Construction just finished on this 24-story building designed by Foster + Partners for Vivaldi Park area in Amsterdam.  It’s quite the efficient structure — exceeding Dutch environmental regulations by 10%, and features flexible floor plates that are perfect for big name tenants such as Ernst & Young.  The design calls for an ecological pond, fully glazed windows on sun-exposed facades, and the retention of 65% of rainwater.  In addition to its energy efficient elements, probably one of the more interesting aspects of the structure, and one that has grown on me, is Foster + Partners’ signature use of the aluminum-clad, steel diagrid structure.  Any thoughts relating to the diagrid pattern on the building exterior?

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• The future of the environment.
• The rise of the "conflicted consumer."
• The Top 100 Green Design Firms.
• As the housing market weakens, homes get smaller.
• Green buildings is hard to define. 
• The green home market is growing. 
• New study says solar could provide 10% of electricity by 2025.

*WIR = Week in Review; a Saturday showcase of excellent links.

I'm amazed by what can be found on Flickr.  Just in the last couple weeks, someone posted photos of their friend's LVL home by Rocio Romero.  It's quite nice both inside and out.  And we've talked about Rocio Romero prefabs before, including this Napa LV Home and this Arkansas LVL Home, and what's interesting is: how they're customized.  Every Rocio Romero home starts with a primary focus on quality, sustainability, and design — from there, owners tend to add their own personality to the inside and out. 

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About ten years ago, I worked at UPS in their "boneyard" — a place where all the pallets were unloaded and strewn in huge heaps on an asphalt parking lot.  We’d neatly stack the pallets, place them in a trailer, and UPS would get rid of them, netting about $0.25 per pallet saved.  At the time, I didn’t realize the amount of pallets in circulation around the globe.  It’s estimated that there are about 2 BILLION ordinary unit load pallets in circulation globally, and about two-thirds of these are only used once.  It’s further estimated that U.S. companies throw away roughly 4 billion board feet of wood pallets every year.  Pretty crazy, I know. 

So HDR Architecture came up with Unit Load_Redux, a temporary exhibition intended as a probe for sustainable living through the redux of pallets and the use of bicycle energy.

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Atlantic City Convention Center has just signed a 20-year agreement with Pepco Energy Services to have a 2.36 megawatt solar roof installed on the building.  When completed by the end of this year, the project is projected to be the largest single-building solar energy project in the United States.  That’s 13,321 photovoltaic panels covering roughly two-thirds of the building AND a savings of roughly $4.4 million in electricity costs over the 20-year deal. 

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