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Making greener building choices just got a whole lot easier. Honest Buildings, which just launched in beta, is an online ecosystem for green real estate, a place where building owners, service providers, and occupants can exchange information, offerings, and needs. At the site, you can search an address in any of 5,570 cities, and get ratings on the building's walkability, energy use, and LEED......read more
Dietmar Eckell has a thing for ruins. The German photographer travels the world to capture eerily beautiful photos of decaying things and places, from forgotten military sites and decomposing cars to crashed planes and abandoned buildings. Of the many excellent photo series on his website, God's Ruin is one of our favorites. The collection of images stunningly depicts ancient churches and......read more
What to do with public eyesores in the inner city? It should come as no surprise that the Dutch have dreamed up a novel way of beautifying them. Designer Roeland Otten, best known for the amazing ABChairs he released in 2010, uses the power of camouflage to disguise ugly public buildings in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. If you're picturing drab green military canvas draped over buildings, think......read more
Here's another cool green design project from (surprise!) Holland, where designers Rikkert Paauw and Jet van Zwieten offer a hefty dose of symbolism by transforming old garbage dumpsters into functional mini-buildings. Dubbed "Recykiosks," the structures were built using dumpsters filled with discarded construction waste. The "recyclitects" erected the kiosks in three different......read more
The California Energy Commission today unanimously approved upgraded building energy efficiency standards that one commissioner called "the strongest in the nation." The new standards, which take effect Jan. 1, 2014, include a host of common-sense standards designed to save energy, from insulating hot-water pipes to making sure that air conditioner installations are inspected for sufficient air......read more
From unpredictable floods to rising sea levels, the earth-altering phenomena induced by climate change are changing the way humans coexist with water. Urged on by the demands of global warming, architects and city planners are responding to the challenge with buildings that sit on or above the shifting seas. Aqua-architecture has a long history in the Netherlands (a full third of the country......read more
With buildings accounting for nearly 40 percent of overall energy consumption in the U.S., it's safe to say that energy efficiency in buildings has to be a core part of any plan to reduce carbon emissions. Net-zero buildings, which produce as much energy as they consume, are the ultimate in building energy efficiency. According to a new report from the New Buildings Institute and the Zero......read more
When the owner of a Silicon Valley property decided to renovate his family home, he also decided to make good on an idea he and his daughter shared: building treehouses in an oak grove on the edge of the property. While not exactly treehouses per se, these three tea houses nestled among the stands of oak should do the trick. Designed by Swatt Miers Architects, the glass-paneled tea houses......read more
Photographer Christian Flatscher, an architecture student in Innsbruck, Austria, combines landscape and building photography in cool and unusual ways. His precise and simple digital images betray his academic interest in architecture, but what makes them most interesting is the inclusion of natural elements like plants, trees and mountains. So right after you're finished gasping at the......read more
Perusing the Old Faithful blog the other day, we came upon these photos from a 2007 series called Familiar by Brad Moore, shot among the post-war architecture of inland California. With a restrained, less-is-more aesthetic and a keen sense of irony, Moore's photos capture the interplay between buildings and plants in the suburban landscape. From his statement: The following......read more
