Building Archives - Green Businesses

TreeHouse Aims to Make Homes Thoughtful, Sustainable and Healthy

Austin-based TreeHouse, a home improvement retailer focused on eco-friendly construction materials, has selected Dallas as its first stop outside its hip hometown. Tuesday, it will announce plans to open a store in early 2017 in a new shopping center in North Dallas. TreeHouse CEO and co-founder Jason Ballard believes he can sell the world on eco-friendly homes in the same way that Tesla is broadening the customer base for electric cars. As the first retailer that Tesla has authorized to sell the Powerwall, its battery for the house, TreeHouse is already a powerhouse of sustainable good. They are also one of the top-selling retailers of Nest smart-home products, Ballard said. “We resist being a niche company,” Ballard said. “We’re not just for customers with dreadlocks and card-carrying members of environmental groups. We’re going to prove with the Dallas store that we’re not a store for special people, we’re a store for everyone.” Single-store sales have increased 3…

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. …

20 Universities That Encourage Green Living

1) Nanyang Technical University – School of Art, Design and Media - The architectural structure of this building maximizes interior daylight, makes smart use of lack of space and land in the local area, minimizes materials, and uses lower water and electricity uses. 2) Yale University – Kroon Hall - Kroon Hall at Yale University is made from 80% certified timber, 16% recycled content. Also, 34% of the purchased materials came from regional sources. As a result, there is an 81% reduction in annual potable water use, which saves an average 500k gallons of city water a year. They are also seeing a 61% reduction in energy use compared to a similar building and program. It features rooftop photovoltaic panel providing 25% of the building’s electricity. Half of the red oak paneling came from a forest in northern Connecticut that’s managed by the school itself. 3) Carnegie Mellon University – Gates and Hillman…

20-Story Vienna Office Building Is Certified as First Passive High Rise

Beth Buczynski for Earthtechling In order for a structure to be considered “passive“, it’s got to be buttoned up tight. Leaky windows or insufficient insulation means wasted energy, something that’s unacceptable in a passive house design. Normally, this would prevent glass-covered skyscrapers from even being considered (windows shed a lot of energy in both directions) but a new high-rise in Vienna has bucked the trend. The RHW.2 building–home to the Austrian Raiffeisen-Holding Group–features a glass facade that’s nearly 300 feet high. Inside, 900 employees enjoy superior air quality while the building’s owners enjoy tiny energy bills. As such, the building was recently certified as the first Passive House high rise in the city–a feat that wasn’t all that surprising to those affiliated with the Passive House Institute. Image via MVAHA So how does such an edifice achieve the energy-efficiency required for Passive House status? With determination and very carefully…

EPA’s 2013 Battle Of The Buildings Draws Over 3,000 Entries

Is your commercial building on an energy-efficient diet? If you've cut back the consumption, you may just be qualified for a one-of-a-kind contest sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency. Here's the scoop from Beth Buczynski for Earthtechling. In a world of reality show competitions, it’s no surprise that the EPA has chosen to turn energy efficiency into a survival of the fittest contest. The 2013 “Battle of the Buildings” will pit commercial buildings against each other to save energy and fight climate change. All buildings and tenants that submit complete energy use data for calendar year 2013 (January 1, 2013 – December 31, 2013) using EPA’s custom report are invited to compete. This year, around 3,200 buildings qualified by monitoring and reporting monthly energy consumption using EPA’s online energy tracking tool, Portfolio Manager. Image via EPA In order to do well in the competition, property owners must get creative. Technologies that cut energy waste…

Making Affordable Multifamily Housing Greener A Good Thing

Center for American Progress President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan, announced at Georgetown University in June, outlined an ambitious agenda to address the increasing dangers of climate change. Although the proposed regulatory standards on existing and new power plants have taken center stage in public discussion, the president’s agenda also included several noteworthy proposals to support the important aim of increasing access to energy efficiency and clean energy technologies in affordable multifamily housing. To reduce the deadly threat of climate disruption, it is essential to rein in polluting energy use, especially the wasteful conventional consumption of electricity in buildings. Currently, large multifamily residential buildings represent a huge source of energy inefficiency, but they also hold the promise of being smart and cost-effective places to make deep savings. Low-income affordable housing in particular can help open this market, improving financial…