Architecture
Energy Efficient Windows
Winter: tis the season to be jolly. Christmas and Valentine’s day have already come to pass, but the season hasn’t lost all of it’s festivities for those of us enjoying the Winter Olympics. Some time during the beginning of each month though, in spite of how joyful the season may be, you’re bound to get an envelope in the mail that’ll bring you down from all that cheer. Inside the envelope, you’ll find a letter with a lot of fine print and a very clear number representing how much money will be going to go towards paying off the additional heating expenses that every Winter brings along with, the Winter hangover.
Environmentally sound technology has advanced though to the point where you can stay warm in-doors without paying as much of the annual extra costs of heating utilities and without causing unnecessary harm to the environment. It’s a win-win situation in the form of a window material that won’t even clash with your drapes.
The technology is called Low-emittance coating and is applied to the glass during the manufacturing process but the science behind it is pretty simple. When your home is warmed up, eventually things will cool down (it’s why you have to keep the heater on over extended periods of time) as the heat radiates. The heat leaves in the form of infrared radiation, and these microscopic layers work to prevent that by only allowing specific frequencies through. Best of all though, it can work both ways. So in the Summer the same coating that kept heat in during the winter, can keep heat out (diminishing the need to keep rooms regularly air-conditioned).
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Eco-Friendly Bark Shingles Home Siding
Thinking about re-siding your home? Take a look at this eco alternative. Just like a trees own weather proofing, these bark shingles insulate, protect, and are virtually maintenance free. It is made up of tulip tree bark waste from timber operations that would otherwise get burned, mulched, or left to rot.
Lasting up to 75 years, renewable, sustainably harvested and containing no chemicals, it is quite possibly the greenest siding on the market today. The textured look only adds to its appearance and acoustic properties, blocking out sounds much like another bark, cork.
North America’s Largest Living Green Wall
PNC now holds the title for the largest living green wall in North America currently hanging on the exterior of their Pittsburgh headquarters building located at One PNC Plaza. With approximately 14,448 plants covering 602 modular panels, the 2,380 square-feet living mural really livens up the 30-story building.
The eight varieties of plants, installed by locally sourced (within a 500 mile radius of downtown Pittsburgh) materials and labor, only need 15 minutes of irrigation per week. Not only does it look pretty, its also doing some work- reducing the ambient temperatures of the south-facing wall by 25%.
Not only that, PNC has constructed more green United States Green Building Council LEED certified buildings than any other company in the world with a count of 64 Green Branch locations and two office buildings.
Whole House Lighting Control System
Great lighting can really make a house feel like a home. While we tend to focus on the energy efficiency and design of lamps and bulbs, often we neglect to consider the actual electrical system in the house. Whole House Lighting Control System by Verve Living Systems brings a whole new element to eco-friendly lighting.
A wireless lighting system that works via radio frequencies without the need for batteries, it works by routing all lighting to a programmable central controller. Each switch transmits a ‘blip’ of a radio transmission to the central hub up to 300 feet away, get this: by using the energy from the act of flipping the switch. That’s right, the switch itself powers the transmission without needing batteries or its own power source, so they are completely independent and self sustained units. This allows them to be mounted anywhere, you could even just carry it around in your pocket if you want.
By eliminating the need for light switch wiring and having a central hub to control lighting of the entire home, one can program an endless combination of lighting scenarios, and change it without having to do any re-wiring. The energy saving opportunities are equally as enticing. A one switch shutoff for the entire house so you won’t have to worry about that closet light you forgot to turn off.
Verve Lighting Control Unit
The benefits of the system are endless. Not only does it greatly reduce lighting install time, labor, and cost due to the lack of a need for wiring switches, but the switches can be installed anywhere, and moved at any time. The system is completely programmable, so you can change the operation of each switch, or group lighting elements together. Imagine turning on one switch and having your entryway, driveway and garage lights all turn on at once, and then be able to click a button in your car to just turn on the driveway and garage lights only.
Solé Solar Roof Tiles by SRS Energy
Keeping in the solar powered theme of my last post, I wanted to focus a bit less on tongue-in-cheek novelty and hone in on some serious design.
Many architects, homeowners and commercial building owners out there aren’t very fond of the blocky look of solar panels, especially if their roof is highly visible or conforming to a specific style. For those who want renewable energy and beautiful design, SRS Energy has answered their wishes with their line of Solé solar roof tiles.
These solar tiles mimic the Spanish or Mission-style homes of California and Italian villas and have a curved surface and SRS Energy has partnered with US Tile to produce an easy to install standard size roof tile (which can be integrated with traditional clay tiles if desired). Instead of being the traditional orange/red colored clay tile, these solar tiles are made up of triple-junction amorphous solar cells produced by Uni-Solar. They are not quite as efficient as traditional crystalline silicon panels because of their curved shape semiconductor design, however, this is made up by the efficiency of the system.
Weekend Green Reads – Books on Sustainability
This weekend seems like a great weekend for reading, so I thought I would share some upcoming green books in my queue. I seem to have a sustainable design theme going, although that should come as no surprise to anyone who regularly reads my blog.
Sustainability in design has always interested me, mainly because so many problems with current products on the market can be solved by a tweak in the design. For many, this can entail looking at a product with a whole new perspective- which can prove difficult in many situations. Take for example one of the books, Design Is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable.
The author, Nathan Shedroff, considers how paper bags may be worse than plastic for the environment or how a Prius may have a larger footprint than a H2 Hummer. Now these are pretty bold statements, so I am intrigued as to how he crafts his argument.
Another book along those same lines, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, explores the cradle to cradle process (or C2C, the ‘birth’ of a product all the way through to the ‘death’ and re-birth of the raw materials) and how it can and should be implemented into the consumer stream.
This is a concept of growing interest (you can tell from increasing products advertising cradle to cradle certification), and with good reason. Our ‘disposable’ society needs a shift and the best way to do that is to make products with their ‘end-life’ in mind.
The two previous books are great reads for everybody, geared towards educating and inspiring with varying layers of depth. As an ecologist, my scientific background begs for more granular depth. At times, I like to see the data, the science behind things, the technical stuff. This is where Sustainable Design: The Science of Sustainability and Green Engineering
Providing “…readers with the scientific principles needed to guide their own sustainable design decisions”, and “written to enable readers to take a more scientific approach to sustainable design”, it will be sure to entice all you architects, engineers and scientific types.
New Solar Panel Powered Stadium in Taiwan
A beautiful integration of renewable energy and modern green design, the recently finished solar stadium in Taiwan will welcome the 2009 World Games to 3,300 lights and two jumbo screens all on 100% solar energy. Designed by Toyo Ito, the 14,155 sq meter roof consists of 8,844 solar panels generating 1.14m KWh (that is 1.14 gigawatt hours of electricity) a year.
When not powering the stadium lights, the power will be funneled into the local power grid and is expected to meet almost 80% of the neighboring area’s energy requirements. It is estimated that this stadium will prevent 660 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year from being released into the atmosphere when compared to a traditional powered stadium of this size.
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Can I Recycle This, and Where?
I have this happen to me all the time. Random electronics, toys, packaging, home remodeling projects, etc. I don’t want to throw it away, but can it be recycled? Real Simple has come up with a great A-Z guide to recycle just about anything, and gives you the information you need to find a recycler in your area. Their list is pretty complete, however I have a few additional resources for some specific items- mainly clothes and denim jeans.
Probably the best way to recycle clothes is to take them to your local charity that accepts donations. Goodwill, The Salvation Army, and many other large scale donation resellers will bundle unsellable clothes and sell them to textile recyclers who then make them into industrial rags. Alternatively, recycled denim is becoming an increasingly popular form of insulation in new and remodeled homes.
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Energy Active Eco Home- Taking Energy Efficiency Positive
This technologically advanced home boasts a computer controlled system that regulates the home like a human body. Monitoring temperature, seasons and the time of day to maximize efficiency, this home is an energy over achiever- creating more energy than it uses. While this may sound futuristic, it’s happening right now, in a cold and cloudy Lystrup, Denmark in fact.
Increasingly popular in the U.S., Passive Houses are energy efficient homes that mitigate power through the use of solar, wind or other renewable energy sources. These homes are becoming the standard throughout most of Europe prompting a new frontier of energy Active Houses. These Active Houses are highly efficient homes that captures more energy than the occupants need for heat and power and require not only super efficient building techniques and materials, but also onsite renewable energy sources.
For eight months a year, the solar cells produce excess energy to sell to the grid. In the winter months, the house buys back electricity – from renewable sources, of course. When a mass-market battery car finally reaches the market, there will be a charger for it in the garage and energy to spare.
Ecowork – Green Office Workspaces
Do you ever get headaches at work and don’t know why? While it is probably your boss or that annoying co-worker, it could just as well be your office furniture. The office is full of toxins, from printers to off-gassing formaldehyde in the desks and cubicle dividers. The EPA even has a name for it, sick building syndrome. It’s more than just paint VOC, it is also the furniture.
Green Materials for Eco Friendly Design – Sustainable Materials and Green Building Products
Green designers and material engineers have been hard at work; creating renewables, recycleables and waste reclaiming products. Green building materials are developing at a rapid pace, from fly-ash concrete to fabrics made from recycled goods. It can be hard to keep up with all of the new developments in green materials, but there are two great up to date resources at your fingertips. CSI GreenFormat and Ecolect are two eco material alternative online catalogues with information on many types of cutting edge building materials for architects, builders, designers and interior decorators.
Ecolect is a web–based company that provides information and news about sustainable materials for product design, architecture, furniture design, graphic design, and more. The website is beautifully designed, making it easy to browse, search and submit materials. The layout is similar to a blog format and offer material photos and descriptions. Since some of the materials are user submitted, the amount and depth of the specifications vary with each material. The interface is great for browsing green materials for basic information about newer textiles and building materials. The in depth green product descriptions give you full cradle to cradle information including information on production, manufacturing, use and end use recycling. What is really neat for green architecture firms or eco centered interior designers is their new green material subscription service called GreenBox. This service features a package of new product samples complete with descriptions and specs delivered to you every three months. Each delivery includes:
Ecolect GreenBox - Green Materials Sample Subscription
- 12 cutting edge material samples
- Material information
- Sustainability specs
- Performance overview
- Cost profiles
- Distributor information
Put together by Construction Specifications Institute, GreenFormat is a very extensive materials database for green products. While the interface may be a little more difficult, the information is gold. The materials listed on this site aren’t necessarily green, they leave that up to the browser to determine. This site suffers from the same user defined information, so while some of the materials may overwhelm you with information, others may offer none at all. Since this database is put together by CSI, you can be sure that there is a ever-growing mountain of information and green product descriptions, if it exists, it is probably listed here.
Construction Specifications Institute GreenFormat Website
Unfortunately neither of these sites offer searches based on LEED credit or allow product attribute comparisons in a single screen. Standardization of information would be nice as well, so that all products could be compared more fairly for defining atributes. Even with all these flaws, they are great eco resources for green materials. They are available for anyone to browse, so go ahead and explore them yourself to find that new fabric to redecorate with, or for use as in a sustainable remodeling project. For those more interested in green design, check out a previous article featuring asknature.org for engineering and architectural design ideas based on nature.
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