The Passivhaus has its roots in the USA in the seventies, when Amory Lovins proposed super-insulated houses that could be warmed by a hair dryer. They caught on in Germany, where Passivhaus became a standard that is being followed all over Europe. Now that building standard is coming to America.

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", Green Building, green design, passive house, passive solar building, passivhaus, passivhaus institute, sustainable design

There’s nothing new about cargo bikes; they were once very common delivery vehicles, and they make a lot of sense for carting heavy loads. As Treehugger’s outdoor correspondent Warren McLaren has noted, “Bicycles are, as we keep telling our readers ad nausem, the most efficient means of transport humankind has ever devised. Mostly people take that to mean in the transportation of people. But what might have gone unnoticed by many was that bikes are not only brilliant for commuting, recreation or racing, they are also excellent at hauling cargo. From surfboards to sunflowers, from wedding cakes to wardrobes. Kids to compost.”

He put together a great four part series:

Bicycle Cargo Chapter 1: Racks And Bags >

Bicycle Cargo Chapter 2: Bike Trailers >

Bicycle Cargo Chapter 3: Extended Frame Bikes >

Bicycle Cargo Chapter 4: Cargo Bike Business (A – L) >

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Post tags: alternative transportation, bicycling, cargo bikes, cargo carrying bikes, green design, sustainable design, sustainable transportation

Paul Rudolph was one of the dominant architects in the sixties and seventies, who understood how to build with the climate instead of fighting it. Yet so many of his buildings are now gone or threatened. Why are the works of this master of modern architecture being sent to the scrapyard in such staggering numbers?

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", demolition, Green Building, green design, green renovation, modern architecture, Paul Rudolph, sustainable design

There are a lot of things wrong with the way we build our cities, and in these hard times, there is a lot wrong in the way we are rebuilding them, or unbuilding them as the case may be. These activists were out the other night trying to stop the demolition of 41 historic buildings in Brantford, Ontario, that are coming down because some people think that this is better than trying to fix them. But fixing them is greener, and just one of many things we could do to make our cities and buildings better, more efficient and healthier.

Read the rest of Big Steps To Make Our Cities and Buildings Better

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", building materials, energy efficient buildings, Green Building, green construction, green design, green renovation, sustainable design

Olympic medals are not the only thing that come out of Vancouver, Canada; it is also a hotbed of hydroponic creativity. TreeHugger contributor Sami Grover has suggested that equipment developed for a “certain herbalist demographic” is very effective at growing food without soil, often indoors under artificial light. Much of that technology is now being transferred to more conventional produce.

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Post tags: "sustainable agriculture", green design, green gardening, growing food indoors, hydroponic growing, hyrdoponics, sustainable design, treehugger

What is a house, anyways? For the designers of the Veasyble wearable shelter, isolation and intimacy are important. They reflect on “the change in our relationship with the domestic environment, due to the effects of our increasing mobility, and how this has affected our concept of intimacy, creating new demands.” Read on for more innovative concepts that blend the boundaries between clothing and architecture.

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Post tags: architectural clothing, conceptual clothing, green architecture, green design, sustainable design, treehugger, wearable architecture

There have been many design events circling around the big Interior Design Show in Toronto for years, but this is the first time they have all been rolled together into one big festival. The normally snowy January was springlike, without a flake to be seen. This TreeHugger was going to cover it from start to finish, but was completely outclassed by flying squads from Mocoloco and Designboom, so this post will round up the best of all the coverage from the show.

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Post tags: Design Fair, furnishings, green design, green interiors, Products, sustainable design, toronto international design festival, treehugger

Inhabitat recently wrote about Emergency Shelters and Disaster Relief For The People of Haiti and how Shipping Containers Could Provide Disaster Relief For Haiti, both which reflect the standard thinking among architects and designers for decades: “we have great ideas, and if you just let us get involved we could make a huge difference.” And why not – we can design our way out of any problem. Cameron and Kate of Architecture for Humanity, who are young enough that they shouldn’t know better, take a completely different approach – they think that the last thing we should be doing is dropping in shipping containers and hi-tech architectural solutions.

Read the rest of Architecture For Humanity and A Different Approach to Haiti

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Post tags: Architecture for Humanity, best of treehugger, design for disaster, green architecture, green design, humanitarian design, social design, sustainable design

Go into any bookstore or search on words “Stock House Plans” and you will find thousands of them, mostly junk. Perhaps 50% of are stolen and just about all of them get twisted and stretched before they actually get built. But for decades, a few architects have seen them as a way to democratize design, to make good designs available at a lower price to a larger audience. Now, when clients have less money and architects are reliving that joke of a decade ago (What do you say to an architect with a job? “I’ll have fries with that.”), perhaps it’s time for talented architects to take the stock plan business seriously.

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Post tags: green architecture, Green Building, house design, stock plans, sustainable design, treehugger

The blogs are full of “best of the year” lists, but architecture moves more slowly – it takes a long time for ideas to get built, technologies to evolve and for knowledge to spread. Instead, we look at the themes and memes of the past decade of architecture in TreeHugger. From the rise of modern prefab to the growth of green roofs, read on for the most notable trends in sustainable building.

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Post tags: 2010 architecture recap, architecture of the decade, architecture trends, Green Building, green design, prefab architecture, shipping container archtiecture, Sustainable Building, sustainable design, themes and memes in architecture

TreeHugger’s man in CopenHagen, Matthew McDermott, has to deal with more than just climate change; the place is evidently crawling with people pushing all kinds of agendas and issues, sort of a giant Causapalooza. Avaaz was at least on message; the clean room suit-clad aliens with green skin wandered all over asking anyone and everyone if they were “climate leaders” and where real climate leaders could be found. Read on for a roundup of other unusual sights to be seen at the COP15 climate conference.

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Post tags: cop15, copenhagen climate conference, global warming, green design, matthew McDermott, protests, sustainable design, united nations climate conference

One of the sad things about the recent demise of the construction boom in Dubai is that we will no longer have so many wonderful architectural renderings to show. Some come from talented starchitects jumping through architectural hoops; others like the amazing confection that was Falcon City, feature the Eiffel Tower, pyramids and hanging gardens of Babylon. Sigh, so many glories that will never be built.

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Post tags: "sustainable skyscraper", dubious dubai, green architecture, Green Building, green design, sustainable design

Inhabitat has done a lot of coverage of living walls, particularly those of French botanist Patrick Blanc. They are complicated things, requiring pumps, hydroponics and a lot of care. If they don’t get it right they can fail, like the Paradise Park Childrens Centre in London did.

Edouard François does a different kind of green wall, known as green façades. In these much simpler structures, no pumps and technology are needed, as the vegetation is planted in the ground and the walls become the growing medium. It takes time; Inhabitat has pictures of François’s Eden Bio project, which will take about seven years to grow out and look like the renderings. But some of his other projects are completely grown.

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Just last week Treehugger joined thousands of designers, builders and architects in Arizona to check out all the latest advances in sustainable building at Greenbuild 2009. By the time we got to Phoenix, we were 28,000 strong, all standing up and cheering for Al Gore’s speech, a new and different one directed at the Greenbuild audience. A conference like this shouldn’t be necessary; every building should be green. But there were stirring speeches, great educational sessions and hundreds of new green products to see.

Read the rest of TreeHugger Reports From Greenbuild 2009

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Post tags: Arizona, building materials, Green BUilding conference, greenbuild 2009, phoenix, sustainable design, treehugger

I know, it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet, but this year Treehugger is starting early and are taking it slow. Let’s face it: with all that rushing, consuming, and bargain-hunting, the holidays can be darn stressful. So this year, following the best of the methodology pioneered by the revolutionary Slow Food Movement, Treehugger is taking them back. We’re putting the brakes on stress and over consumption and making a return to those idyllic holidays of old with our Slow Gift Guide, consisting of 12 categories and over 100 gifts. Check them all out after the break.

Treehugger 2009 Gift Guide: Have a Slow Holiday >

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Post tags: green design, green gift guide, holidays, presents, Shopping, sustainable design, treehugger slow gift guide

Mark Twain had a garden shed; he called it “the loveliest study you ever saw…octagonal with a peaked roof, each face filled with a spacious window…perched in complete isolation on the top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills. It is a cozy nest and just room in it for a sofa, table, and three or four chairs, and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lighting flashes behind the hills beyond and the rain beats upon the roof over my head—imagine the luxury of it.”

But in recent times, the humble garden shed has become an outlet for designers to experiment in small spaces that often slide under the radar of zoning bylaws, providing extra room for study, relaxation or just getting away from everyone else.

Read the rest of Garden Sheds Are an Explosion of Architectural Experimentation

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Post tags: Architecture, building, garden sheds, green design, green roof, Prefab, prefab architecture, sustainable design

Over at TreeHugger we are saps for furniture that can slide under your door; flatpack isn’t just made by IKEA. Designers like Eric Ku are doing it with humor, inventing a flatpack alphabet – his Flatpack Chair is pretty self-explanatory. In Japan, Keiji Ashizawa channels Marcel Breuer with a steel flatpack cantilever chair that slides under the door. Read on for more examples of cutting-edge flatpack furniture.

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Post tags: "flat pack", efficient design, flatpack furniture, furnishings, green design, green Interiors, sustainable design

The kitchen of the future was going to be so high-tech. Frigidaire’s Dream Kitchen of Tomorrow had it all; an IBM punch card recipe file, automatic dispensing and online TV ordering. And that’s not all – read on as we take a look at several extraordinary retro-futuristic kitchens to see how they’ve withstood the test of time.

Read the rest of The Kitchen of the Future Today

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Post tags: Green Building, green design, interior design, kitchen of the future, Products, sustainable design

Buildings consume 76% of electricity generated; they create 48% of our greenhouse gases; a quarter of our waste in landfills comes from construction. Yet we continue to tear down perfectly good ones and replace them with new ones that don’t perform as well and don’t last as long. If we understood what old buildings are saying to us, we would be less eager to rip them down, and perhaps might even emulate them in our new buildings. Read on for examples.

Read the rest of Lessons We Can Learn From Old Buildings And Apply to New Ones

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Post tags: "energy efficiency", "sustainable architecture", Daylighting, efficient architecture, Green Building, Green renovation, natural light, natural ventilation

Green roofs are wonderful things; like a thick blanket, they keep roofs cool in summer and warm in winter. They have been around for centuries in Scandinavia and Iceland, where they moderate the cold winters and sometimes very hot summers. They reduce the “heat island” effect, where the air above and around the old black roofs gets hotter, making them hot properties in cities. Some, like Toronto have made them mandatory; other cities like Chicago give financial assistance to promote them. The provide habitat for birds and insects, even goats.

Read the rest of Green Roofs Are Changing the Way Architects Design Buildings

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Post tags: agriculture, Architecture, botany, Green Building, green design, green roof, sustainable design, Urban design