Read the rest of HOW TO: Choose a Living Christmas Tree for a Green Holiday Season

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Post tags: carbon sequestration, Christmas decorations, friends of the urban forest, green christmas, green holidays, living christmas tree, living christmas tree rental, Los Angeles, potted Christmas tree, san diego, San Francisco, Trees

While rapper Ice Cube is certainly known for his lyrical stylings, what you may not know is that he studied architectural drafting before he got big. He also has a deep appreciation for design – and he shows off his love in a new ad about art in LA for the Pacific Standard Time. Here, Ice Cube rhapsodizes and pays tribute to midcentury design icons Charles and Ray Eames. After listing off some of his favorite buildings in LA, Ice Cube tours the Eames house and tells us why loves it so much – the Eames were resourceful, the house was built in two days, has prefabricated walls, and creates connections with nature. “This was going green 1949-style, bitch. Believe that.” The quotes are amazing – each sentence is worthy of repetition and it’s sure to brighten your day – it certainly brightened ours.

+ Pacific Standard Time

Thanks for the tip Caitlyn Ko!

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", Charles and Ray Eames, Eames, eco design, green architecture, green design, ice cube, la, Los Angeles, pacific standard time, prefab design, rap, sustainable design, tribute to charles and ray eames, Video

Read the rest of Opportunity Green Sustainable Business Conference: Final Wrap

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Post tags: green conference, Green Design Events, green events, inhabitat, Inhabitat LA, Inhabitat Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Opportunity Green, social design, Sustainable Conference, sustainable design events, Sustainable Events

This technicolored school, aptly named the Rainbow School, has done more than brighten up the LA neighborhood it calls home – it’s actually making lives there better. DLR Group hosted several outreach meetings with members of a downtrodden community in order to gather their input on how to transform the South Region Elementary School Number 2 (SRES 2) into an invigorating space for a colorful student body. The outcome of these discussions is an extraordinary, brightly-hued school that is not only energy and resource efficient, but inspires oodles of creativity in the children it serves.

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Post tags: "energy efficiency", California, CHPS, Collaborative for High Performance Schools, color, creativity, Daylighting, DLR, DLR Group, LA Unified School District, Los Angeles, resource efficiency, South Region Elementary School Number 2, The Rainbow School

Read the rest of SCI-Arc’s Billowing Graduation Pavilion Was Made With Giant Knitting Needles

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Post tags: Dwayne Oyler, eco design, green design, Jenny Wu, Los Angeles, Oyler Wu Collaborative, pavilion, Sci-Arc, sustainable design

Read the rest of 25,000 Chopsticks Create Stunning Wooden Clouds Inside LA’s Tsujita Restaurant

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Post tags: Art, cloud interiors, Decorative Objects, green interiors, Japanese design, Los Angeles, noodle bar, recycled chopsticks, Recycled Materials, tsujita restaurant

Read the rest of Green Oak Writer’s Studio Is the Perfect Small Space For Meditation & Inspiration

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Post tags: bertram architects, compact home, eco design, green architecture, Green Building, green design, green oak writers studio, home office, ipe wood, Los Angeles, Small home, small space living, studio, Sustainable Building, sustainable design, writer's studio

Albeit amazing to look at, Scott Campbell‘s series of skulls carved from stacks of one dollar bills are not the greenest artworks we’ve covered. Using lasers, the artist carves into real, uncut United States minted dollars to create tattoo art’s most ubiquitous image – the skull. Spotted over at Notcot, these delicate three-dimensional pieces subvert popular notions of nobility with tattoo parlor designs that use copper, real currency, graphite, ink and neon.

Read the rest of Scott Campbell Carves Skull Out Of $11,000 of US Currency

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Post tags: Art, green, greenback, is this green, Los Angeles, money, oh wow gallery, SCott Campbell, skull, tattoo art

Read the rest of Innovative and Flexible Prefab Prototype Schools For Los Angeles School District

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", Architecture, eco school, gonzalez goodale, green architecture, Green Building, green design, green school, la, Los Angeles, los angeles unified school district, Prefab, prefab construction, prefab school, sustaianble building, sustainable design

Fans of human powered bi-peds in the City of Angels rejoice! The Los Angeles City Council just approved a plan calling for 1,680 miles of interconnected bikeways. The new undertaking will call for more than 200 miles of new bicycle routes added every five years, making it easier – and more importantly, safer – to peddle two wheels around a city that is infamously known for its automobile grid lock.

Read the rest of Los Angeles City Council Unanimously Approves Plan for 1,680 Miles of Bikeways

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Post tags: bike path, inhabitat, Inhabitat LA, Inhabitat Los Angeles, LA City Bike, LA City Bike Plan, LA Transportation, Los Angeles, Los Angeles City Bike, Los Angeles Transportation, sustainable transportation

Please join the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), The Everychild Foundation, and the World Champion Los Angeles Lakers as we cut the ribbon on our newly expanded and renovated home at Lafayette Park today! This magnificent, ecologically sustainable community center is the City of Los Angeles’ first LEED certified building. Designed by award-winning firm Kanner Architects, it will provide thousands of neighborhood families with a “state of the art” facility for arts and educational programming, athletics and recreational opportunities, and community events.

Time: 2:30pm Ceremony, Partnership Reception to Follow

Place: 625 South Lafayette Park Place, Los Angeles, CA 90057

RSVP: Elizabeth Curtis, ecurtis@heartofla.org or call 213.389.1148 x241

Parking: Instructions to be provided upon RSVP

Media Inquiries: Lauren McGee, lauren.mcgee@pmkbnc.com or call 310.854.4863

READ MORE >

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Post tags: "leed", Green Building, green design, Green LA, kanner architects, lafayette park, Los Angeles, los angeles first leed building, los angeles green

There are less than two weeks left to enter Metropolis’ Next Generation Design Competition, a design challenge asking you to give the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) building in downtown L.A. a zero-footprint makeover. Open for interpretation with a number of hungry ears and ready to hear your ideas, the GSA wants you to not only be creative, but to think about how the building’s current energy usage could be improved through renewable energy, smart technologies, and even public awareness. The goal of the competition is to provide an eco-efficient precedent for its more than 9,600 properties across the nation. For more details on the competition, and the $10,000 prize, check out the GSA’s site. But don’t delay - entries are due by January 31st!

+ Metropolis Next Generation Design Competition

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Post tags: Design Competition, Green Building, Los Angeles, Metropolis Magazine, renewable energy, smart technology, Sustainable Building, zero environmental footprint

Read the rest of LA’s Broad Museum Unveils Porous, Light-Filled Gallery

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", art museum, broad art foundation, broad museum, concrete shade screen, Daylighting, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, eco design, Green Building, green design, la, Los Angeles, Museum, porous exterior, shade screen, sun screen, Sustainable Building, sustainable design

Read the rest of Tesla’s Red Hot and Green Los Angeles Showroom

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", car dealership, ccs architecture, eco design, electric vehicle, green architecture, Green Building, green design, green transportation, la, Los Angeles, sustainable design, tesla, Tesla Motors, tesla showroom

Read the rest of LA Warehouse Office is a Shipping Container City

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", clive Wilkinson architects, eco design, eco office, green architecture, Green Building, green design, Los Angeles, pallotta teamworks, Recycled Materials, shipping container, shipping container architecture, shipping container office, Sustainable Building

Absorbent parking lot pavement, low-water plumbing fixtures, and heat-reducing roofing are just a few of the sustainable features in the first ever eco-friendly building in the Los Angeles Public Library system. Designed by Carde Ten Architects, the LEED silver Sorensen Library is expected to use 25 percent less energy and 50 percent less water than a conventionally-designed library.

Read the rest of Los Angeles County Opens Its First Green Library!

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Post tags: green architecture, Green Building, leed silver, Los Angeles, Recycled Materials, sustainable design

PHAT Energy recently unveiled the PHATport 350, an outdoor solar structure that can serve as everything from a cozy, sun-sheltering patio to an energy-generating car port (imagine plugging your EV into one of these!). The self-contained solar shade will be on display at this year’s Solar Power International in Los Angeles (which runs today and tomorrow!), and the company has rolled out a quirky ad campaign that features a series of solar power fables sure to Flip Your Switch. Check out their hilarious videos after the jump!

Read the rest of PHATport Solar Awning Provides Outdoor Shade and Solar Power

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Post tags: flip your switch, Los Angeles, PHAT Energy, PHATport, solar awning, solar power car ports, Solar Power International in Los Angeles, solar power patios, solar powered structures, solar structures

Project UMBRELLA just took the $5,000 first place award in The Architect’s Newspaper and SCI‐Arc’s recent Los Angeles Cleantech Corridor and Green District Competition, which asked entrants to envision downtown LA as an incubator for green technology and jobs. Designed by Constantin Boincean, Ralph Bertram and Aleksandra Danielak, UMBRELLA features a series of umbrella-like solar evaporators that collect and clean city sewage so that it can eventually be released into the streets, generating a “transformation into a network of lush, cultivated landscapes.”

Read the rest of Oasis-Sprouting Solar Umbrellas for Los Angeles

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", architect's newspaper, cleantech corridor, Green Building, green design, Los Angeles, Sci-Arc, sustainable design, umbrella

Read the rest of Samitaur Tower Broadcasts Community Art in Culver City

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Post tags: art tower, cultural tower, culver city, eric owen moss architects, Los Angeles, samitaur tower, Urban design, urban infill

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", broad contemporary art museum, Daylighting, eco design, green architecture, Green Building, green design, lacma, Los Angeles, los angeles county museum of art, renzo piano, renzo piano building workshop, resnick pavilion, Sustainable Building