8Tallet, by BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), has one of the world's largest green roofs and was designed to function as a complete community rather than an apartment building. Learn more about this cool building in one of the world's most environmentally progressive cities, Copenhagen.
Construction is underway on the campus of Bowling Green State University (BGSU). If all goes according to plan, the Wolfe Center for the Collaborative Arts will be finished in 2011. The timing seems perfect, given that the university recently dubbed the arts its first “Center of Excellence.” This gorgeous building by up-and-coming Norwegian-based architectural firm Snohetta will most certainly bring attention to and validate the importance of the arts programs.
Ask your safety manager or operations risk manager and they will tell you about the numerous additional hazards a crew will face at night. Consult work studies and you will see that working at night lowers the efficiency of any of your work crews. Unfortunately, few studies or safety managers will tell you about the managerial and contractual challenges contractors face when they take on night work.
Reduce, reuse, recycle. This is the simplest mantra of the environmental movement and the guiding principle for families and small programs across the nation. How does this principle apply to infrastructure, specifically asphalt pavement? We already use as little asphalt pavement as we can, but this is more an economic decision. We recycle asphalt pavement to build new pavement. We reuse it as clean fill. What else can we do with it? Can we use it to collect solar energy?
As one of the famous Rs that rings so loudly in the vocabularies of environmentalists and sustainability advocates, reuse is finding its way into green design -- manifest in everything from reupholstering furniture to giving an end table a fresh coat of paint. On a larger scale, however, sustainable design has broken new ground by converting religious spaces (yes, pun intended) for new, fresh, and sometimes highly creative purposes. The adaptive reuse of churches, like any other repurposing project, can be met with costs and challenges. It would seem, however, that resurrecting these spaces can provide great benefits not only for the environment but for businesses and communities as well.
Morphosis Architects' new academic building for The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City consolidates the college’s three schools -- art, architecture, and engineering. Known as 41 Cooper Square, the building was completed just over a year ago. And it's still turning heads. However jarring, Morphosis's design creates a vertical campus, providing opportunities for chance encounters and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
There are over 600,000 bridges in the United States and almost 13% have some sort of structural damage. Most bridges still require field methods to assess this damage, including visual inspection, dye penetrant testing, magnetic particle testing, and ultrasonic techniques. These field methods can miss structural problems or fail to catch them in time to prevent a catastrophe. In the case of the Minneapolis steel truss bridge that collapsed in 2007, resulting in 13 lives lost, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) ruled that 16 of the gusset plates that connected the trusses failed. Smart bridge technologies are being implemented in the redesign, providing more efficient and real-time monitoring and inspection.
The economic case for installing solar electric panels on your house or place of business is a heavily discussed topic these days. With the green building movement in full force, photovoltaic (PV) systems are becoming more and more popular. In many cases, though, homeowners and small business owners lack the necessary information to make an educated decision on whether to go ahead with a photovoltaic (PV) system installation. In order to make an educated decision on a PV system, the owner must approach the purchase with the return on investment (ROI) in mind.
The University of Technology Sydney, Australia (UTS) solicited design proposals for a new building to house its Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology as part of the school’s Broadway Building Design Competition. The school was in search of an architecture firm that could design a “gateway” building that referenced the urban context and the City Campus Master Plan while supporting a large population of students and faculty and reducing the school’s environmental impact. In July 2009, UTS announced the winning design, submitted by Australian architectural firm Denton Corker Marshall, from over 60 international entries. Selected by UTS representatives, the City of Sydney, and the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Planning, the design for the Information Technology and Engineering (ITE) Building was chosen for its aesthetic appeal, as well as its functionality and sustainable qualities.
The continued development of the high-speed rail (HSR) infrastructure in the United States will enable people to quickly travel from city to city, and companies to ship freight in significantly less time. However, what makes HSR unique goes beyond the offering of a new mode of transportation or shipping. Developing the HSR infrastructure in the U.S. will require consideration of various construction approaches and technology options.
Summersville Dam, in south central West Virginia, is the second largest rock-fill dam in the eastern United States and exemplifies the way a dam can provide multiple enhancements, such as recreational activities, flood control, and electricity generation, to the local community.
When describing the changes made to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for 2009, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) uses the word “harmonization.” According to Marie Coleman, a Communication Associate with the USGBC, this refers to the fact that all LEED commercial rating systems are now aligned on a 100 point scale.
