GREENheart Buildings Inc.

29/03/2023

Almost ready to get a building permit for this alley-accessible coach house project in Oak Park, Illinois. Using prefabricated panel wall and roof systems, it will go together very quickly and have outstanding energy performance. It also has to visually fit into the architectural district.

19/12/2022

Another practical example of timber structure.

Timber provides almost all the building fabric of Green Solution House 2.0, a hotel on the Danish island of Bornholm completed by architecture studio 3XN.

23/06/2022

Oga. Catchy name.

But don’t just p*e directly in your garden. Pathogens and it’s too strong. Store it as directed to sterilize, dilute it and *then* apply. There’s a metering system available to add a liquid fertilizer to a drip irrigation installation that would work great for this...

These days, p*eing on your food plants may be considered a gross and wacky gardening hack, despite the practice having been proven beneficial for thousands of years.

10/05/2022

Tensile design is an important option both in terms of reduced materials use and, if well-designed, ease of replacement and recycling of the shell materials.

12/04/2022

We installed one of these in our recent project in Michigan. Excellent technology!

My sister is in the process of building a house in Ohio, and I’ve been having conversations with her about how to make it green. She and my brother-in-law both consider me to be eco-crazed (arguably rightly so given the climactic and political stakes) and so tend to raise eyebrows when I make one ...

19/03/2022

This is my main issue with what I’ve seen being touted as “net zero” or “passive heating and cooling” or “vegetative” buildings. They are notionally able to perform well, but in practice, their occupants a) don’t know how to use it - there may have been training during “commissioning” but staff turnover means few or no people know how to manage the systems, b) the occupants don’t care, because facilities management is just another thing to think about and they already have too much work, c) the systems are poorly designed and occupants have to come up with workarounds, or disable automate systems that conflict with use, or d) the architects are essentially beta testing a new approach that doesn’t work well or breaks down over time and never gets repaired.

There’s so much new “sustainable” architecture being built and showcased that is simply meant to appear impressive, but actually fails to take the occupants into account in any deep way.

Research shows people don’t understand how to use high-performance buildings. Does architecture need a UX breakthrough?

16/03/2022

Timber and bamboo in construction. Dispelling some myths.

The Potential of Bamboo and Mass Timber for the Construction Industry: A Conversation With Pablo Van Der Lugt, architect, author and speaker.

27/10/2021

This is a great project on a number of levels, but the two that jump out are: 1) is it being built on a degraded site, not on a pristine, natural site; and 2) it is using mass timber instead of large volumes of concrete and steel.

Architecture studios Jakob+MacFarlane and T.ark have designed a low-carbon cross-laminated timber building called Living Landscape that will transform a landfill site in Reykjavík.

19/10/2021

Rain, rain, got in the way last week, so a lot of this work was done under a tarp. Now with our first truly sunny days in a while it’s easier to photograph. The second floor framing went up last week as well as the roof rafter structure. Yesterday the lookouts, roof sheeting and continuous ice and water shield went up to make things waterproof. Today was interior demolition of the old bathroom and shower, and the start of the ZIP system wall sheathing (waterproof, air tight and no need for house wrap).

15/10/2021

Another important principle: choose the site that is in the most need of repair and restoration, not the site that is already beautiful. Preserve that one. Don't build there. Fix the errors of the past instead.

For years, Julie Bargmann designed toxic and degraded sites that no other landscape architect would touch. Now she’s being honored with a prestigious new award.

15/10/2021

Going mainstream. This will reduce the carbon impact of construction enormously.

The New York City Council has approved the use of mass timber for the construction of buildings of up to 85 feet tall in the city.

14/10/2021

Pretty good progress, but struggling a bit with intermittent rain. Still, expecting to sheet the new roof tomorrow and install ceiling joists.

Then some demolition to open up where the addition will connect with the existing house.