Greenline | Design / Technology / Sustainability

David Byrne, co-founder of the Talking Heads, has turned the New York Battery Maritime Building into a musical instrument. Sitting at a old pipe organ, any ‘musician’ is able to sonically explore the complexity of the building’s system without ever leaving the composers seat. A heavy sound may be for structure. A light sound [...]

The Mobius Climber (of course a name play on the mobius strip) by Landscape Structures is an amazing new design for playground equipment. The designers used a textured annodized aluminum sheet as the mobius strip structure that does not become excessively slippery when wet. The aluminum frame also resists excess heat gain so the equipment [...]

Here is a great example of efficient material use in an automotive application.

Medical interns, fashion designers, criminals, apprentices, lumberjacks, crab fishermen, ice road truck drivers, have-been celebrities, and pet whisperers have all found a place in the bizarre world of reality television. We have followed their lives season after season and can now relate personally and emotionally with their struggles. Why is it that I can now [...]

The UMA Active House is a modern factory-built volumetric module unit house.  “Fixed price, fixed time, quality-guarantee, and modern design” are some of the attractive attributes of the house according to the design team.  The house is also unique because it is designed to be nested into communities which share parti-walls.  There are currently four [...]

Downtown Provincetown, Massachusetts, has a new sustainable art center designed to promote the health of its occupants, art collection and the indoor and exterior environment. The 19,500 sf expansion of the existing Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) building “created new galleries, new storage areas, and an expanded museum school” and accomplished these programmatic goals [...]

Ethylene Tetraflouroethylene, commonly known as ETFE, is a type of plastic that is extremely corrosion resistant and very strong. The material is self cleaning because of its chemical composition (very similar to teflon). In addition, ETFE transmits even more light than glass and weighs only 1% of a comparable glass panel. Installation costs are between [...]

“We believe information is power” - LucidDesignGroup

LucidDesignGroup specializes in collecting and representing information about the operation of complex building systems. Once the system is installed, data from the building is aggregated into what Lucid terms “Building Dashboards.” These Dashboards are accessible through interactive websites or physical kiosk displays and provide a user friendly, interactive [...]

 
When Sydney-based architect and designer Sally Dominguez was told it was impossible to fit a water storage tank under her small garden deck, she designed her own. The Rainwater Hog (2006) is a small-scale modular storage tank for collecting rainwater that can be reused for watering plants, washing the car or whatever you need. “I [...]

”to make as effective, perfect, or useful as possible“ -Definition ‘Optimize’
The National Aquatic Center in Beijing achieves sustainability through the optimization and integration of its structure, envelope, and building systems. In doing so it tells the story of how a little known problem of theoretical physics, Kelvin’s Conjecture, influenced the design of a prominent international [...]

“The first step in sustainability is to reuse an existing building.” – Michael Furbish, developer of Lucky’s Warehouse

Lucky’s Warehouse is a sustainable adaptive-reuse of an industrial space built in the Brooklyn / Curtis Bay area of South Baltimore. The warehouse was originally built to house a millwork shop and was later converted into a storage [...]

The Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) has just completed a $60 million expansion of its facility which makes it the world’s first LEED certified art museum complex. The 125,000 sf facility is three times larger than it was previously and now includes 18,000 sf of exhibition, an auditorium, a children’s education center, art studios, study [...]

Plug analysis is a method of understanding the energy needs of an individual, family or group.  It is an essential part is selecting, sizing, and designing an appropriate renewable energy system for a building.  The method is especially significant because of the relatively high cost of many renewable energy systems.  Sizing the system to meet [...]

An inventor has created what he claims is the world’s first motorcycle powered by fresh air.
Jem Stansfield says his converted Puch moped produces cleaner air than found in many town and city centres and so can actually reduce pollution.
“It actually fires out cleaner air,” said 37-year-old Stansfield, who used to be a sheep herder.
The University [...]

Enjoy this commercial is produced by the Alliance for Climate Protection. It has a refreshing twist on the old carbon dioxide/greenhouse gas emission message… a highly visual one. I bet if people saw black balloons filled with greenhouse gas coming out of their appliances the world would have no problems with global warming. At least [...]

SPeAR, the Sustainable Project Appraisal Routine, is a sustainability performance evaluation tool developed by ARUP for use in their projects. The software was developed by ARUP as a way of breaking down sustainability into constituent parts so that issues could be dealt with on a discrete per instance basis rather than as a conceptual ideal. [...]

Greenwashing is everywhere these days. It is hard to pick up a magazine without being introduced a myriad of products, services and opinions that are tainted green in one way or another. Let’s be honest, it is good to be associated with the latest trend. At the moment it happens to be sustainability. I for [...]

A fellow architect here at Ziger/Snead tipped the green team off to this great new web site. Go to www.walksite.com, type in an address and watch as it tallies up amenities within walking distance to calculate your “walk score.”
Testing out our office’s location near downtown Baltimore revealed what I already know — We’re in [...]