The book Handmade Houses, A Century of Earth-Friendly Home Design, by Richard Olsen is inspiration for any green builder. With a clear focus on Big Sur homes Olsen highlights homes that were built along the same style as the Slow Food Movement, where meaning, lifestyle and experience are just as important as the finished “product”, that …
Handmade Houses, A Century of Earth-Friendly Home Design Read More »
Check out this dude. A real druid. A magical builder. Sunray Kelly [Building] is all about the human consciousness to me. Its about our evolution more than the buildings themselves. Sitting in NY city watching this fellow green builder in the woods of Washington, I can’t help but long for those sounds of birds and …
Interactive designer Marco Castro has recently developed an innovative idea about how to efficiently increase green space in overcrowded urban settings through an interesting new reinterpretation of the term “green vehicle”. The “Bus Roots” project is working to establish rooftop gardens atop buses in New York City and around the country so as to counteract …
Being a New York green contractor we consider urban farming to be an important consideration for every project. Given every building has walls and a roof it is always worth asking wither they are well suited for vertical or roof farming. Sub-Irrigation Planting Systems (SIPs) are a perfectly sustainable answer to urban farming, according to …
Sub-Irrigation Planting – the most sustainable urban gardening method? Read More »
Check out this great event hosted by the New York Horticultural Society, a perfect opportunity to learn new ways to incorporate green walls into your space! Also, you’ll learn about the design, benefits, major components and systems, as well as market drivers behind this modern green building technique. We think they’re a sustainable, beautiful and …
Green Walls 101 Class at NY Horticultural Society Read More »
We are now accepting checks to buy oysters. Here’s the deal: around the corner from lies the heavily polluted Gowanus Canal. The industrial landscape of this former tidal creek is surreal in its bleakness – but to us it offers the exciting possibility of a rock bottom wasteland that has nowhere to go but up. …
Eco Brooklyn’s show house is now home to a beautiful new landscape which has been certified by the National Wildlife Federation as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. Nestled among many homes in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, NY this garden provides a home for a wide variety of shrubs and perennials that have invited in a number of …
Green design is a broad term. In an attempt to narrow it down, we are looking at how green design and “universal design” or lifespan design are linked. First of all, you’re probably wondering what universal design means. Here are the seven principles that define universal design, according to North Carolina State University (check out …
Green Contracting and Universal Design – What’s the connection? Read More »
When doing an eco renovation of a brownstone there are two key factors: maximizing space and maximizing light. A New York brownstone floor is not the largest of spaces so one way to expand the space is to add a deck off the parlor floor. But this creates a problem with the other important element …
Last week a judge dismissed Henry Giffords law suit against USGBC. Gifford had pointed out that energy audits of LEED buildings showed no greater energy savings than normal buildings of the same class, and in fact LEED buildings showed WORSE energy savings in many cases. Green Source Magazine speaks about it here. USGBC countered his …
LEED Wins Law Suit Despite Bad Energy Efficiency Read More »
