{Re}habitat

As LEED celebrates its 10th anniversary, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) reports that one billion square feet of buildings around the world have now been LEED certified. Although that is just a drop in the global bucket, certification has helped to spur green construction; according to the Green Outlook 2011: Green Trends Driving Growth report by McGraw--Hill Construction (MHC), LEED specification is mentioned in 71% of all U.S. projects valued at over $50 million.

This year, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, Spain celebrates its 20th anniversary. Well, sort of. While the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia officially opened its doors in 1990, the building has been transformed by so many architects over the years that it’s difficult to date.

The project was a seismic retrofit of a 15-story, 750,000 sq. ft. office building constructed in 1991. The steel portion of the project consisted of systematically strengthening the moment connections throughout the building and installing over 200 dampers without interrupting the operation of the tenants. The contract dictated that the work would start in the basement, progress through the ground floor and the parking garage (floors 2-5), and then continue through the occupied office floors (6-15). The contractor could only occupy three half-floors at any one time. Although my team was extremely experienced, with over 20 years of seismic experience and over 50 years of steel work experience, this project provided us with some significant lessons to take with us to our next project.

Located in Freeport, Pennsylvania, about a 30 minute drive north of Pittsburgh, Buffalo Township’s water treatment plant produces over 700,000 gallons of fresh water daily. The plant provides drinking water to over 5,000 residents in Buffalo Township and Freeport Borough. It is also the fresh water supplier for the Municipal Authority of South Buffalo Township. Join Buildipedia for a photo tour of Buffalo Township’s water treatment plant, as we trace the flow of water from the Allegheny River to its distribution throughout the utility.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) 2009 American Housing Survey (AHS) determined that 66% of U.S. households have a dishwasher. It's not really any surprise that two-thirds of our homes have a dishwasher when you consider that today's Energy Star dishwashers will save you time, water, and utility costs. Depending on how often you use your dishwasher, you can expect an average life expectancy of nine years, according to the Study of Life Expectancy of Home Components, prepared in 2007 by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). Performing simple maintenance tasks will help your dishwasher last longer than expected and will also reduce the likelihood that your dishwasher will cause water damage to your home.

During times of economic uncertainty, we need to expect more out of every investment. Whether as a homeowner making small improvements or as a business owner making multimillion dollar improvements, we must make highly informed decisions to capitalize on the investment. Buildipedia's new series on ROI (return on investment) driven products looks to provide the information to help make these decisions. This step-by-step approach to a product's cost as well as its ROI will aid both new builds and retrofits. Here we focus on windows and toilets, both of which play big roles in energy and water usage in our buildings and provide different opportunities to reduce expenses.

Perhaps no building type has changed more in the past generation than the university library. Enormous book collections, once the organizing feature of these buildings, have lost their prominence as scholastic resources. Today’s college students, having grown up using the Internet, have little patience for a warren of "stacks" and laborious searches through printed materials. Therefore, a building prototype that was traditional, monumental, and static has given way to a new, more fluid style.The dynamic form created by Zaha Hadid to house the new Library and Learning Center for the University of Economics and Business in Vienna, Austria, makes a definitive statement regarding the contemporary function of a scholarly library.

In this gift buying guide, we look at innovative DIY tools that any DIYer or weekend warrior would love to have. The tools included range from a flooring saw that will allow you to make cuts in the same location you are installing your floor to a multifunctional sawhorse that has over one ton of clamping force. Each tool listed is a winner as a potential gift.