6 April 2012 | Posted inBlog News & Updates, Cool Stuff, News, Sustainable Design
Tour the Bay, Green Building-Style
San Francisco has long been one of the world’s great tourist attractions, and this year it will have a great new set of offerings: 20+ tours developed for the Greenbuild Conference and Expo, plus many more that the USGBC Northern California Chapter will be able to offer in the future. The Greenbuild Host Committee recently put out a call for tour proposals – the outpouring of responses showed the embarrassment of riches that San Francisco has to offer for green building architourists. The team is still sifting through the proposals, but they put together this wordle to show the trends in and the variety of topics. It was created from the set of six key words that each proposal was required to provide about the tour’s content.
Some of the big words are no-brainers, like energy, LEED and green. I was pleasantly surprised to also see historic and community in the top ten. Some of my favorite unexpected smaller words include food, atrium, cluster, deep, seismic, living, and art. While we may be left in suspense with respect to the actual tours, I am enjoying the ability to ponder our options:
- Net Zero in Outer Space: a new Luxury Redevelopment
- Radiant Students on the Roof
- A Scenic Redevelopment of Modern Waste
- Seismic Seniors Generate Innovative Recycling
- On-Site Adaptive Nature: from Biotech to the Bay
- Performance Art Partnership in the Park
Before I get my hand slapped by the Tours Sub-Committee, I will add the disclaimer that these tours are a figment of my imagination and most likely bear no resemblance to the actual proposals. Check back later this year for announcements about the real ones, or visit us in San Francisco this November.
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Developers, architects and builders are realizing that Net-Zero Energy Building (NZEB) is central to the future of our industry. Currently, there isn’t a definition. Furthermore, the measuring science doesn’t exist. The National Institute of Standards and Testing has been conducting conferences to flush out a system. One idea is “Whole Building Metrics”. Zero Energy Concept Building (ZECB) goes beyond NZEB because this approach is holistic. ZECB includes technology to purify waste water and improve indoor air quality by harnessing the power of Mother Nature to replenish these resources. A draft of a definition for Zero Energy Concept Building (ZECB) is on a website developed for this purpose. Links are provided to support conclusions backed up by 3 years research. There are two pages on the site; the HOME page illustrates an example of a ZECB and the second page is a draft of a definition for ZECB. Here’s the link https://sites.google.com/site/zeroenergyconceptbuilding/home
Lots of good points here, though there are both several definitions and several measuring tools available – no doubt to be discussed at Greenbuild this year. We may need to wait a few years, though, for a net zero redevelopment in outer space.
Official Greenbuild tours have now been announced. They’re great – everything from vinyards and redwood forests to high tech Silicon Valley hot spots.