By: Johnny Hartsfield

The team that brought us BedZED back in 2002 has released yet another zero carbon housing product called ruralZED earlier this year at EcoBuild in Earls Court, London.  The ZEDfactory installed their new affordable, zero carbon home in only 3 days.  ruralZED is a high quality housing system combining micro-generation and small biomass technologies that help achieve a Level 6 in England’s Code for Sustainable Homes.  What makes this product unique is that the ZEDfactory has built into their system the ability to upgrade from a Code 3 to a Code 6 for 70% of all UK building sites. 

ruralZED is made of a hybrid laminated timber frame flexible enough for a variety of master plan options at fixed prefabricated kit prices with volume discounts.  Minimizing its demand on resources, ruralZED catches sunlight, wind, fresh air and rain using tried and tested energy systems.

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Garrett and Dustin Moon of Portland, Oregon (although they are really from my home state of Washington) are building what promises to be one of the first Living Buildings in the country.  GreenFab highlighted their project, The Commons, back in April to share with you what very few people are attempting to do in this country when LEED is not enough. 

The Commons is “designed to reach beyond today’s highest green building standards and become the first U.S. home to meet the Living Building Challenge.  The Commons will generate all its own energy without fossil fuels, reclaim all its water, be free of unhealthy materials and be a place of beauty and community.”

Hot off the press, Garrett has just published a paper, Sustainable Architecture: an overview of equitable and efficient spaces that helps to identify and explain sustainable design processes and applications.  The document is half a survey of sustainability and its applications and half a case study of their project, The Commons.  This is a MUST READ!

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Although it was completed a year ago, Sean Godsell’s Glenburn House is still worth revisiting.  Nestled within the rolling hillsides approximately 1.5 hours drive north east of Melbourne, Australia, the Glenburn House is a beacon of sustainable design.  The building skin includes solar collectors for generating electricity and hot water.  Other passive features include double glazing, rainwater harvesting and digital power management.

The house is a long, linear gesture carved into an undulating landscape.  This linear plan is enhanced by the architects’ barcode motif.  Within the home, a series of organized spaces results in a coded arrangement that is unique to the client.  Somewhat of a “tectonic thumbprint” for living.  

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Dockside Green is a 15-acre master-planned waterfront community in Victoria B.C. consisting of three neighborhoods designed to create a sense of belonging and true environmental sustainability.  Targeted for LEED Platinum, Dockside Green’s principles of New Urbanism, smart growth, green building and sustainable community design are the driving forces behind this development project. 

Synergy, designed by Busby Perkins+Will, is the first phase of the overall Dockside Green development to be completed and includes 95 homes in two condo buildings, townhomes and commercial space.  Recently, Synergy achieved 63 points out of a possible 70 for a LEED Platinum certification.  To reach this highest LEED rating to-date, Synergy incorporated a number of innovative sustainable systems.  Read on to learn more.

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Sited on a hillside overlooking Lake Sammamish and the Cascade Mountains near Seattle, the Zero Energy Idea House minimizes energy usage while maximizing comfort and style.  At only 1,700 square-feet, this two bedroom home combines solar power with the most efficient building products and appliances that result in a total energy bill of less than $500 per year.  Additional features include: SIPs (structural insulated panels), rainwater collection, salvaged wood flooring, efficient ventilation, green roof and a “living wall”  used for soil retention.

For this project, the term “zero energy” does not actually mean that the house uses no energy.  The home actually combines on-site power generation with other efficiency measures to meet its own energy requirements.  So, the solar panels will meet electrical needs and heat hot water but the hydronic in-floor radiant heating system will be gas-powered. 

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Earlier this year, Envisioning Gateway-an international competition for the Gateway National Recreation Area in New York/New Jersey-announced its winning entry for an innovative, visionary and compelling proposal celebrating the unique potential of the park as both a regional resource and a national environmental treasure.

Ashley Kelly and Rikako Wakabayashi’s winning entry, Mapping the Ecotone, took on the dual task of developing a master plan to unify the separate units of the Gateway National Recreation Area and to design a new park at Floyd Bennet Field in Jamaica Bay.  Their goal was to “create a highly visible, experiential public infrastructure that responds to the shifting ecosystem of Jamaica Bay and defines a new vision of the relationship between nature and people.” 

The design actually encourages development and human interaction along coastal edges where recently, people have been fleeing from disastrous climate change phenomenon.  The result is an “urban park that creates a microcosm of shifting habitats, program and landforms.”

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Designer Charles Lee from the BIOS Design Collective has recently created a concept that facilitates bio-remediation through public art sculpture.  A series of photobioreactors, consisting of an aluminum carriage with a continuous spiraling tube cascading from the top, absorb light and nutrients to maximize algal biomass.  This semi-closed system uses pollutants and CO2 for nutrients and thus provides a form of bio-remediation and atmospheric greenhouse gas reduction. 

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

I thought I would just share some inspiring images of Icelandic turf houses.  This type of construction has been done for centuries and I still find it unbelievable how the United States is just now starting to catch on - very slowly. 

“The Icelandic turf house was the product of a difficult climate, offering superior insulation compared to buildings solely made of wood or stone. And the relative difficulty in obtaining other construction materials in sufficient quantities.

Iceland had few forested areas when it was settled, and what forests there were was often largely birch trees. Birch timber is not well suited to large and complex structures, but nonetheless a frame could be made with it. This also meant that it was difficult for ships to be built, this culminated with a lack of vessels that could transport large cargos (Iceland’s harsh winters added to the problem by increasing ship maintenance and occasionally destroying them). Due to the lack of transport and Iceland’s remoteness, importing foreign timber was not very common and was mostly reserved for ship and church building. However, Iceland did have a large amount of turf that was suitable for construction.”

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

The winner of the ninth annual MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program was recently unveiled in the P.S.1’s courtyard in New York City.  The winning entry, Public Farm One (P.F.1), was submitted by WORK Architecture Company and has been described as “a utopian vision of a future where urban meets organic and form meshes harmoniously with function to create a wholly new kind of landscape.”    

The installation is made of cardboard tubes arranged in a honeycomb pattern and floats above the ground to accentuate city views.  51 varieties of vegetables and herbs have been planted for cultivation and will be used in P.S.1’s cafe or sold at a weekly Greenmarket collaborating with the exhibition.  Continue reading to see many more images. 

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By: Johnny Hartsfield

Our friends Robert Humble, Joel Egan and Ben Spencer at Hybrid Seattle together with ORA recently submitted the winning entry for the 99k House Competition.  182 entrants were challenged with creating an innovative design for a small house in Houston, Texas that is affordable, sustainable, and energy efficient.  Designed for a low-income family, Hybrid/ORA’s winning design is a compact and highly adaptable home responding to both social and environmental concerns.

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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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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 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

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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