When Berkley, California recently made the announcement that it would become the first city in the United States to ban natural-gas installations in newly constructed buildings, public took note. After the news broke, four other California cities established new rules to "encourage... View full entry
New Zealand architects have had enough. With the effects of climate change impacting the globe, several nations have declared an urgent international climate emergency. After UK architects issued the Architects Declare initiative in May 2019, several other countries such as Italy, Norway, Canada... View full entry
Plant Prefab, a building manufacturing backed by Amazon, has announced a plan to achieve "net carbon neutral" operations by the year 2028. According to a Medium post announcing the move, since 2006, the company has steadily worked to increase its "comprehensive and continuous effort to... View full entry
“We are building a 100-year building. We want to make sure it will last 100 years, but well beyond that,” explained William R. Halter, an architect for Elkus Manfredi, the firm behind the building’s design. — CBS Boston
Elkus Manfredi's design for the St. Regis Residences allows the lowest floor of the 22-story luxury tower to be permanently be raised by up to five feet without disturbing the building's two-story ground-level restaurant. The design was created to allow the building to adapt to rising sea... View full entry
The MTA pledged Monday to fast-track subway access for people with disabilities by making 66 more stations easier to navigate as part of a new $51 billion, five-year spending plan...The promise comes as the MTA faces multiple lawsuits over the shortage of elevators in the subway system — THE CITY
"Making 66 more stations accessible would triple the number that had been tapped for Americans with Disabilities Act upgrades in the 2015-2019 capital plan," THE CITY reports. The planned upgrades are part of MTA's recently announced $54 billion capital improvement plan. View full entry
Gabon will become the first African nation to receive funding to preserve its rainforests to mitigate the effects of climate change. [...] Norway will pay $150 million to Gabon to battle deforestation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The deal is part of the Central African Forest Initiative [...] The partnership sets a carbon floor price of $10 per certified ton and will be paid on the basis of verified results from 2016 through to 2025. — QZ
According to QZ, since 2000, Gabon has created more than a dozen new national parks to help preserve the country's forests. Roughly 12-percent of the Congo Basin Forest, the second-largest tropical rainforest behind the Amazon, is located within Gabon's borders. View full entry
"DOWN TO EARTH: how can we redefine all our actions as what leads toward the Earth? How can we adapt in such a way that our urban living environments can cope with the impending climate crisis – not at the expense of but in balance with nature? Indeed, where can we land?”
George Brugmans (IABR)
— George Brugmans
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned us in the fall of 2018 that to avoid catastrophe, human societies have 12 years to completely transform the way we use energy and land. Change is urgently needed and on a scale for which ‘there is no documented historical... View full entry
The Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF), a coalition made up of over 30 building industry leaders that includes the American Institute of Architects, Perkins and Will architects, Autodesk, the American Institute of Steel Construction, and the American Concrete Institute Foundation, among others, has... View full entry
[New York City's] Economic Development Corporation is seeking ideas for a floating pool that would filter the water of the East River to allow for safe swimming. A similar idea was first announced in 2010 by the nonprofit +POOL, which has been working with the city for years. The pool would likely be built between the north side of Brooklyn Bridge and the south side of Pier 35 on the Lower East Side, according to a request for expressions of interest. — 6sqft
According to 6sqft, New York City was once home to as many as 15 floating river pools, a tradition that originated in the 1870s. Proposal submissions are due no later than 5:00 PM on October 4, 2019. View full entry
The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s (RAIC) Committee on Regenerative Environments is calling on the country's architects to join architects from around the world in formally committing "urgent and sustained" climate action. The call makes Canadian architects the latest group to take up... View full entry
[San Jose] became biggest city in the US to adopt all-electrification requirements on new residential buildings and gas bans on commercial construction.
By early next year, developers may have to opt for electric appliances and other infrastructure in single-family homes, backyard cottages, low-rise buildings, apartments and condos. [...] the changes could cut greenhouse gas emissions in new buildings by up to 90 percent and save owners and tenants money on utility bills.
— San Jose Inside
San Jose, California's third largest city, is implementing its Paris Accords-aligned Climate Smart San Jose plan as part of a municipally driven decarbonization effort. The plan relies on a series of "reach codes" to go above and beyond existing sustainability requirements. View full entry
[Dr. Raman's] prototype device employs radiative cooling, the phenomenon that makes buildings and parks feel cooler than the surrounding air after sunset. As Dr. Raman’s device releases heat, it does so unevenly, the top side cooling more than the bottom. It then converts the difference in heat into electricity. — The New York Times
After driving through a dark village in Sierra Leone, UCLA electrical engineer Aaswath Raman got the idea of building a device that didn't have to rely on solar power or wind to generate electricity after dark. Dr. Raman and his research team did just that, and built a prototype thermoelectric... View full entry
Deep beneath the streets of Clapham, London, in a former air raid shelter, Steve Dring and his colleagues are farming. Vertical farming, that is.
The company Dring co-founded, Growing Underground, is cultivating a wide range of vegetables and herbs in vertically-stacked trays in the confined space. It’s part of a growing trend in Europe and the U.S.
— Marketplace
Marketplace visits Growing Underground, a cutting-edge vertical farm inside a converted WWII-era air raid bunker 100 feet beneath London. "If we were growing peas out in the open, we’d have three crops a year," the company's cofounder Steve Dring tells the reporter. "Here, we get 62 crops a year... View full entry
Texas Central, the private company developing the Texas Bullet Train, announced it had signed a deal with Salini Impregilo, the Italian construction giant, and its American subsidiary, Lane Construction, to design, construct and install the 240-mile high-speed rail line using Japan’s Shinkansen trains. — The Houston Chronicle
The plan to build a 90-minute bullet train between Dallas and Houston still requires a number of local, state, and federal approvals before it can move forward. Nonetheless, backers of the project are raising funding for the initiative and setting out to complete early design work. Texas... View full entry
Under the 25-year deal with developer 8minute Solar Energy, the city would buy electricity from a sprawling complex of solar panels and lithium-ion batteries in the Mojave Desert of eastern Kern County, about two hours north of Los Angeles. The Eland project would meet 6% to 7% of L.A.'s annual electricity needs and would be capable of pumping clean energy into the grid for four hours each night.
The combined solar power and energy storage is priced at 3.3 cents per kilowatt-hour [...]
— Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti praised the approved Eland Solar and Storage Center as an integral part of the city's climate commitment to reach 55% renewable energy by 2025, 80% renewable energy by 2036, and 100% renewable energy by 2045. "Located on 2,650 acres in Kern County, California, the... View full entry
