You already know that we're media sponsors for West Coast Green 2009. If the self-sustaining show home isn't enough to get you out, maybe the living walls or Innovation Pipeline will. Or maybe some of the keynote speakers, such as Ray Anderson, Gavin Newsom, Andrew Winston, or Cameron Sinclair, will get you out. Who knows?! The marketing campaign is in full swing, and we have three more reasons you should register now:
This summer Gerding Edlen Development opened a 51-unit apartment building in Portland, Oregon called The 20 on Hawthorne. The 20 is over 50% leased already and LEED Silver certification is pending. Homes range in price from $900-$2,500 and in size from 502 to 968 square feet. Perhaps more interestingly, though, this building has a stackable, automated parking system that fetches cars in about 30-40 seconds on average. It's pretty cool to watch.
A few months back, we reported that PNC (NYSE: PNC) was in the process of installing the largest green wall in North American on the exterior of their Pittsburgh headquarters building, One PNC Plaza. Now, as you can see in this monstrous image, PNC has successfully installed the 2,380 square-foot living wall with 602 modular panels. Each 2'x2' panel has roughly 24 plants, so there’s approximately 14,448 plants covering the wall of this 30-story building. Wow!
A few months after receiving LEED Platinum in Georgia, New World Home has now received Platinum certification for this home in Youngsville, New York. It's the first manufactured home in New York to receive the certification and the first home of any type in the state to receive the same level of certification without needing solar panels, wind turbines, or a geothermal system. Like the Georgia home, this one accomplishes the task with non-exotic things like tight construction, efficient mechanicals, and green materials.
Ray Anderson is one of the most prominent business leaders in the country and his story is incredible. Growing up, he learned to grit it out on the football field and in the classroom. Several years later, he applied those lessons to start Interface, the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpets. Now, in his new book, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist, which was released late last week, Anderson challenges the business community to share a goal he set for his company: to take nothing from the earth that cannot be replaced by the earth.
If you’ve read Anderson’s previous book, Mid-course Correction, you know his story. Anderson was tasked with giving a speech about sustainability and really didn’t have much to say. At the same time, someone had placed a copy of Paul Hawken’s widely influential The Ecology of Commerce on his desk. In reading this book, Anderson was hit with the magnitude of the challenge facing business. He was also excited by the opportunity.
We have three copies of this book, which we will give away to three random commenters at the end of Friday, September 25, 2009.*
What kind of school did you grow up learning in? During those formative years, did you have the opportunity to learn in a sustainable and architecturally significant environment? Think back to those days when your mind wandered. Would you ponder the exposed woodwork? Or the expansive windows? Or the structural steel? Like many students, maybe you didn't have the opportunity to learn in a green school or anything of the sort, and that's where the Green School Primer comes in. The Green School Primer is a new book that's been written to educate anyone — whether a board member, teacher, student, or parent – about the benefits of green schools.
