About a year ago, we showed some renderings of Orchid Street Cityhomes, and it turns out, the homes are now finished.  Matter of fact, they’ve won a Root Award in Portland Spaces‘ inaugural design competition.  Well deserved, I believe.  Orchid Cityhomes is a duplex, or connected rowhouses, but the party wall is the garage, so the homes maintain a level of privacy and separation that’s usually missing in most attached residences.  They were designed and developed by Building Arts Workshop and both dwellings just received LEED Platinum certification about a week before Christmas.  Some of the green amenities include:

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[Ed. note - video removed by owner]

Jay Leno’s all about the green tech, I mean, his garage is running on wind and solar, and it powers approximately two-thirds of the place.  So recently, he just put up this video demonstrating a new technology for rooftop wind applications.  The Mag-Wind turbine is made by Enviro Energies and both Jay Leno and Ed Begley Jr. have their own versions on order.  Naturally, Leno was excited to point out that his turbine will be bigger than Begley’s, but in addition to that, you’ll get an idea from the video how interesting the technology actually is.  It’s built using magnetic levitation technology that reduces friction, noise, vibration, and energy loss.  Some other interesting aspects of the Mag-Wind System include:

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Check out this bright, contemporary renovation of an old, 1960s nursing building.  The renovation was led by the design team of Lord, Aeck & Sargent and Gould Evans Associates; they’re anticipating LEED Silver certification and did it all with a $6 M budget.  Now complete, it will be used for Arizona State University's Global Institute of Sustainability and a newly formed School of Sustainability.  In terms of performance, the Institute is anticipated to save 18.7% on energy and 50.3% on water use compared with its baseline usage — plus, it's been outfitted with six, hard-to-miss, state-of-the-art AeroVironment parapet turbines. 

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I want to shout out to a project one of our contributors, Sarah Roe, is working on.  If you’re interested in helping out, please make sure to get in touch with her as outlined below. 

Green Hope Community is a newly-formed non-profit organization whose goal is to establish an eco-friendly community for internationally orphaned children.   This community will be based in the United States; sites in North Carolina, Georgia, New Mexico, Arizona and Oregon are currently being considered.  The goal of the Green Hope Community is to give orphaned children a chance not only to survive, but to thrive, and to give them the tools to become leaders in the fields of environmental progress and social justice.

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Last year I talked about five green building trends and most of that, generally speaking, was spot on.  This year's going to be a little tougher nut to crack, however, because things are changing every day.  After a week or two of new information, it could be that everything below will not make sense any more.  I don't believe that will happen, but it could.  Anyway, to cut to the chase, all of this is informal and anecdotal.  I'm making these predictions based on approximately thirty years of seeing, studying, reading, working, and observing as a human being.  You will certainly have a different perspective, but hear me out.  When you're done, make sure to tell me what you think below. 

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