed Biowave: an ocean power system that harnesses energy by using the motion of water to generate electricity.  The system mimics the oscillating motion of plants at the bottom of the sea caused by currents and wave energy. 

Connected together by a “root”, a system looking like three balloons generates electricity by swaying in the tide.  In case of strong wave action or currents, the device would simply lay flat on the ocean floor until the surge passes.

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

In 1989, NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA) conducted a study that resulted in a list of indoor house plants that could help purify the air.  For years, we have also heard of the dangers of indoor VOCs (volatile organic compounds) that are off-gassed from building materials, fabrics and household cleaners.  While the building industry is trying to eradicate VOCs from materials there is a simple and natural way for us to combat this problem - live with plants. 

Good Magazine has just made this easy for us with a user friendly system of identifying certain plants for specific air quality situations.

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Last month, I introduced Michelle Kaufmann’s Smart Home that was part of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry’s new exhibit titled “Smart Home: Green and Wired“.  Well, in case you missed the opening last week, here is a quick photo tour offered by Apartment Therapy.

>>ENTER SLIDESHOW

Via: Apartment Therapy

By: Johnny Hartsfield

A recent Seattle Times special report titled “Failing our Sound” suggests that “we pledged to protect Puget Sound.  We’ve passed laws and spent millions to preserve it.  Yet we keep sabotaging it.”  This is all because we are making poor development decisions, decisions made easily behind a set of rules and laws that are simply inadequate to save our region.

Right now, politicians are beginning an enormous effort to protect and restore Puget Sound by 2020 - at which time, we are expected to gain another 800,000 people.  This could end up costing us up to $18 billion.

“Failing our Sound” is a four part series (The painful cost of booming growth, Saving wetlands: a broken promise, Beaches suffer as walls go up, and Paying landowners to protect Puget Sound) highlighting the specific reasons why our current growth habits are undermining the health of Puget Sound.  Continue reading for an introduction to all 4 parts of this Seattle Times special report.

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

The Cascadia Region Green Building Council has just issued the Living Building Leader program directed at green building practitioners to outfit them with “the diverse, broad and deep skill set needed to create Living Buildings.”  The Living Building Leader program works by engaging architects, engineers, interior designers, landscape architects, green consultants and contractors to learn the tools and technical training necessary to achieve a Living Building status.   

Living Buildings are achieved by following the six design prerequisites outlined by Cascadia’s Living Building Challenge.  Professionals become certified Living Building Leaders by completing a series of ten on-line sessions concluded with a short exam.  Although participants have up to three years to complete all seven Petals, it is expected that most professionals will complete the course in two years.

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Glasgow-based ZM Architecture has just released a provocative new design concept that will place large rotating discs on the River Clyde to harness energy and help reduce the city’s carbon footprint.  The concept recently took 1st place in the International Design Awards (IDA) Land and Sea competition and hopes to develop into a small pilot project in conjunction with the Glasgow Science Centre.  The project proposes to stimulate river activity and change while sending electricity to the surrounding city grid. 

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Sure, a new LEED certified building is great, and a cool new energy efficient gadget is a must-have, but let’s start talking about what real sustainability is all about.  More than just built objects, obtaining a measure of sustainability in our communities relies more on a holistic solution to pressing environmental issues.  These solutions emerge out of a profession and a design process that involves creating a sense of place, identity and belonging - a profession that has historically taken a back-seat to architecture.

As early as the 16th and 17th centuries, Landscape Architecture has been a design discipline rooted in “space making” and creating important connections between people and their surrounding environment.  But sadly, to this day, we have consistently failed to understand the importance of the landscapes between our buildings - the spaces that connect, direct, inspire and heal. 

Martha Schwartz is a landscape architect specializing in master plans, art commissions, urban renewal and redevelopment.  In a recent article highlighted in “The Green Room“, Martha sheds some light on the importance of her profession in solving many of the problems that face our communities today.

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Ten years in the making, Blue Water Entertainment and Open Pictures present Fields of Fuel, a Josh Tickell film that is more than just a film, it is a “catalyst in a social movement for clean, sustainable, localized energy production.  This film, an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival 2008, cost less than 1 million to produce and will be on a 50-city nationwide tour to bring green energy to the cities and towns of America. 

Click on the video above to watch the trailor.

>> Fields of Fuel

By: Johnny Hartsfield

While I was up at the Living Future “Unconference” last month I listened to Ruben Anderson give a short but inspired presentation on turning our street right-of-ways into food producing machines.  Ruben is a Vancouver, B.C. based writer and consultant with a focus on sustainability issues, and asks the question: would you give up your extra parking spot for a garden plot?

Most of us are already aware that America’s demand on foreign products such as oil, textiles and food not only hurts our financial economy but also dilutes product quality and integrity.  This also affects our health and our understanding of the connection between the farm and table.

In an article titled “Let’s Pave Streets Green“, published in The Tyee, an online magazine based in B.C., Ruben uses the street he lives on as an example of what we could do with the extra street space we just don’t use.  He explains that “the street I live on has several apartment buildings and five houses….and every person who lives on my street has underground parking or their own spot off the back lane.  Yet the street is lined-choked-with parked cars.”   This is his solution…..

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