"We believe that healthy buildings are the foundation for strong and vibrant neighborhoods. Our work has been called adaptive reuse, mill renewal, restoration--we call it building history for a sustainable future."
--Robert Ansin, CEO of Mass Innovation and developer of Monarch on the Merrimack
Well, you can call it whatever you want but Monarch on the Merrimack is the real deal! Mass Innovation took a run down mill and converted it into 600 eco-luxury lofts. Over a 1/3 of a mile long, the mill, located on the riverfront in Lawrence, MA, is now New England's largest eco-luxury development. Once regarded as an industrial city outside of Boston, Lawrence is turning green, spearheaded by the Monarch development.
Continue reading "Monarch Lofts Bring Eco-Luxury To New England" »
Well, St. Louis is bringing it...bringing urban, green living to downtown. The SkyHouse (at 1428 Washington Avenue, St. Louis) represents the first residential building to go up in downtown St. Louis in over 30 years. Its is a 22-story glass structure that will be LEED-certified. There will be 12,000 square feet of commercial space on the first floor, 3 levels of parking, 3 levels of penthouses, and 166 condos on floors 5-18. One cool thing about the SkyHouse is that floor 19 will be exclusively for the residents. It will have a green space, dog run, media room, conference room, workout facility, sun deck with lounge chairs surrounded by a green roof and other places to just hang out. The building will also be built with energy efficient, high speed elevators. 
I have done quite a few posts on wind turbines but this is the first one on water turbines. I was watching a TV program called "Big Ideas Small Planet" and one of their interviews was with Trey Taylor. His company in New York, Verdant Power, has developed a water turbine and has actually installed it in the East River, New York City, along the eastern shore of Roosevelt Island! New York has some amazing water currents and its awesome to see a company take advantage of that for renewable resource purposes. Its called the RITE project and Verdant is using a tidal-powered Kinetic Hydropower System (KHPS), which they developed and patented. The project is slated to eventually run rows and rows of water turbines in the East River generating enough renewable energy to supply power to 8,000 New York homes. 
Its time we give props to our northern neighbors. The first LEED Platinum building was designed by Larry McFarland Architects. This building is cool because it is uses building positioning to take advantage of solar and geothermal heating. Ocean water is pumped through the building and heat is extracted to warm the building. The building has solar panels on the roof...I have posted a silhouette of the building and you can see how the building's position was strategically developed to take advantage of as much sunlight as possible. The building uses 1/4 the energy of a "conventional" building, resulting in a 33.3 ton reduction in CO2 emissions. Bike racks, drought resistant plants, dual flush toilets, CFL's, photosensors and occupancy sensors to control lighting and energy usage, exterior sunshades used for cooling, radiant heating, 30,000L underground water recycle tank for rainwater and greywater...all of this has come together to make this Canada's first LEED Platinum.
In order to curtail house-size growth in Boulder County, residents may be facing huge restrictions on the size of home the county will allow them to build. Based on 2006 building permits, the average size of new homes is around 6,290 sq/ft. 
Happy 4th of July and God bless our troops! Hope everyone has a relaxing day! Came across some cool pictures of a Hive Modular home this morning. It's their X-Line model and they had firm Rosenlof Lucas do the landscape architecture. Hive uses a modular construction system, which reduces the overall build time of a structure, improves quality control and reduces actual construction time. When you look at one of their X-Line models, everything has a built-in, maintenance-free/worry-free type of feel. Due to location constraints, pricing on a structure can differ...$140 per sq/ft in the Midwest versus $200 per sq/ft west of the Rockies for a complete turn-key modular home sans design, delivery and setting costs. $200 per sq/ft still isn't that bad considering the quality that you are receiving. Hive Modular is one of the best prefab, modular companies out there...especially for the price. 
Studies have shown that people are happier and more productive when they are exposed to natural sunlight during the course of their workday as opposed to artificial light. In 1999, the California Board of Energy Efficiency commissioned a study and found that increased sales, increased productivity, increased wellness and reduced energy costs resulted from companies using natural solor lighting instead of artifical light. Enter in Sunlight Direct. 