sustainable design

With soaring energy costs and a hot summer just beginning, homeowners are looking for any way to keep the months ahead cool.  One option that many do not consider is “cool,” metal roofing.  Cool, metal roofing is eco-friendly, sustainable, and can save you twenty percent or more on your energy bill.

"There used to be a terribly vicious cycle that held true when it came to green construction: Builders didn't want to shell out extra cash to offer ecologically-friendly homes because they were afraid that competitors would just continue business-as-usual and steal away all the customers with their lower prices.

"Anytime there is a paradigm shift within an industry, like the one we are seeing now toward Green building practices, there are likely to be two camps: Those who truly believe in the new paradigm and whose body of work clearly shows it and the hangers-on who merely try to 'hop on the bandwagon' without really changing the way they do business.

New horizons arise for sustainable design....

Okooko, a 3-month-old eco-friendly mattress and bedroom-furniture company based in New Zealand, recently opened its first retail store in the United States, in Philadelphia. (There are two other stores, in New Zealand and Hong Kong; a fourth is expected to open in New York this spring.) The company — which takes its name from the Maori word for “to cradle in arms”— sells mattresses ($2,500 to $3,000) made of natural latex, bamboo and wool, and beds ($2,200 to $5,500) made of wood from sustainable forests managed by the New Zealand government.

 

Body panels from a synthetic resin made up of 85 percent post-consumer waste, soy-based seat foam, and “reconstituted” oak veneer used trim. More updates from Detroit in this new car review.

Green citizens just can’t get enough of verdant architecture. However while we’ve been concentrating on greening exterior surfaces of buildings, innovative companies have taken their grass inside. These 'green walls' adds a welcome ecological element to sterile office environments and improves air quality while taking up less floor space than potted vegetation does.

Many struggle with the question, what can we do? The Kirksey Carbon Copy guidebook offers 5 simple suggestions for individuals and companies so that if 20 percent of the businesses and individuals in Texas accepted this challenge, it would be the equivalent of taking 9,834,595 cars off the road and winding back the carbon clock by seven years.

A short video about the event Designboost which will take place in Malmö, Sweden 17-19 October 2007. The theme this year is sustainable design.

The Aga Khan Award for Architecture recognizes distinguished architecture that encourages social development, restoration, re-use and environmental responsibility in the Islamic world. One of the winning projects, the METI School of Rudrapur in Bangladesh, is a great example of these values. The school is an amazing hand-built project that showcases great sustainable design practices and locally-sensitive architecture.