We’re going to be on the scene at Greenbuild this year, are you?  If you are, get ready for Project FROG‘s “FROG Zero” classroom, which will be on display as part of the “School of the Future, Today” demonstration.  The 1,282 sf structure is the company’s new, zero-energy building that’s intended to raise the bar for green classrooms.  Project FROG, an acronym for Flexible Response to Ongoing Growth, manufactures high performance, modular, green building systems that are rapid to deploy, affordable, and sustainable.  Units can be purchased as individual classrooms or in combination to create campuses.  The one on display at Greenbuild will include some of the following eco-friendly features:

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Yesterday the EPA announced winners of the second annual green building competition known as the Lifecycle Building Challenge, or LBC2.  The challege issued a proposal for designs and ideas that support cost-effective disassembly and that anticipate future use of building materials.  It was open to architects, reuse experts, engineers, designers, planners, contractors, builders, educators, environmental advocates, and students in three main categories: (1) Building, (2) Innovation, and (3) Outstanding Achievement Awards.  The winners have been selected and listed below with a quick image.  There’s seriously some excellent thinking at work here, so congratulations to everyone …

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On Friday Rick Fedrizzi, founding chairman of the U.S. Green Building Council and current President and CEO, sent out a letter to USGBC constituents to address general market concerns relating to the economy and future of green building.  I thought the letter was interesting because he mentions something I’ve been thinking about for over a year now: the allocation of sustainable accountability.  Whether it’s the newest green ad campaign or some politician’s promise, I feel the prevailing mentality is that the government or businesses or someone else, someone other than me, is going to help us figure out the toughest of tough issues.  Anyway, I don’t want to put words in the venerable Mr. Fedrizzi’s mouth, so here’s the letter if you didn’t get the email yesterday:

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This article was written by Phil Clark who blogs about green building and development in the UK at Zerochampion.  Make sure to come back after visiting his site …

Will there ever be one green building standard to rule them all?  It’s an interesting question given the explosion of new ones that are emerging around the globe: in the past month news has reached us over here of a new standard planned by the recently German Sustainable Building Council (this was discovered by Building Sustainability columnist and U.S. expert Jerry Yudelson, a reference of which is in this article) and of a new guide for eco-friendly projects in New Zealand.

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In conjunction with Design Philadelphia and National Design Week 2008, Minima Gallery in Philadelphia is hosting a prefab exhibition titled A Clean Break from October 17-30.  The purpose of this event is to promote "clean development — aesthetically and ecologically."  The exhibit is described as an "exhibition of modern prefab architecture and high-design, low-waste innovations for the urban environment."  Pretty cool.

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