A green school with a view…of dignity
“A school has to be more than beautiful and ‘green.’ It has to respect students’ dignity, and feel like a safe and peaceful place where people care.”
Buildings
Durisol foundation house
Yesterday, I was talking with a potential architect and I asked about lower embodied-energy basement wall systems. She mentioned Durisol, which is basically a type of lightweight block made from cement-impregnated wood waste.
An interview with Chris Bird, author of ‘Local Sustainable Homes’
In advance of the publication next week of Chris Bird’s Transition Book “Local Sustainable Homes”, I spoke to Chris about the book, and about what he set out to achieve in writing it.
Housing & urban design – Sept 3
-Americans want smaller homes, not McMansions
-HafenCity: A Case Study on Future-Adaptive Urban Development
-Straw Bale Model House
My foreword to ‘Local Sustainable Homes’
Next week sees the publication of the next book in the Transition Books series, ‘Local Sustainable Homes: how to make them happen in your community’ by Chris Bird. More details to follow (including how to order your copy), but as a taster, here is my foreword to the book…
Two agricultures, not one
A great deal of the discussion of post-petroleum food production misses the fact that in societies before oil — and thus arguably in societies after oil — food was produced by two distinct systems. The last century saw the dismantling of one of those; the present century will have to see its reconstruction.
Studio 12: Transition Cities
Host Tamara Banks takes a look at the Transition Cities movement that is working for a way of life that is environmentally friendly, supports the local economy and conserves natural resources.
Embodied energy: An alternative approach to understanding urban energy use
Everyone knows that it takes energy to produce anything. The energy used in mining, transport, processing, manufacturing, delivery, and disposal is “embodied” in every product we consume, from food to diapers to televisions and insurance policies. Our traditional way of looking at energy, however, highlights only current consumption, traditionally disaggregated into agricultural, industrial, transportation, commercial, and residential sectors.
How to build an earthship – Our adventure in New Mexico
Throughout the last year Michelle and I have been researching green building methods. So far we have visited and helped build strawbale houses, spent time in an underground concrete building in Denmark, checked out adobe brick and visited the Passivhaus Institute (Passive House) in Germany.
Cob
A few years ago, at Seed Savers in County Clare, I helped sculpt, pound and pat a house together.
Carbon offset value of straw bale houses
One of my goals in moving to Ithaca was to get into a position where I can began transitioning my family to a carbon-negative lifestyle. Obviously writing posts about alarming climate papers only goes so far; if one isn’t prepared to personally do something, at some point it starts to feel hypocritical (at least it does to me). This process is absolutely in its infancy, but I plan to blog about it to a certain degree. Our experiences may be helpful to others traveling along the same path. Perhaps a few other people who wouldn’t otherwise have contemplated this will get the idea. And at a minimum, I will be able to feel less guilty, and more smug and self-righteous, as the climate goes to hell around us.
The problem with bicycles
Once people get into their heads that maybe the personal automobile is not really such a good idea — in other words, after they have moved beyond the biodiesel/electric car phase, as if the only problem with the personal automobile is the fuel it uses — they usually fixate on bicycles. I say “fixate” because this often becomes an eco-fetish like so many other such things, as if more bicycles were better, and if you could just get enough bicycles in one place, you could “save the world.”
