Quick Green Buildings in a Fast-Paced World

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The quest to raise the world’s tallest skyscraper is officially on.  Named Sky City, the 220-floor green building is an ambitious well-intentioned project by the Chinese firm Broad Sustainable Construction.  After much delay from securing construction permits and other bureaucratic paperwork, the skyscraper finally has the go signal from the Chinese government and is set to start this June.

Sky City is set to change Changsha city's skyline (Image from news.nationalpost.com)

Sky City is set to change Changsha city’s skyline (Image from news.nationalpost.com)

Estimated building time: a mind-boggling 90 days.

BSC would later revise this time-frame to a more conservative seven months.  But even so, it’s still an impressive feat considering …

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Edible Landscapes for Our Office Building Gardens

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 We’re used to seeing PETA vegan campaigns featuring celebrities clad only in various produce.  This time around, the Virginia-based animal rights organization is giving us an idea of the scope in which veganism is currently embraced by all of America.  Recently it released its list of the top ten most vegan cities in the US, with Austin, Texas, Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles California heading the pack.

Vegetable garden at Montreal's Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel

Vegetable garden at Montreal’s Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel

The basis for PETA’s list is the number and variety of restaurants catering to vegan diets that can be found in each city, which naturally reflect the vegan lifestyle of the populace there.  Actually, the article in the PETA website reads like a long commercial plug for vegan restaurants, but perhaps …

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Spray-On Solar Cell Prepares to Make a Debut

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Traditional silicon-wafer cells and thin-film solar cells have an upcoming rival—solar cells of the spray-on kind.

Spray-on solar cells for glass windows (Image from newenergytechnologies.com)

Spray-on solar cells for glass windows (Image from newenergytechnologies.com)

Since 2010, New Energy Technologies based in Columbia, Maryland has been busy developing their breakthrough dubbed as SolarWindow in partnership with the University of Florida.  In lieu of the traditional clunky silicon-wafer cells or the flexible thin-film solar cells that have to be strategically installed,…

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Impact of LEED on Asthma in Occupants

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Asthma-diseaseA recent study just released by Johns Hopkins University shows that asthma rates are significantly reduced for occupants in buildings that have achieved LEED Certification. This is yet another great example of the qualitative benefits (often overlooked) of green buildings and the Certification systems that help make them a reality.

To download the entire article in …

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Let’s Have Bird-Friendly Buildings Once and for All

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In the U.S., as many as one billion birds die each year from accidentally colliding into glass windows of buildings.

We can’t get our head around this number—one billion—and yet that number apparently is already a conservative estimate.

The Aqua Tower in Chicago: Poster building for bird-friendly architecture

The Aqua Tower in Chicago: Poster building for bird-friendly architecture

This is one of the tricky paradoxes of green buildings—their reliance on glass that’s both daylight-inviting and heat-insulating—the very features which make them eco-friendly—in turn poses risk to birds who fly directly into the glass.

That’s not the birds’ fault.  Migratory birds are exceptional navigators of the skies, but are practically helpless when confronted with glass.  The birds mistake the glass reflections for the …

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