Category: shelter

Earthships Taking Off in the Netherlands

Earthships are a type of house that are built using reused materials to construct a structure that is sustainable. Often the earthships are off the gird and can function autonomously from external systems. In the Netherlands, these types of buildings are growing in popularity.

Earthships use dirt- and sand-filled tires to create insulated, fire-resistant walls that are then surrounded by earth berms. A glass conservatory filled with plants on the south-facing side maximizes the sunʼs warmth, directing heat into earth mass walls and floors that radiates within the house when the temperature drops. High-performance wood-burning ceramic heaters provide additional warmth as needed. During summer, inhabitants can lower temperatures by blocking windows. Temperatures are maintained at around fifteen degrees Celsius because of the stable temperature of dirt surrounding the building. Cool air enters through the front windows, and warm air is ventilated out through skylights.

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USA Urban Population Growth Outpaces the Suburbs

Regular readers know that in the modern world an urban lifestyle is more sustainable than a suburban lifestyle so it’s pretty good news to see that more people in the USA are moving into urban centres. America is where the suburbs started and have had the largest cultural impact and seeing a transition away from unsustainable suburban living in America is definitely a good thing!

Even among those who are buying homes rather than renting, there is a strong preference now for close-in locations, where sales prices driven by demand have increased while those in outer suburbs have plummeted. Where home purchase prices are still recovering, the recovery has been much stronger in inner, urban locations than in outer suburbs.
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Roughly 52 of the 73 US cities with population of greater than 250,000 showed faster annual growth (or slower rates of losses) in 2011 than their average growth over the last decade. Primary cities in large metropolitan areas with populations of more than one million grew by 1.1 percent last year, compared with 0.9 percent in surrounding suburbs. Cities switching from declines to gains included Pittsburgh and Milwaukee, both previously written off by some as “shrinking cities” because of what was perceived as irreversible decline because of the loss of manufacturing.

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Dwell’s Top Green Projects of 2012

Architecture magazine Dwell has released their top ten green projects in the USA for this year. It would be great to see this done in a global perspective.

On April 19th, AIA’s Committee on the Environment (COTE) announced the COTE Top Ten Green Project Awards: their selection of the most sustainable buildings across the country. COTE advocates environmentally conscious building and focuses on educating architects and the public about green design. This year’s winners had an unprecedented focus on public utility and budgeting and there was an unusually high number of adaptive reuse projects and concentration on community ties. Watch the slideshow to learn what made the 10 winners.

View the slideshow.

Talking About Cities With People Who Don’t Live in One

When it comes to talking about the divide between urban and non-urban living there’s more differences than just who lives in a more sustainable community. People living in non-urban areas just don’t understand the positive urban living that is being espoused, and in fact, can take insult to how pro-urban thinkers (like me) talk about cities versus sub-urban living.

Marohn says he has realized over the past decade that he and the New Urbanists are actually often talking about the same thing. The urban experience and the small-town experience have more in common than people think. And they’ve both been distorted by the suburban experiment. The picture looks different. In cities, it looks like an army of surface parking lots has devoured our downtowns. Small towns have also been hallowed out at the core and nipped at their edges by encroaching subdivisions.

But the effect is the same, Marohn says: an erosion of civic space, which has led to an erosion of the financial viability of communities. And this is the language he uses to talk about planning – the language of economics, of debt and prosperity and gas prices.

Sure, economic arguments are often environmental ones, too (saving on gas also saves the environment!). But Marohn only ever mentions this under his breath, like, “oh, by the way, reinvesting in our existing infrastructure is good for the environment, too.” He says he sometimes ticks off environmentalists by acknowledging their worldview as an afterthought instead of up front.

Read more here.

Proposed Wooden Skyscraper

wood building
Yesterday we looked at making a key building material, cement, more green and today we’re looking at a skyscraper to be built out of wood. Wood is a much kinder material to the environment thanks to the fact that wood is renewable because it comes from trees.

The idea may sound odd given that wooden skyscrapers may not sound strong or even fire-resistant but all of this is thought out for this building which may get built in Vancouver.

‘Tallwood’ would be made of large panels of ‘laminated strand lumber’—a composite made by gluing together strands of wood.

Trees are a renewable resource, and they help to reduce air pollution. Sourcing from sustainably-managed forests could be deemed more environmentally sensitive, according to CNN.

Unlike concrete—which produces about 6-9kg of carbon dioxide for every 10kg of concrete—wood sucks carbon out of the atmosphere.

And contrary to popular belief, wood actually is quite fire-resistant.

“It may sound counter-intuitive, but performing well in a fire is something inherent in large pieces of wood, that’s why in forest fires the trees that survive are the largest ones,” Green said.

Read (and see) a bit more at Taxi.