Building Alive, Designing to Thrive

Chicago Cultural Center's Tiffany Dome My first trip to the Windy City did not disappoint; I was pleased overall with session content and have some takeaways from each below. Teslas vs: Duck Curve This session touched on something that we in the New York City Living Building Challenge Collaborative have been discussing . In California, high energy efficiency and solar PV requirements have lead to high renewables production mid day to the grid, and an exponentially higher demand on the grid towards late afternoon hours when everyone is heading home. At the same time, Electric vehicles could potentially charge mid day while people are at work, and 'sell' some of their battery charge to the grid in the early evening when people are home and won't need their full remaining capacity. The grid here on the east coast isn't well suited to accept power, I am curious to see this theory grow. Building the First LEED Platinum City Washington DC announced last year...

"Life creates situations conducive to life…we must strive to do that" -Paul Hawken I've discussed this before, but I think it's worth addressing again; what ever happened to the precautionary principle? Why doesn't it apply to building science?   Imagine a world where it is harder to create a building or product that hurts the Earth than one that heals it- I believe that was the original intention of Building codes, Material Safety Data Sheets, and EPA regulation. But instead, it has provided opportunity for companies to say their products are safe because no one can prove they are dangerous!   Modern humans spend about 90% of their time in buildings- but still we construct them and finish them off with products that aren't healthy to breathe, touch, or make.   An article was published early last week about the long term negative health effects of 9/11 victims , rescuers, and so on. This year, dozens have died from cancers that can'...

Can we review the headlines in the news over the past week?   Houston- 8" of rain in 1 hour India- Heatwaves 120 degrees Fahrenheit kill over 1,000 Galapagos- Volcano erupts, threatening to wipe out fragile species that helped Darwin develop the theory of evolution Worldwide- increase of allergies globally as warmer seasons spread ragweed and other pollens- increased C02 will feed them. California- Santa Barbra oil spill over 100,000 gallons of crude oil last week.   And you want to sit there and tell me Climate Change isn't real?   And/ OR that humans have nothing to do with it? Then this is you my friend (insert pic)     The fact is, it's real and it's happening. So you can stick your head in the sand or you can be a part of the solution. And believe it or not, the solution doesn't even require you to give up something. You just need to get it a different way.   Energy is our Achilles heel, but also ou...

Aristotle once said, "The energy of the mind is the essence to life". Too bad for him and us, buildings and modern society as we know it can't survive on the stuff. Buildings consume about 40% of the energy and 75% of the electricity produced annually in the United States. (usgbc), which means they are the largest demanders for power, heat, air and electric. So, for obvious reasons, these are the most important places to focus our energies (pun intended) in reduction and reuse. Reduction is probably the more obvious of the two, creating better buildings that don't leak heat and air conditioning, that are so well insulated the heat from the bodies of it's occupants actually warms the building. This will create a lower energy demand to control thermal comfort within the space. Reuse is the more challenging and yet I'd argue the more exciting way to increase efficiency in a home, building... or wherever. Something like using the wastewater from the toilets to co...