Build It Forward
Upcoming Speaking Announcement
Green Home NYC is featuring Gennaro Brooks-Church as a guest speaker. He will be speaking on two key concepts he coined: Build It Forward and the Zero Brownstone. More info below on the event next week.
August forum: Working with contractors (AIA credit)August’s forum will discuss working with contractors in both residential and commercial projects. Along [...]
Hybrid House Book
Broadly speaking there are two kinds of green building books: one looks to the latest scientific innovations for solutions and the other looks to revive ancient techniques. Lets call them the futurists and the traditionalists.
In the futurists camp you have high tech, in the traditionalists you have low tech.
Futurists design houses with complex energy calculations. [...]
Eco Brooklyn Green Building Terms
On the Eco Brooklyn job sites we have certain green building concepts that we use. They are mostly coined by me to help the crew and clients understand what Eco Brooklyn’s core goals are. They are easy rallying points to help us all stay on track.
These terms can be searched on this site for more [...]
Green From The Ground Up – Book
The book Green from the Ground Up, Sustainable, Healthy, and Energy-Efficient Home Construction, offers everything its title promises, and yet that very same title shows how wrong the authors are. It is 330 pages full of intelligent “green” building techniques covering everything from efficient insulation techniques to natural ventilation.
The book is a fantastic overview of pretty [...]
Brooklyn Wood Floor Revival
We did two jobs over the past week on wood floors. They started out really ugly. And they ended up amazing. We finished them with 100% pure tung oil so they are really natural.
The first job was to remove some paint that a previous owner, in their infinite and unfathomable intelligence, had painted over the [...]
Eco Brooklyn is Featured in NY Times Blog
Here is an article on Eco Brooklyn in today’s NY Times Blog.
http://fort-greene.thelocal.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/sustainable-brownstone-101/
The general gist is that green building can be affordable. They say Eco Brooklyn “practices guerrilla green-building techniques” to achieve this, which involves a lot of dumpster diving and salvage.
We try to set up more formal ways of collecting material but it is not easy. I [...]
Zero Brownstone
The term Zero Brownstone is an idea I came up with during our experimentation of making the greenest brownstone renovation possible.
The Zero Brownstone is based on two concepts during the deconstruction and renovation of the brownstone as well as in the finished home:
Zero Waste and Zero Consumption
During Construction:
Zero Waste - During the deconstruction (aka demolition) process [...]
Green Building gets better with age
I call myself a green builder and as such am constantly thinking what that title means. Possibly one of the best definitions of green building I can think of is this: does it age well?
Green building is meant to be sustainable, meaning it can be repeated on an ongoing basis. Clear cutting trees is not [...]
Green Building is More Dependant on Natural Cycles
One of the many differences between renovating a Brooklyn brownstone the old fashioned way and doing a green renovation is the difference in cycles.
A normal brownstone renovation is very similar to all post-industrial activity: MAN OVER NATURE. And ever since the “triumph of science” we have been able to overpower the earths natural cycles and [...]
Recovering America
Please read to the end: there is an invitation for designers and architects to submit work to Eco Brooklyn.
After hearing that Malcolm Wells, pioneer of underground architecture, had died I bought a couple of his books and read up on him.
I regret not meeting him when he was alive. He had a great sense of [...]
Green Building Directories
There are a number of ‘green’ product listings and databases on the web; Greenspec at BuildingGreen.com and Pharos, for example, but most (if not all) of them require a paid annual membership. One good source of free information on green products is Oikos.com. More than 2,500 companies are listed in a searchable database.
Others are
WNC [...]
Malcolm Wells, Champion of ‘Gentle Architecture,’ Dies at 83
“To leave the land no worse than you found it” is the manifesto of Gentle Architecture, a concept coined by Architect Malcolm Wells, who recently died.
He made an impression on the green movement of the 1970’s and his work is getting attention with the new green building movement we are currently having.
There are many ways [...]
Comfortable Green Brownstone
Here is a great image. It shows the true value of a Brooklyn brownstone green renovation.
This is something you can’t put a price to. It is like the credit card advertisement:
Insulation $10
Radiant floor $15
Fiberglass Windows $12
Watching your baby play naked while it snows outside: Priceless
This photo really shows the immediate value of doing a good [...]
Brooklyn Green Brownstone Renovation Template
The way Brooklyn brownstones are currently renovated does not work. It does not work for the environment nor for the inhabitants’ comfort and utility bills.
Eco Brooklyn is focused on redefining how a brownstone gets renovated. We use the Brooklyn Green Show House as an example of a renovation template that works for the triple [...]
Re-nest and the process of green building
Architect and writer Julia Brooke Hustwit came by our Brooklyn Green Show House for the first in a series of articles she is writing on the house for re-nest.com. You can check out the first one here.
We spoke a lot about how the green building process differs from normal building. Just the word “process” seems [...]
350.org and Turn Brooklyn Green
350.org is a site worth knowing about. It is at the helm of a very sensible movement to get the CO2 levels of the world back down to 350 part per million, which is a safe level. Right now they are at 387 and it isn’t very clear whether they will keep going up or [...]
Salvaging Old Brooklyn Stairs
Here you see the Eco Brooklyn team diligently salvaging some beat up old stairs in a Brooklyn Brownstone. Along the Eco Brooklyn credo we salvage anything we can. Buying new is our last resort.
But we keep in mind the cost. If it costs the same in materials and labor to salvage than buy new then [...]
Reusing Sand Paper
At Eco Brooklyn we are always looking for ways to reduce, reuse or recycle. Here is a cool thing we just discovered today.
Because we refinish a lot of old wood floors, either subfloors or salvaged floors that others deemed too beaten up to keep, we do a lot of sanding.
We go through A LOT of [...]
Eco Brooklyn Featured on Reclaimed Home
Reclaimed Home released their second part tour of the Brooklyn Show Green Show House.
We are where we live
When you live in a Brooklyn brownstone all the materials in the house slowly give off dust and gases. This mixes into the air. It goes into your lungs, your skin, under your finger nails, the souls of your feet, your very bones.
Over time you literally ingest the house.
This is constantly happening wherever we [...]
Brooklyn Green Flooring
The greenest flooring option is to keep the one you have.
If it is wood, then simply sand it and seal it with tung oil. It will look better than new. If it is tiles, then re-grout it and replace the cracked tiles. The exception is if it is laminate or linoleum – then get [...]
Reclaimed Home interviews Eco Brooklyn
ReclaimedHome.com came by and interviewed Gennaro Brooks-Church at the Brooklyn Green Show House. He talks about the new template for building a Brownstone.
Below is the video they took while I did a tour.
They also took some cool pictures.
Check out their site. They are doing some great stuff.
[...]
A green builder is a reluctant builder
A green builder should be treated the same as a coroner or dentist. You don’t call them if you don’t have to.
The greenest building is to not build at all. At the industry’s current evolutionary state in building it is best to avoid building if possible because building inevitably consumes resources and destroys things.
So as [...]
Build It Forward Defined
The concept Build It Forward was coined by Gennaro Brooks-Church, Director of Eco Brooklyn, to describe the driving focus of the company, which is to turn all buildings in Brooklyn green.
The idea of Build It Forward is not new. Certain Native American Tribes have it in their concept of “seven generations”, Buddhists have it in [...]
Old Growth Forests In Perspective
This image shows the time it takes to attain old growth for a forest. It is a humbling time frame. It is a classic example of build it forward thinking. If we plan on an old growth forest now it will need to be tended and protected for at least 200 years into the future [...]
Green Job Sites Make Garbage
As a Brooklyn green contractor we actually generate more garbage than a non-green contractor!
More garbage!? You ask.
The truth is yes. Bag for bag we cart off more garbage from our sites than non-green job sites.
But how could this be?!
The reason for this is that we BRING ON a lot more ‘garbage” TO the job site. [...]
Seventh Generation
I was explaining the meaning of Build It Forward to somebody and they pointed out that the Native American Indians have a similar theory. Theirs is the understanding that our actions today will impact future generations, seven generations to be exact.
I did some research and could not find any reference to this. The best I [...]
Bruce Ratner: Scumbag Liar
I read in the Carroll Gardens Courier that Ratner is continuing his dishonest takeover of the Brooklyn community in Atlantic Yards.
After securing a corrupt deal with the MTA where he will be allowed to buy part of their land he said of the site this week:
“….it is about affordable housing and public space. It is [...]
Pouring a concrete counter
We make concrete counters for bathrooms and kitchens. Concrete is gotten locally and can be mixed with recycled aggregates like glass or stones. And especially if you make them on site we feel it is a very green alternative.
Other marble counters consume a lot in extraction and transport. And there really isn’t anything more locally [...]
Spirit of Salvaged Wood
Here is a great example of why I love New York salvaged wood over the crap new wood that comes from god knows where.
Salvaged wood is better because it is:
saved from the overflowing landfill
does not cut down a new tree
is ‘harvested” locally from buildings
already dried out and won’t shrink or warp
is stronger
has history and spirit
That [...]