You’ve probably noticed that nearly every roof in New York City is flat, but do you know why? The roofs were designed this way to allow for additional floors to be added as the city expanded, and New Yorkers have taken advantage of the flat space in an endless amount of ways. We recently exposed some of NYC’s hidden rooftop homes, and students from the City College in NYC have taken a page from the same book with their design for this Solar Roof Pod. The structure, which they entered in this year’s U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon, turns underutilized roof tops into prime real estate for the self-sufficient solar home.

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Long Island City is about to step a bit more into the future. SuckerPUNCH, a site dedicated to bringing designs that are innovated, quirky, and pack a punch to the forefront of creative world, launched the Long Island Cinema Competition and recently awarded Iranian architecture firm Afsarmanesh Architects with the best in show for their unique design that puts the theater go-er at the center of the movie experience.

 

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As if EV chargers and a thoughtful LEED-certified design weren't enough, the Times Square Element Hotel is doing even more to be a friend to the environment. Element just began a partnership with Holton Farms to offer guests fresh local produce through Holton's CSA program. We already knew that the chic green hotel is eco-friendly without sacrificing amenities or comfort (just ask Inhabitat's Editor-in-Chief Jill Fehrenbacher, who had the pleasure of staying at the new hotel), but with the Holton Farms CSA (community supported agriculture), Element is going above and beyond.

 

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Upper West Side residents have had enough of the pollution and noise caused by delivery trucks, and Councilwoman Gale Brewer says she has a plan to stop it. Brewer, representative of the Upper West Side, proposes making the trucks much cleaner and quieter by requiring them to plug into the city’s grid to power their refrigeration units when making deliveries instead of relying on their noisy diesel generators. Residents couldn’t agree more.

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One thousand new superintendents graduated yesterday from “One Year, One Thousand Green Supers,” another exciting green initiative sponsored by the city. Now in its second year of operation, the program has been a huge success so far. The program is a 40-hour class that trains supers in the latest practices for energy efficient operations. The class also trains workers to tackle wasted energy problems and helps them create a green operating plan along with performing cost-benefit analysis for building owners and managers.

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As of today, all public parks, plazas, beaches, and green spaces in New York City are smoke free. The city’s controversial smoking ban officially takes effect today, meaning that lighting up a cancer stick in the middle of Central Park will now cost you $50. Given cigarettes’ detrimental health effects and toxic toll they take on the environment, we are in full support of the smoking ban. In fact, we think it should have been enacted long ago.

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New York City prides itself on being a center of innovation and progress, and the forefathers of this city, the Dutch, can make the same claim, especially in the field of architecture. From Rem Koolhaas and OMA to MVRDV and Mecanoo, contemporary firms from the Netherlands have consistently pushed the design envelope. It is fitting, then, that a gesture from old to new Amsterdam takes an innovative architectural form. The freshly inaugurated New Amsterdam Plein and Pavilion, a permanent gift from the Kingdom of the Netherlands to New York City via architects UNStudio, provides an outdoor living room for commuters, workers and visitors to Battery Park. The undulating futuristic pavilion is a social component, and rest area, for one of New York City's most visited intermodal transportation hubs.

 

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Public service buildings in NYC are taking a more environmentally friendly turn. City officials gathered last week to announce the opening of a new green intake center for the homeless, the Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing (PATH) building in The Bronx. Designed by Ennead Architects, the PATH project was commissioned for the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), as part of the Design and Construction Excellence program. The building is expect to receive a LEED silver rating.

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It was no sleep 'til BKLYN for the Inhabitat editors at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair this New York Design week. This year, our favorite Brooklyn-grown design show set up shop at ICFF, and we were on the scene to scope out the fresh crop of locally-made furniture. From luxury chicken coops for the urban hen to beetle-eaten reclaimed tabletops, check out our roundup of the best of BKLYN Designs from the show.

 

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We’ve been covering the development of the massive Freshkills Park with great excitement, so you can imagine our delight when we learned that city officials want to fast track the installation of wind turbines in the park! At a meeting last night, the DEP Commissioner Cas Holloway told the Daily News, “Our teams were together just two days ago poring over a map of the landfill to identify what are the spaces [where] we think this is feasible to do.”

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Back in 2009, we learned that the Lower East Side Girls Club would be getting an amazing new green community center to be the first and only Girls Club in NYC. The development finally broke ground last year, and construction is in full swing. Designed by Cutsogeorge Tooman and Allen Architects, the 30,000 square foot facility includes a planetarium, dance theater, and in-house kitchen and bakery. Plus, thanks to a green roof, solar power, and many other sustainable features, the new building is set to receive LEED Gold. It will open in late 2012.

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The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce just announced the 13 winners of this year's Building Brooklyn Awards, and we were thrilled to see that green architecture accounted for almost all of the winners. Chosen by a panel of architects, planners, and city officials, the developments range from parks to apartment buildings to public service facilities. The fact that green buildings or renovations accounted for almost all of the winners proves that sustainable building is important to our city's officials. The official award ceremony will be held Thursday, July 14 2011. Hit the jump for more information about the green winners.

 

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The Prospect Park geese are at the center of attention, yet again. A group of Brooklyn residents, business owners, and wildlife advocates have devised a program to stand guard over the Prospect Park geese at all hours of the day to prevent federal officials from using mass extermination methods as a way of maintaining the geese population. Armed with binoculars, cameras, and video recording equipment, the pro-geese group is determined to prevent another massacre like last summer’s.

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We just got word that the high-end, eco-friendly health food restaurant Rouge Tomate will be launching a green food cart just outside Central Park on June 15th. The cart, to be parked at 65th Street and Fifth Avenue, will be made from recycled materials, equipped with solar panels, and it will use all biodegradeble to-go serving containers and paper products. Rouge Tomate is a highly rated member of the Green Restaurant Association, and the new food cart will reflect that it every way possible.

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Water is one of the most fantastic and essential resource this plant has to offer and New York City is beginning to better understand water’s urban benefits, especially in the fight to clean-up its waterways. Back in 2008, ConEdison, NYC’s electric company, teamed up with Columbia University’s Climate Center at the Earth Institute to construct a green roof atop ConEd’s Long Island City building in Queens in order to study the benefits that green roofs offer. In addition to reinforcing the well-known fact that green roofs help reduce the heat island effect, the research team discovered that the green roof retained 22 percent more water than originally suspected and cost very little to maintain.

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