If you’ve been following the news at all lately, you’re probably aware that this fall’s G-20 summit begins tonight in Pittsburgh.You may also be aware that there was some surprise when President Obama announced that the Steel City would host the meeting. Obama has said that he wanted to highlight Pittsburgh’s success in transforming itself from an industrial center to a hub of higher education and green technology. He could have added that the city’s David L. Lawrence Convention Center, built by Rafael Viñoly Architects in 2003, is an excellent venue for an agenda that includes addressing climate change (even if, obviously, the financial crisis will be the main issue on the table). The DLLCC was the first, and is the still the largest, LEED Gold convention center in the country. It was built on a former brownfield using a high percentage of local or recycled materials, equipped with an on-site water-reclamation plant, and designed for an abundance of natural lighting and natural ventilation, among other green moves. Maybe, if we’re lucky, the G20 leaders will be inspired by its environmental performance to phase out those pesky fuel subsidies that are hindering efforts to cut down on worldwide carbon emissions.

Images: courtesy RMJM

What global recession? Only a week after South Korean developers announced the completion of phase one of a $35 billion eco-city, the architecture firm RMJM is promoting its own $1 billion ultra-green mixed-use development in Istanbul. According to a press release, the four-million-square-foot development, which is expected to serve 20,000 people, is moving ahead despite worldwide economic woes, slated for completion in 2011. More images after the jump. Read more…

If imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery, New Yorkers (and Venetians, Parisians, Savannahians, and Sydneysiders) might soon feel their ears burn. Last week, administrators of the Songdo International Business District, the work-in-progress eco-city located just 40 miles from the South Korean capital, announced the completion of “phase one” of the project’s ambitious, $35 billion development scheme. The first phase is officially marked by the completion of 100 acres of green space modeled after New York’s Central Park (and named, appropriately, “Central Park”). Also to be included in the final scheme for Songdo: Italianate canals, Savannah-style parks, Parisian boulevards, and a convention center modeled after Jørn Utzon’s iconic opera house. Read more…

The USGBC’s new headquarters are housed in a renovated 1970s office building, for which Wilson negotiated a green lease. Photo: Larry Olsen/courtesy Envision

If green building is to ever become mainstream (and, trust me, it’s not even close today), it will need people like Sally Wilson working behind the scenes. A trained architect, Wilson is a real estate broker in the CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) Washington office, and the firm’s global director of environmental strategy. She had the distinction of being the first real estate broker in the world to be LEED accredited. Since green building will never become business-as-usual unless business itself signs onto it, this was a very significant first. Wilson served as a real estate consultant for the USGBC’s new headquarters—her husband Ken’s firm, Envision Design, created it—helping to negotiate its green lease. Recently I spoke to her about the USGBC, her work with the real estate behemoth CBRE, and the next frontier for green building.

Let’s begin at the beginning. What is a “green lease”?

We think of it as LEED integration into the lease. When we begin the process with a client who is pursuing sustainability, we start by sending out a general RFP to landlords, and we attach an additional rider to it, which is an environmental-qualification statement. This rider is structured around opportunities for the building to pursue LEED credits. It’s roughly twenty-five points. It varies depending on the location, but we customize it for each tenant. Read more…

An 88-foot-tall neon sculpture that sits atop Roanoke’s Mill Mountain gives Virginia’s fourth-largest metropolis its nickname, the Star City of the South. As of last month, there’s another piece of architecture that would lay claim to the glow of the sobriquet. Randall Stout, a Los Angeles–based architect and onetime Gehry protégé, recently completed the Taubman Museum of Art, an 81,000-square-foot building that is more than a little indebted to Libeskinian angularity and Gehry-esque flow. It’s not Stout’s first museum (he also designed an extension of the Hunter Museum of American Art, in Chattanooga), but, formally at least, it’s a fairly radical addition to an architecturally staid city in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

There are a few sustainable elements—low-E glass, a good amount of natural daylight, some local materials—but, alas, no LEED certification. Among the inaugural exhibitions are Rethinking Landscape, which surveys contemporary landscape photography, and In the Cataclysmic Calm, a show (no, it’s not a volume of contemporary free verse) on the making of the building itself. More photos after the jump. Read more…

It’s official—Renzo Piano’s just-opened California Academy of Sciences is so green it’s Platinum. Yesterday afternoon, the U.S. Green Building Council awarded the new San Francisco landmark 54 points, making it the first ever museum to be LEED Platinum certified. (Previously, the most points one had garnered was the Grand Rapids Art Museum’s 42, good enough for Gold.) Read last month’s cover story on the Academy to find out how the architecture, landscape design, and engineering all came together to create a radically new model for the natural-history museum.