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This is by far the busiest road in Dubai, the site of frequent, epic traffic jams that are infamous among commuters...But an ambitious new proposal would see a stretch of Sheikh Zayed Road transformed into an "urban living room" with fumes and congestion giving way to a green, pedestrianized oasis. — CNN
The project, titled X-Space was designed by architects Mouaz Abouzaid and Dima Faraj, and recently won the World Architecture Festival's (WAF) top prize in the Smart Cities category, reports CNN. The two-level project seeks to expand area for pedestrians while reducing area for... View full entry
The Nolla Cabin is a sustainable summer cottage developed by Neste and envisioned by designer Robin Falck. The project is a part of Neste's Journey to Zero initiative that aims to push the world closer to a carbon-neutral existence. The A-frame prototype of the cabin was built in 2018 on... View full entry
The wide-range of benefits offered by green roofs have encouraged increasing numbers of municipalities and building owners alike to invest in this architectural sustainability solution. Aside from fighting air pollution and mitigating urban heat island effect, these roofs also implement savings on... View full entry
This post is brought to you by LafargeHolcim Foundation Call for exemplary construction projects and visionary design concepts. The LafargeHolcim Awards seeks leading projects of professionals as well as bold ideas from the Next Generation that combine sustainable construction solutions with... View full entry
Since [...] the federal government turned control [of Governors Island] over to New York City, under the condition that it not be used for residential housing, it has been an island in search of a purpose [...]
Now, the city has a new idea: transforming one of its last big chunks of developable land [...] into a “living laboratory” for coping with the effects of climate change.
— The New York Times
The early stages of a plan to convert New York's Governor's Island into a self-funded sustainability laboratory have come to light. The proposal bears some similarities to the Billion Oyster project, a decade-old proposal developed by an eponymous nonprofit and landscape architects SCAPE hat... View full entry
It’s well known that the production of cement—the world’s leading construction material—is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 8 percent of all such releases...A team of researchers at MIT has come up with a new way of manufacturing the material that could eliminate these emissions altogether, and could even make some other useful products in the process. — MIT News
The research team is exploring the "idea of using an electrochemical process to replace the current fossil-fuel-dependent system" that relies on coal-fired ovens to convert limestone, clay, and sand to Portland cement. Through the new process, the need to burn coal will be avoided and the emitted... View full entry
It's no secret that planned obsolescence makes the world go 'round. We've all been there: You buy a big-ticket item that seems to work great until, that is, the product is no longer under warranty. Soon after, it breaks. Lo and behold, repairing the item is prohibitively expensive, it might even... 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
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
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
[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
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
This Friday, the University of Pennsylvania will hold Designing a Green New Deal, a day-long symposium aimed at articulating a design perspective for "a still-abstract set of proposals for decarbonizing the economy, eliminating poverty, creating green, working-class jobs, and retrofitting... View full entry
Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has introduced a five-step plan to address climate change and to help mitigate its effects in the built environment. To start, Yang lays out the problem of climate change in personal economic terms: "Why have we so far barely made a... View full entry
Earlier this month, the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport announced that it had hit a much-anticipated milestone in becoming the first airfield in the United States powered by 100% solar energy.
The end result of an ambitious project that started seven years ago, the airport's 2.64-megawatt solar farm was completed with about $5 million of funding from the Federal Aviation Administration.
— Forbes
