green buildings Archives - Green Businesses

Google’s Amazing New Campus Revealed. Video…

Google reveals its greatest search results. Google’s search was global. Massive. Yet personal. Google was scouring the world, looking for a special architect for their own new campus. According to Google Vice President of Real Estate, Dave Radcliffe, their Search Results culminated in two “Best in Class” architects, Bjarke Ingels from Denmark and Thomas Heatherwick from the UK. Radcliffe assembled a veritable trifecta of function, form and beauty by teaming the ambitious, community-focused architect, Ingels and Heatherwick, renowned for his attention to human scale and beauty. The company that Revolutionized online search has now embarked on a paradigm-shifting mission to transform the workplace environment. They started with a question. “What is the best possible environment we can make to invent, engineer and make ideas happen?” Google's presence in Mountain View, California is so strong that the team felt the need to focus on developing a community, not a fortress. …

What’s Good for the Environment can be Great for Business

I enjoy learning about how I can help the environment and staying up to date on which green businesses are playing a role in this revolution. My understanding of why everyone needs to contribute to this solution continues to branch out in many new directions as well. From reducing to reusing to recycling, this century's eco-friendly innovators have helped pave the way for a growing awareness about environmental concerns that is sweeping the globe. Here are some examples of how green businesses are helping create a cleaner and safer environment. Plastic Reduction

The most basic way people can start helping clean up the environment is bringing their own bags to the grocery store. Instead of choosing between paper and plastic bags, both of which create a strain on the environment, bringing your own cloth bag is reusable, reducing the need to cut down trees and drill for oil, which is where plastic products come from. Several U.S. cities such as San…

The Most High-Tech Green Buildings

Buildings that communicate and change shape to keep their occupants comfortable and safe. By Jonathan Fahey, Forbes In England there is a building made with insulation that can be inflated or deflated to adjust to outside temperatures. In Germany there is a house designed to be easily disassembled and recycled. The New York Times Co. building is draped in shades that automatically adjust to the movement of the sun. In Milwaukee a museum changes its very shape to shade itself. The point of a building is to keep its inhabitants comfortable: Humans want to be warm (but not too warm) and dry. The problem comes in providing heating or cooling, and replacing the light lost when the sun is shut out. The solutions are becoming ever more creative. "Heat and light are the things people are most concerned about, and they are the things that take energy," says Brendon Levitt, an architect with the San Francisco Bay Area firm Loisos + Ubbelohde, which specializes in so-called hi…