The US Department of Energy's new Research Support Facility at the National Renewable Energy Campus in Golden, Colorado is taking green construction to a new level. The building, which is 222,000 square feet and will house 800 employees, is zero-energy, meaning that it will create as much energy as it uses. Once finished, it will be awarded LEED Platinum certification. Using smart design......read more
Living roofs have gained widespread acceptance in recent decades for their ability to reduce the urban heat island effect and decrease heat loss and energy consumption. In the hands of a skilled designer, they can also be downright beautiful. Here are a few of our faves. Images, left to right: 1. School of Art and Design, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. If this sweeping building......read more
Peering down 148 metres from the top of the latest addition to London's skyline, the traffic-clogged Elephant and Castle roundabout and its notorious neighbour, the Heygate estate, below feel an unlikely location for a world first. But next week, this new skyscraper, nicknamed "the Razor", will take a crucial step towards becoming the world's first building with wind turbines......read more
At an organic farm just outside Monterey, Calif., a super-eco building material is growing in dozens of darkened shipping containers. The farm is named Far West Fungi, and its rusting containers are full of all sorts of mushrooms--shiitake, reishi and pom-pom, to name a few. But Philip Ross, an artist, an inventor and a seriously obsessed amateur mycologist, isn't interested in the fancy......read more
Urban gardening used to seem subversive. People planted tomatoes in public parks, strung their hops to rooftops to make homebrew and reclaimed empty lots as community farms, never mind the property owner. Yet here in one of the more thoroughly tilled cities in America, subversive has come full circle: the federal government plans to plant its own bold garden directly above a downtown plaza. As......read more
Pulse Energy’s flagship product makes finding out who left the lights on as easy as checking your iPhone. The Vancouver, BC company’s easy-to-use software gives building owners, managers and occupants real-time access to energy information on the web. Meanwhile, energy efficiency consultants are wondering all their work went. ...read more