Vermont Natural Coatings is one of the leading green wood finishes out there. Most of the time we mix oils and bases from staple ingredients like tung oil, linseed oil, whey pigments and citrus solvent, but sometime the situation calls for a more “conventional look”. This is when we might use Vermont Natural Coatings. Here […]
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The book Gentle Architecture by Malcolm Wells is one of those cult books. Published in 1981 it is out of print. The author died in 2009. But the book lives on amongst those of us searching for alternatives to our current building crisis. Most people don’t even know we have a building crisis. Most architects don’t
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Have you ever wondered what toxic sites are in your neighborhood? Do you unknowingly live next door to an abandoned toxic dump? Here is a site that can give you some clues. It is called ToxicTargeting.com and lists all the recorded environmental activity in New York State. You can type in your address and see all the
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I realize concrete has huge embodied energy and creates tonnes of CO2 during it’s manufacture but I still can’t resist reading up on the uses of concrete for residential interior applications. Eco Brooklyn is guilty of making some concrete counters too. I just read Concrete at Home by the concrete fanatic Fu-Tung Chen. He has
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The book Earth in Mind, on Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect by David Orr is dense. It took me a couple months to get through it. I could only read a couple pages at a time. It didn’t even have any pictures! I’m a picture book kind of guy. It was both deeply rewarding
The book Mannahatta, a Natural History of NYC by Eric Sanderson was the best book I read in 2009, and I must have read 40 green building books. For weeks after reading it I walked around New York in a daze, spellbound by the historical tapestry the book had woven of my surroundings. If you
Looking for an enlightened activity this summer? Maybe you should go attend the Micro Living event mentioned below. Micro Living is a great concept born in reaction to our current Out Of Control Living (my term :). Micro Living aims to reduce our consumption of inessential objects and increase our life affirming relationships (with ourselves,
Go Green Expo NYC is coming up next week. See below to get the $10 special rate. I went last year and it was ok. It is really a subsection of Architectural Digest Home Design Show, although I’m sure it will be bigger this year. Go Green Expo NYC in my opinion is profit based.
One aspect of green building is about reducing the toxins we use in the building process. For example our green renovations of Brooklyn brownstones use no toxic glues (Liquid Nails, for example). Our meter is that if a child can’t be in the room while we are doing it then we aren’t interested in doing
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Here is a video put out by Sustainable South Bronx about their green training program, BEST. They have it down in the sense that they understand training green builders is more than technical info. It is about community outreach, personal empowerment and large scale advocacy – essencially a holistic approach to living and teaching. Check
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