“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 …
Malcolm Wells, Champion of ‘Gentle Architecture,’ Dies at 83 Read More »
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 …
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 …
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” …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Reclaimed Home released their second part tour of the Brooklyn Show Green Show House.
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 …
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 …
