On my second week in New Orleans, on a sweltering August day, I went on a bus tour of the Lower Ninth Ward, sponsored by the local AIA chapter. It was a dispiriting experience. While much of the city had seen its fortunes rise, the Lower Ninth, the neighborhood most affected by Hurricane Katrina, was still a kind of lunar landscape, desolate and depopulated. There were, however, two notable exceptions: the Holy Cross neighborhood (which had seen about half of its residents return) and Brad Pitt’s Make It Right development, a bright cluster of about 75 houses, designed by a veritable who’s who of contemporary architecture: Kiernan Timberlake, Shigeru Ban, Graft, Morphosis, as well as a number of notable local architects.

Make It Right remains an active construction site, the ultimate work in progress. Led here in New Orleans by Tom Darden, the organization has set an ambitious goal: to complete all 150 houses by 2014. (They plan to break ground on a Frank Gehry-designed house soon.) While working on the Game Changers profile of Tim Duggan, Make It Right’s landscape architect, I interviewed Darden. The 32-year-old executive director talked about the background of this seminal project, its unforeseen challenges, and its potential for global impact. An edited version of our talk, conducted at the Make It Right offices, follows.

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“The greenest building is… one that’s already built.”  We have heard this before. It’s often spoken in response to the argument for shiny new buildings with LEED plaques in their lobbies.

For those who advocate the reuse of buildings, especially those of historic significance, there is soon to be a ‘how-to’ guide, sponsored by the Municipal Arts Society of New York (MAS) in collaboration with the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). “Greening New York City’s Landmarks: A Guide for Property Owners” is being developed by architecture firm Cook+Fox and environmental consultants Terrapin Bright Green.

Empire State Building, Photo by Ryan Cunningham

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During this year’s NeoCon, the largest contract furniture trade show held in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) introduced Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Pilot Credit 43, which applies to all Building Design and Construction, Interior Design and Construction LEED rating systems.

The pilot credit supports LEED’s objective of encouraging building owners and facility managers to implement measurable green building goals as these relate to maintenance and furnishings, specifically. LEED Pilot Credit 43 promotes the use of non-structural products, with known life cycles in LEED buildings, in order to set the foundation for continuous improvement. Also, for the first time, the USGBC recognized several third-party certifiers, which validate the sustainable attributes proclaimed by manufacturers about their products. Many of the methods of earning LEED Pilot Credit 43 revolve around the use of third-party certification.

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Photo: Morley Von Sternberg.

It’s ironic to think that some of the most pleasant and appealing structures in the U.S. have had some of the most painful births. Take Yale’s Kroon Hall. This $33.5 million LEED Platinum flagship building of the University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (FES), opened last spring, has the comforting exterior of a classic Connecticut barn set amongst Yale Gothic. Bordered by inviting courtyards and a water garden, its sun-filled 58,200 sq. ft. interior features red oak paneling from sustainably managed forests, healthy low-VOC workspaces and cheerful gathering areas for students and faculty. A 100 KW photovoltaic rooftop supplies 25% of the building’s electricity, its water is heated by photovoltaic panels embedded in the southern façade, its air is heated and cooled by deep-well heat pumps, low-velocity basement fans and cooling water spray, and circulated by natural convection. Rainwater is captured for grey water toilet flushing and irrigation. Windows can be opened and closed at will (optimally by heeding sensor-activated red and green light signals during the day).

Kroon Hall is indeed one of sustainable design’s pioneers, having had its genesis from the 1990s through the first decade of the 21st century. At its heart is a concept called biophilia, advanced for the past 20 years by Stephen Kellert, Yale professor emeritus of social ecology, and famed entomologist Edward O. Wilson. Biophilia acknowledges the human need of a fulfilling connection with nature. Its structural expression in Kroon Hall was driven to fruition by James Gustave Speth, the then dean of FES and a world-recognized leader in environmental studies.

Photo: Morley Von Sternberg.

Yet Kroon Hall came about only after the near resignation of dean Speth and repeated frustrations experienced by professor Kellert and others. Read more…

The six-acre green roof of the Vancouver Convention Center, one of the Top Ten Green projects of 2011.

Last Thursday was Earth Day, and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) took the opportunity to announce its list of the Top Ten Green projects of 2011. As always, the list features a diverse set of projects, but this year’s crop is marked by an emphasis on community. Among the ten winners are two schools, a meeting house for a Unitarian congregation, a sewage treatment plant, and two mixed-use residential buildings – all of which have become invaluable to the townspeople who share their facilities. There is a clear message here: that sustainability is ultimately about people, and need not come at an exorbitant price tag. Here’s a complete list of winning projects:

Cherokee Studios, Los Angeles
Brooks+Scarpa
This building proves that not only can mixed-use, market-rate housing be built sustainably at little extra cost, but that such a design can be used to market a green lifestyle. By giving residents an adjustable double-façade, the architects also give them the power to save considerably on energy, and cater to their specific needs. It doesn’t hurt that this also makes for a visually striking building. Add to that a passive cooling strategy, LED lighting, occupancy sensors, solar panels, and a green roof, and its no surprise that a Living Building Challenge certification might be in the future. Read more…

When Bob Berkebile approached the American Institute of Architects in the late 1980s to seek funding for research into sustainable architecture, he was told that it sounded more like an environmental problem than a professional problem—in short, “No, thanks.” Fast forward to 2011 and his firm, BNIM, has won the AIA National Architecture Firm Award, for its achievements in sustainable design.

For a man committed to reducing carbon footprints, Berekebile’s over 30 years of work in sustainability have left a lasting imprint on the green design movement. He founded the AIA’s National Committee on the Environment, helped create the U.S. Green Building Council, and contributed to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, rating system, used internationally as a standard to design and evaluate sustainable buildings. For Berkebile, sustainability is about fostering a new ethic. When it comes to water, that means treating “every drop that falls from the sky as a precious resource.” We spoke with Berkebile to find out how that attitude is reflected in design.

University of Kansas Students: How important is responsible water management in designing sustainably?

Bob Berkebile: I think water is the biggest challenge we face. We have all focused a lot on energy, appropriately, because of our carbon footprint, and it’s disastrous effect on the environment. As a direct result of our bizarre attitude about water, coupled with climate change, many places on the planet are already suffering for lack of potable water. In the very near future, I think we’ll be finding in this country that people will be shooting one another over water, and that a lot of our food production will be limited. So, it’s really time for a transformation in how we think about water as a resource and to design an integrated water management system that is consistent with the number of people on the planet and the water that’s available to us. Read more…

Last December, Katherine Grove of William McDonough + Partners and Richard Maimon, of Kieran Timberlake, shared the stage at Ecobuild in Washington, DC. They were invited to discuss their work at the Make It Right project in New Orleans, where Cradle to Cradle provides a framework for the design of the community and of individual homes by several firms.

Make It Right is a pro bono effort to rebuild a community of safe and healthy homes. The emphasis is on affordability, high-quality, design, and sustainable construction. To date, 80 LEED Platinum homes have been built making the neighborhood a living laboratory of construction and material processes. Grove’s and Maimon’s presentations focused on the collaborative approach of the Make It Right interdisciplinary team, which has achieved remarkable effectiveness and efficiencies. They lowered the cost of building eco-friendly homes by managing the economics of the home designs, the costs of materials and labor, the education of staff and labor on site, contractor profit margins, insurance, legal and governmental fees, staff education, and the speed of construction.

Grove gave an overview of the Make It Right project and talked about how Cradle to Cradle was applied here: specifically with respect to materials assessment, target diagrams, and key performance goals for homes. Maimon presented an in-depth analysis of the Kieran Timberlake prototype house, including a look at how the design has evolved over multiple construction iterations, continually improving its effectiveness with regard to affordability, materials, and other factors. Grove followed this with a look at some lessons learned and initiatives under way, which include multiple modes of construction, workforce training, cross-training of builders, and more. After their presentation, I talked with them about the goals, lessons, and promise of Make It Right. Read more…

In keeping with President Obama’s “Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance” executive order, we’ve seen a decisive push for greener federal buildings over the past year. It even appears that different agencies are actually vying with each other for the most sustainable buildings—NASA seems absolutely thrilled that the new Propellants North Administrative and Maintenance Facility, at the Kennedy Space Center, will be its greenest facility ever.

The building will be “a future hub for spacecraft fueling support and a storage facility for cryogenic fuel transfer equipment,” so I was expecting suitably fancy, futuristic technology. Instead, the design and construction team is gunning for a LEED Platinum rating with some good old-fashioned methods—recycling and Dumpster diving. Read more…

Ministers from 24 countries, representing 80 percent of global energy usage between them, put their heads together in Washington, D.C., last week at the first ever Clean Energy Ministerial. The big guys signed up to take action on things like carbon capture, clean energy, and electric vehicles, but their plans for the building industry are particularly interesting. For if all goes well with the Global Superior Energy Performance (GSEP) partnership that was announced on Tuesday, we might have to look at sustainable architecture in a new way.

In minister-speak, the GSEP partnership will be “a multi-country effort to create and harmonize nationally-accredited energy performance certification programs that encourage and reward strategic management of energy use and third-party verified energy reductions.” Essentially, Canada, the European Commission, France, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States have signed up to adopt a global standard not just for deciding how sustainable a building is, but also what the acceptable methods for reducing energy consumption will be. And this rating/reward system will not be LEED. Read more…

The top picks from the “most green” and “most important” lists: William McDonough’s Adam Joseph Lewis Center (left) and Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

This week, when Lance Hosey released the G-List, his survey of the top green buildings since 1980, he was responding to Vanity Fair’s celebrity rankings of the top-rated buildings of the last 30 years, which anointed Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao as the most important building of our time. But Gehry’s name was nowhere to be found on the G-List. Why was I searching for some signs of him among the greens? Read more…