Last week I came up with my own “brilliant” idea: create an online forum where people that work in green buildings would record their experiences to create a better understanding of how green buildings really feel.

That post was in response to Weber Thompson’s blog that is doing exactly that. If you missed it, that blog also answered my question on how the team is measuring their building’s performance (see tag below for Weber Thompson).

Now I’m asking you what your brilliant ideas are?

It’s no secret that Seattle (and Chicago, and Portland and New York etc….) are racing to be the greenest city in the country. So if Seattle wants to hold onto that goal, what should it do? Should density be the focus or should it be regulations through things like stricter energy codes?

On a broader scale, is urban planning the answer or is it more incentives?   

For a British perspective on what cities should do, see a BBC story here. For a video on the nature of sustainability and its future from the perspective of Sir Norman Foster, click here. Or you could check out Sustainable Ballard’s Web site here to see what one Seattle neighborhood thinks, or Sustainable Capitol Hill’s site here.

Did you ever hear about an interesting project, wonder how it would  work and then forget about it?

To avoid that situation the Weber Thompson team at the Terry Avenue Office Building (at left) is blogging about what it’s like to work in a LEED gold (for core and shell), naturally ventilated building. To check it out, go here. (For more on the building, my colleague Shawna Gamache wrote about it in her blog here).

The blog’s most recent post talks about cooling the building on a hot day … and opening all 248 of the building’s windows. The post before that discusses how the building SOUNDS different…. and what it’s like getting used to that.

What a novel idea. To share with the public the water cooler discussions of how people like their new surroundings. 

(Just for the record the building we work in here at the DJC also has no air conditioning. It gets warm a couple days in the summer but it’s very doable).  (more…)

Today is green project day at the DJC because there’s just so much to report. It’s also Earth Day and I meant to write a post about the silly earth themed product advertisements I got in my inbox, but that will just have to wait until later, while we get to what you really love…. projects!

In fact there’s so much to cover, it will be written in two posts: this one and another following it.

First we’ve got the winning project called Eco-Laboratory from the Cascadia Region Emerging Green Builder program’s Natural Talent Design Competition. The competition was open to students or anyone in their job less than five years. This year, it asked entrants to design a living building (for more on that, click here).

The winning entry was a team from Seattle’s Weber Thompson. Team members were Brian Geller, Myer Harrell, Chris Dukehart and Dan Albert. The entry, which is purely theoretical and will not be built (at least in the near future), was sited next to the 7,200-square-foot p-patch in Belltown at the corner of Elliott Avenue and Vine St.

The team used what was already on site, from the garden, to a high homeless population, to an active community, to inspire the design of the building. Judges liked that and thought it truly incorporated the idea behind a living building.

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