This Friday is the opening day of the 3rd Solar Decathlon Exhibition. The exhibition takes place on the National Mall in Washington DC from October 12th to 20th. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the competition invites 20 teams from colleges and universities across the United States, Germany, Spain, and Canada to participate. The objective is to “design, build, and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar-powered house.” Students have been working on these projects for up to two years; they build them, then deconstruct their projects to transport them across the country and even across oceans only to put them back together again. Teams arrived in Washington last Wednesday, October 3, and have been assembling their homes to prep for Fridays opening.

Powered entirely by the sun, these high-tech homes that exhibit superior efficiency are “likely to help shape America’s clean energy future,” states a press release from the Department of Energy. The first Solar Decathlon was in 2002. I am partially inspired by this event as my old alma mater, the University of Michigan, competed in the 2005 competition. Although Michigan is not competing this year, many of the students from participating schools and prospective schools took notes on the flaws present in 2005, and went home to improve, reinvent, and discover new technologies for this year’s event.

As a result of seeing the 2005 University of Michigan MISO (Michigan Solar) home, I can tell you that these teams are consciously composed. With students from disciplines ranging from Engineering, Architecture, and Design to Urban Planning andEnvironmental Studies, these projects are guaranteed to be well-conceived. “These solar homes are powerful, comfortable, and stylish. They are relaxed, elegant, wasting neither space nor energy.” Since these projects come from an academic setting, a place where exploring concepts and visions for the future is fostered and encouraged, these homes are creative, innovative, and surprising.

Not only is this an opportunity for students to learn, explore, and experience solar home construction; it is also an occasion for the public to come view the solutions and learn about the best in energy efficiency and home design. If you are in the DC area and have a chance to stop by, the exhibition hosts an entrée of tours, seminars, workshops, and talks by students and professionals. Starting this Friday October 12, the exhibition is open to the public. Next Thursday, October 18 is a day devoted to building industry professionals, and the official awards ceremony is next Friday October 19. Enjoy!

This November 7-9, Chicago will host the largest GreenBuild Expo in history. Put on by the USGBC (United States Green Building Council), this year over 18,000 attendees will gather to learn about the trends in green construction and get inspired about future projects. In a city aiming to be the greenest, this is a monumental event. On top of it all, GreenBuild will be held in one of Chicago’s LEED certified facilities, the McCormick Place West Building.

According to the USGBC, "Chicago mayor Richard Daley has pledged to make Chicago the most environmentally friendly city in the world. Building on its legacy as a center of American architecture, Chicago was one of the first cities to adopt LEED. Today it has the most LEED projects of any city in the world."

Included in the Expo is an international conference with headlining speakers such as Paul Hawken (author), Sadhu Johnston (Chicago Commissioner of the Department of Environment),  Thom Mayne (Founder and Principal of Morphosis), Maria Atkinson (Global Head of Sustainability at Lend Lease), and former US President Bill Clinton. USGBC President and CEO Rick Fedrizzi on is especially excited about Clinton’s planned appearance:

"This is an unprecedented opportunity for our green building community to hear from one of the greatest philanthropic and environmental leaders of this century. The William J. Clinton Foundation is facilitating a series of global action plans that are addressing some of the most intractable problems of our times — AIDS, economic sustainability as a way to eradicate poverty, the elimination of childhood obesity. His framework has shown the power that groups of individuals have to effect real change."

"Reducing the C02 emissions that lead to climate change is another key area of focus, and it’s being addressed by the Clinton Climate Initiative, with green building as a cornerstone of that effort,” Fedrizzi noted. “We are making a difference, and President Clinton’s unique ability to inspire individual action will add incredible momentum to this important work."

The event has a full schedule of networking and educational opportunities. Whether you are a homeowner, a builder, designer, architect, engineer, and, heck, even a programmer or a banker, there is something applicable to everyone’s life. With over 850 exhibit booths displaying the newest products and technologies, the expo itself will be an educational and eye opening experience. If you leave thinking, "I still can’t do it," then you didn’t pick up enough tools while in attendance.

More than 70% of outdoor space in the city of San Francisco is dedicated to vehicle parking. That leaves little space for public activity, public play, and public human parking. This very idea sparked an inspiration in a few young men in San Francisco who decided to intervene by paying the meter to create temporary public parks. Rebar group is what they call themselves and the event is called PARK(ing).

The first event took place on November 16, 2005, when these guys and their buddies rolled into town with a truck bed full of sod. They identified a parking spot in a part of downtown San Francisco that was lacking any sort of public outdoor human space, put some quarters in the meter (thus renting the downtown real estate), rolled out their sod, parked a bench, and enjoyed their afternoon in the park (until the 2 hour meter ran out). They invited all passing pedestrians to enjoy a little time in the sun with them, and take a rest. “By our calculations, we provided an additional 24,000 square-foot-minutes of public open space that Wednesday afternoon,” says Rebar member.

The critical issue the members of Rebar intend to approach goes beyond the excessive amount of city surface area dedicated to private vehicles. They desire to display the paucity of public outdoor urban human habitat by way of temporarily renting this private vehicular space.

It is nice to have trees in the city to clean our air and increase our exposure to nature amongst the manmade construct, but oftentimes these small plots of earth are fenced off. Why not include a place to enter and rest your feet right next to these trees?

In its third year, Rebar’s spactacular PARK(ing) event will take place in cities all over the world. Friday Sept. 21st will be a day that no one could miss while tromping around a participating city. The Trust for Public Land is heading up National PARK(ing) day in more than a dozen U.S. cities: NYC, LA, DC, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, St. Paul, Boston, Austin, Salt Lake City, Tampa, and Miami (for more info to get involved or add you city… click). Additionally, a slew of international cities are lined up to participate on this monumental day including: London, Paris, Barcelona, Valencia, Munich, Toronto, Melbourne, and others.

So in response to this information, ReBar, myself, and our community are calling on you — artists, activists, and citizens — to temporarily take over private city parking space and turn them into ephemeral public parks. Get in touch with your local coordinator, invent your perfect mini park, and build it on September 21 along with other enthusiast worldwide…and don’t forget to invite you friends!

It is that time of year to get on the bus and head back to school. Preparing for class and back-to-school activities is not our most sustainability-focused time or year. We want to buy new clothes, new supplies- a new look. This Fall, some students will be living in style out of an old container.

As some college students in Amsterdam move into their brand new housing, accommodations will be a hip combination of new and old. Rethinking the way we use things, Keetowonen, a student housing project in Amsterdam, is transforming shipping containers into 1000 units for college students. Each container block has one building services container that supplies the block with electricity and Internet. Atop the roof is a different container system that collects rainwater, while providing equal heat dispersal and insulation for the units below.

Our perception of a shipping container might not be of something very spacious since they’re usually packed full of non-perishable products from across the globe. Yet, when emptied and tidied up, they can be made into a quite accommodating space. Each 40 square-foot unit is equipped with all the amenities a college student might need- sink, shower, toilet, kitchen, a boiler for hot waster, electricity, heat, and even balconies. Some end units have windows on the side to allow more sunlight to penetrate their space. The box-in-box construction means that the floors, walls and ceilings don’t come in contact with the external structure of the container. Therefore, the interior space in insulated from thermal change and sound disruption.

Also on the campus, Tempohousing installed a café-restaurant, a supermarket, office building, laundry-mat, and a sporting area- all made out of shipping containers. So, for those of you who simply can’t resist now, here is the skinny on the cost and availability of the containers. The units are rented out by the De Key housing corporation. Additionally, in 2005 the Dutch ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) presented Keetwonen with a formal notice that the units are eligible for housing subsidies. "The amount of subsidy tenants can claim depends on their personal (financial) circumstances." Belastingdienst is the provider of this subsidy contract

The first block of 60 units was completed by September 2005 and was rented out. The last was finished in April 2006. This past April 25th, the project received the Funda Award for "best executed innovation in construction."

"At the award ceremony the jury acknowledged Keetwonen to be ‘bright stars in an otherwise dimly lit market which is acting slow on innovation.’ In the report produced by the jurors fast construction and the fact that the Keetwonen habitats are ready for habitation on arrival were the main focus. The low construction cost was also mentioned as a big plus."

Also on GO:

Urban Options: Group 41 Offers Free Custom Container Architecture

A Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement under the Clean Water Act was written in 1972 to set a cap on the amount of crud that could be dumped into Lake Michigan annually. The law set a limit on how much pollution companies could legally dump into the lake. The law also prevented any company that was dumping under the limit from increasing their dumped pollution.

Well, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently made an exception to this law for the $3.8 billion expansion of British Petroleum’s (BP’s) Whiting, Indiana plant. In exchange, the expansion is said to provide 80 more permanent jobs and 2,000 temporary construction jobs. The trade-off for this socio-economical exchange is 35% more sludge (a total of 4,925 pounds), and 54% more ammonia (a total of 1,584 pounds) pumped into Lake Michigan daily. Even though this increase in pollution is still below the federal and state limits, it is the first decision in years that allows a company to dump more toxic waste into Lake Michigan.
For a company that considers themselves "Beyond Petroleum" by supporting alternative energy development and environmental protection, they certainly are not displaying much attention beyond their own petroleum processing?

This Whiting, Indiana plant (currently the nation’s 4th largest refinery) was originally built in 1889 by John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. We are happy that they are using the same facility, but due to the extra crude oil coming from Canada, BP can’t process the expanded volume in the same "small" plant. Therefore, the expansion became the obvious solution. The state excused this severe hike in pollution by saying the project will provide more jobs and security of oil suppliers to the Midwestern United States.

This is what the trade-off actually is: this "toxic sludge" is a cocktail of concentrated heavy metals and suspended solids that does not-so-nicely mix with our fresh-water swimming lakes. The ammonia becomes a problem when it provides a habitat for healthy algae bloom, thus killing the native fish, and altering the aquaculture of the fresh water.

Since the public announcement of the EPA permit grant in mid-June, people are also unhappy with the way these events rolled out. An environmental group, the Alliance for the Great Lakes, filed a petition asking Indiana’s Office of Environmental Adjudication to suspend the permit and reopen the appeal process due to inadequate public scrutiny. When the permit draft was made available for review, many organizations submitted comments on it. Yet, when the final permit was made available, these organizations were not informed on the proper date, nor were they informed of the appeal process. Now the Indiana Department of Environmental Management claims that the appeal process is closed because it is 15 days past the post date of the final permit. Over 70,000 people across the Great Lakes and the nation have signed this petition.

Additionally, Great Lakes supporters spread out over BP stations all over the Midwest region handing out flyers explaining the situation and requesting that customers fill up elsewhere. As this momentum builds, awareness speads, and hopefully BP will either change their ways or admit that they are beyond caring about the Great Lakes. We prefer the former to the later.

To sign the petition yourself go to:
Environment Michigan

Nau, a rather new high performance clothing company has the best looking sustainable clothing on the market. Thankfully, they have taken some progressive and responsible steps as a consumer products company to reinvent sustainable fashion, and improve communities.

The all-encompassing Nau design philosophy requires a balance of three criteria: beauty, performance, and sustainability. Many lines seek to meet one objective, but the most interesting consumer products out there are those that seek to improve lives through the balance of multiple objectives. The clothing line is declared "Prada meets high performance wear." With two top designers both coming from high performance corporate companies - Patagonia and Nike - the design is bound to be as effective as possible. “The clothes integrate performance to the point of invisibility, eschewing adornment and clutter for clean functionality.” Appropriate for all environments, urban to wild, the subtle yet stylish clothing is the model of simple and clutter-less design. With perfection in style, design, and performance, Nau has made it clear to us that sustainable fashion can be very sexy, functional, stylish, and effective.

Yet the most interesting point about the company’s practice lies in the materials itself. Nau has developed 24 of the their 32 fabrics in direct partnership with their suppliers ‘in order to design new, more sustainable solutions that blend performance and aesthetic appeal." All 24 fabrics incorporate a high percentage of recycled materials or vegetable-based byproduct. The interesting part is that instead of patenting the material technology and hoarding the secrets, they do much the contrary. Nau boasts this research from the mountaintops in hopes that other fashion lines, furniture designs, etc., will go ahead and incorporate these highly sustainable and aesthetically exquisite fabrics into their designs. This idea is a paradigm shift that encourages the sharing of ideas and resources throughout a community or the world. If we are all working towards the same goal of a healthier planet, why would we withhold resources that exist to help us get there?

The next pillar of responsibility involves customer participation. For every purchase made at a Nau store or online, 5% is donated to a social, environmental, or humanitarian charitable organization of your choice. Through the Partners for Change organization, you can choose to support communities on a local, national, or international scale. "Committed to radically altering the landscape of corporate philanthropy," Partners For Change and Nau have teamed to bring you this unique experience of direct involvement with the decision making process:

By seeking to create a new way of looking at business, we hope to transcend the traditional gap between the for-profit and nonprofit sector. We believe that all businesses have true responsibilities to the communities they affect. By operating in conjunction with our community partners we have the potential to innovate together in service of changing the world for the better.

Gaining green credentials is of utmost importance to those in the consumer electronics industry. As the demand rises, each company is developing their own labeling system to tote their own personalized green flag. But with so many sets of criteria how do we evaluate the concentration of the green credentials solution?

Philips Electronics recently announced a new consumer product label that will mark simply that the electronic is more environmentally friendly and healthier for the consumer. Titled the “Green Tick”, this label will aid Philips consumers in making decisions about competitive products. Included in the eco-friendly evaluation, the products must meet certain energy efficiency requirements, and use healthier, more environmentally gentle materials in everything from production of the electronics to the packaging. The motivation is to enlighten consumer awareness and to differentiate Phillips products from others. Awarded by external auditors, Green Tick products will be added to the list of Green Flagship products.

It is now becoming easier for Phillips consumers to actively make eco-conscious choices about different products within the company portfolio, but it stops there. The missing link right now is that there is not a tool to leverage the criteria of the Green Tick against that of say Energy Star. When the Green Tick only applies to Phillips products, it becomes difficult for the consumer to make educated decisions about competitive products- how do choose between a “Green Tick” labeled HD TV and an “Energy Star’ rated HD TV? On a seemingly similar note, Sharp
just received an eco-friendly label for their TV’s as well. Boasting
40 EU eco-label awards and additional international energy-efficiency
awards, Sharp was able to achieve so many pillars or environmental wealth because they chose a more common label for
their products- the EU Flower. When the criteria and motivation for these labels are essentially the
same, why compete within the market with private eco-label branding? It is hard to say, but the next step is to get educated and look for labels that are applied to more consumer markets.

Some good news is that many recent European discussions between manufacturers and PR departments have concluded in agreeing to promote green-labeled products and educate with more extensive media coverage throughout the remainder of this year. Hopefully this will result in consumer demand for consistency, and thus an understanding of eco-label activity.

More good news on the horizon is a new widespread European Union Eco-label, the Flower. Taken from the EUROPA Eco-label homepage:

"It is a voluntary scheme designed to encourage businesses to market products and services that are kinder to the environment and for European consumers - including public and private purchasers - to easily identify them. You can find the Flower throughout the European Union as well as in Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland. The European Eco-label is part of a broader strategy aimed at promoting sustainable consumption and production."

Everything from tourism to detergents, business owners and companies can now compete within the green market. With this tool, green attributes pertaining to these private companies, businesses, and practices…may be more easily compared by consumers.

As an extension of last weeks post, Vote on Sustainable Design for the Future, there are simply too many design competitions out there: we must alert you to more. Many of these design competitions are open to people of all disciplines with good ideas. So maybe you should take a pen and paper and enter a keen green idea of your own if you want to see the world change.

Here is my deeper perception on additional “call for entries” situations:

What I have found is that when a corporate product manufacturing company has a call for entries, they are seeking new ideas. Sometimes ideas perpetuate in a work situation, and it becomes difficult to think as far out of the box as some younger creatives do. Electrolux is an international home appliances and equipment company. Each year their Design lab runs a competition for industrial design students working towards their undergraduate or graduate degrees (so this one isn’t for everyone but its still interesting). While “innovative ideas for household appliances of the future” is the mainstay, sustainability is this year’s theme. Students are asked to create eco-friendly, sustainable household appliances and solutions for 2020. If you are a student, check it out. The deadline is July 31. For the rest of you, finalists will be announced October 1.

When a foundation posts a call-for-entries, it is often based on a desire to generate the inspiration of the organization’s namesake in a new generation, and to allow the his/her spirit to live on. Each year, the distinguished jury of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge awards a large sum to “support the development and implementation of a solution that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems in the shortest possible time while enhancing the Earth’s ecological integrity.” This year’s competition honors Fuller’s a"nticipatory design science method": the idea of doing more with less. The Challenge seeks “design science solutions within a broad range of human endeavor that exemplify the trim tab principle. Trim tabs demonstrate how small amounts of energy and resources precisely applied at the right time and place can produce maximum advantageous change.” The entry period is September 4 – October 30, so you have a little time to think about this one. On the other hand, a sustainable solution cannot be left until the last moment to be completed. So get to work.

My third example is similar to one of last week, but this one is still open for entries. RE:VISION is a complete competition network that seeks to highlight great ideas about to explode, but that don’t yet have a venue to do so. Stacey Frost, founder of RE:VISION, wanted to create a place where these “ideas are put into action, supported and encouraged by a diverse group of people dedicated to making WHAT IF, WHAT IS.” Stacey believes that with each individual’s unique perspective combined with ideas, energy, and resources we can really generate change.

The current competition RE:ROUTE is a call for new urban transportation systems thinking. “We need to enhance and revitalize our areas, changing them from a bunch of buildings into a community. How can we move people cars, services, or goods through a neighborhood.” The competition seeks to generate new and creative ideas for urban transportation that start 4 steps back from the base and stop for a breath of fresh air 100 steps ahead of where we are in 2007. The competitions closes August 15 but the requirements are minimal. If you have an idea, get on the “wagon” and redesign it.

For more information these are the sites I consult for new competition posts:
Core77

American Society of Interior Designers

In the design world, often times young architecture/design firms and even individual designers will apply to competitions during the young part of their career to get public recognition, build credentials, and experience the social circuits around design.

As a young aspiring designer myself, I have made a keen observation of the design industry this year. Many of the call-for-entries and competitions this year have been for solutions related to sustainable development, energy, climate, biodiversity, environmental degradation, etc. Naturally we would expect these type of call-for-entries to come through the EPA grant programs, the NRDC, and other governmental organizations for the environment. Instead the call for action is coming from design firms, architecture magazines and other NGOs alike.

Allow me to take this opportunity to highlight some of the forthcoming competitions and competitions past that have sparked interest in publications of all sorts. The entries to these competitions not only alert us to solutions most of us have never thought of, but through the venue of these competitions many will have the opportunity to be realized! The following are just a few examples of the aforementioned. Look out world, great solutions are coming!!!

Design 21: the Social Design Network, is a mainly internet based collaborative project between the global design and merchandise company- Felissimo; and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (known as UNESCO). They seek to inspire social activism through design- design for the greater good. “We connect people who want to explore ways design can positively impact our many worlds, and who want to create change here, now.” Design 21 has been hosting international competitions since 1995 mostly based around social themes.

This year, one competition called Heated Issue, was a call for an environmental campaign; another was for an educational “Childs Play” toy that encourages children to cultivate their own imagination; and the third, Shelter Me, is for a new design of a natural disaster temporary relief shelter. The competition award recipients were voted on by the public, and the winners were just announced! So go ahead, view the future!

Metropolis Magazine: an architecture, design, interiors magazine has strongly directed its focus towards sustainable development in design over the last few years. Annually, they host a design competition called the Next Generation Design Competition that awards $10,000 to the winner and they choose a list of runner-up proposals that get published as well. This year the competition focused on solutions for ENERGY reduction, consumption, efficiencies and alternatives. The award recipients this year designed a city streetlight that conserves urban energy based on the lunar cycle. Check it out. Metropolis also just announced next year’s theme: WATER.

Droog Design: an international design collective based in Amsterdam, seeks to “create innovative concepts that change perspectives." This past month they had a call for entries for concepts based on Climate Change. As a result of picking a winner, they hope to develop a product that pushes boundaries, changes perspectives of environmental issues, and invent new experiences, interactions, and participations… How exciting. Droog will select the top 10 designs, and the public will be able vote online to pick the winner. Public voting begins in September, so look it up and get your vote on.

Aside from the competitions calling specifically for sustainability conscious and socially responsible entries, many award recipients of internationally acclaimed annual design competitions are being recognized for their environmental awareness. Competitions such as the ID Annual Review, the Red Dot Design Award and the Spark Awards. This interesting progression is to be noted among the design circuits as a landmark in sustainable development. Lets hope that this is not the trend of the year but an annual progression towards more socially and sustainability conscious design and cradle-to-cradle conscious products.

Do you have a car on your block that always seems to be parked in the same spot? It collects dust on dry weeks, and disguises itself under a mountain of snow in the winter. Well if you said yes, this vehicle is the victim of what I call “owners neglect." If this black diamond urban ski mountain is your car, never fear; there is now a solution to this situation that is growing rapidly in urban/semi-urban areas.

Many of us own a car for the convenience of using it a couple times a week: to go to the grocery, to go to a concert across town, to get to a dentist appointment early in the morning, or to get out of town for a weekend. Wouldn’t it be easy if you could walk a block and pick up a shared car whenever you need it, and never worry about the upkeep?. This concept is called a car-sharing or car co-op program. You pay a monthly fee, based on your expected use, to employ the service. With the service, the company maintains and services the vehicles, fills ‘em up, takes care of insurance, clean them out, and reserves a parking spot for you when you’re done. This saves you lots of time, money, stress, and reduces the number of bills you have to pay. Here is why it’s important, the car is useful to you on the days you need it, and it is useful to others in the alternate time slots. In some cites these car-sharing programs are even employing fleets of hybrids only. And it is still affordable!
Let me break it down for you. Following are some insight as to why this system benefits you, the community, and the environment.

Individual benefits:

• The tank is always full = time saver
• No insurance bills to pay = less bills in the mail
• A parking spot is always reserved at the end of your day = time saver
• Your car is always well maintained = money and time saver
• Lower theft risk= lower blood pressure, money saver
• No scraping snow off the windshield in the wee small hours of the morning = time saver
• No more waiting in lines at the car wash = time saver
• No more looming responsibility of getting that darn oil changed= time saver, lower blood pressure

Community Benefits:

• Traffic ease: Drivers are only on the street when they need to be; therefore convenience is no longer a scapegoat.
• Fewer cars on the street = less street space required for parking spots: Imagine if every city street had one more lane because we didn’t request it for parking?
• Less parking lots = greater allowance for green space, bicycle lots…healthy public space
• Community members are sharing with each other, which raises the overall “feel-good” factor.

Environmental Benefits:

• There is a lower demand for individually owned cars which results in fewer cars manufactured annually and more cars maintained.
• As vehicles are serviced more frequently and monitored with precision, they will last longer, be safer to drive, and maintain optimal gas mileage.
• If we all participate is a car sharing program and reduce the number of cars on the streets, you might wonder what would happen to the (American) car industry. The car industry could instead switch to a service based supply of cars, parts, and maintenance. Ex: Ford would directly deal with Zip Car. This form of business will keep older cars running well, and reduce our impact of the dead end system where they sell/ we buy-and the relationship is over.
• When the current fleet of cars is bumped down to the 2nd or 3rd tier fleet in 5 or 10 years the affordability will increase, and again, these cars will still be leading a healthy life.

So choose your path. Saving time is money in your pocket, driving less is always better, and sharing makes you feel good.

Here are a couple of Car-Share programs in the US:

Bi-Coastal: http://www.flexcar.com/

Bi-Coastal: http://www.zipcar.com/

Bay Area: http://www.citycarshare.org/

Chicago: http://www.igocars.org/