Cool Hunting
A fresh take on disaster relief, the New Orleans-based Green Project is a positive approach to the deconstruction of damaged or collapsed homes and buildings. Rather than simply tearing the destroyed properties of new Orleans apart to make room for new structures with bulldozers, the Green Project carefully salvages and deconstructs the buildings by hand. Focusing on the importance of New Orleans' unique architectural history and respect for personal property, the hand-done process saves between 45 and 70 percent of the materials. They even have their own garden and interactive community space promoting recycling and salvaging garbage for everything from soil to artistic material.
Whether assisting individuals to reconstruct their homes, selling high quality, salvaged building materials at low cost or promoting recycling and rebuilding in the community, the Green Project has played an integral part in the rebuilding of New Orleans. We have a few Green project t-shirts to give away so follow the contact link at the bottom of the page, select "Green Project" from the pull-down menu and tell us your favorite architectural example of creative reuse before this Thursday, 14 June 2007, 11:59 EST. We'll choose a winner at random.
by Seth Brau
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by Russ Lowe Moving beyond the once revolutionary LEED (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) scope of strategies and requirements for building green, Cascadia, the Northwest chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council's Living Building Challenge meets once unimagined sustainability standards in areas of Site, Water, Energy, Materials, Indoor Quality, Beauty and Inspiration and Process and Leadership. Using a guideline of 20 prerequisites, the initiative...
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Recently, Cool Hunting was invited to participate as a guest judge in the Billes Architecture Home Design Competition, a student competition aimed at fostering new designs for affordable housing in New Orleans' most devastated neighborhoods. Students from 16 U.S. and five Canadian universities were invited to submit their proposals in the hopes of earning a $1,000 cash prize, but more importantly, working with Billes Architecture...
This spectacular design—still in the works—aims to convert a desolate desert, into a thriving environmental preserve and eco-resort. The building incorporates an astonishing array of green designs, which include a five-acre green roof which supports native species, living walls, botanical and herbal gardens and sustainable green dining. Monterey Bay Shores is being built with the goal of reducing its carbon footprint by 50%. In...
