If you live in LA, you’ve probably heard about Evo and the rest of the newly planted green buildings in the South Park neighborhood (official referred to as "South").  Evo is expected to receive LEED Silver certification, joining its neighbors Luma and Elleven — California’s first LEED Gold condos.  At some point, we’ll take the opportunity to talk about both Elleven and Luma as well, but since Newsday published these pictures of the model unit in Evo, we thought it’d be fun to take a look inside. 

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This is the initial rendering for a project called EcoLogic Lofts in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago, a project that developers plan to break ground on in early 2009.  Shooting for LEED Silver certification, the 7-story, 94-unit condo building will source two percent of its power from rooftop wind turbines that look like those made by Aerotecture International (and which are also on Near North Apartments).  Located at Bucktown, Lakeview and Lincoln Park, EcoLogic Lofts will have one and two bedroom units with prices ranging from $239k – $499k. 

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When we first brought news of Blu Homes in July, the company was on the cusp of something interesting.  Since our first article, they've been busy with plans to design and build innovative, sustainable homes.  They've also been crunching the numbers and working on ways to design and build prefab homes that are legitimately affordable.  And with all the talk recently about prefab and affordability, we thought it'd be interesting to revisit a couple development projects of Blu Homes.  They have two homes in the pipeline that, I think, illustrate the case for affordable, modern, and green homes.

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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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Earlier this year, we mentioned the high desert, off-grid itHouse by Taalman Koch Architecture and readers loved it.  Now, Taalman Koch has launched their new itHouse website and announced news of their Three Junipers development project.  Three Junipers is a planned community that will have three, 5-acre properties for pre-sale.  The properties come with a building pad, foundation, and plans for a 1600 sf, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom itHouse.  At Three Junipers, itHouses will be off-grid and powered by both solar PV and solar thermal systems.  Plans include a Poliform chefs kitchen, covered dining patio, outdoor solar heated Plunge pool, suspended indoor Fireorb fireplace, outdoor courtyards with fireplaces, and covered 2 car carports. 

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