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Green Furniture & Furnishings

BuildingGreen.com has a list of Green Furniture & Furnishings products and considerations.

Link: BuildingGreen.com - Green Product Category: Furniture & Furnishings

The introduction of furnishings that off-gas hazardous chemicals can undo all the care given to using “clean” building materials. Furniture and furnishings incorporate many separate products and all of the issues that go with them. As a result, they can be a significant source of IAQ problems—coming from binders in wood composites such as particleboard, from finishes used on the products, from flame retardants used in foam cushions, and from adhesives used to assemble the products.

Those items incorporating fabric, such as upholstered furniture and workstations, can also collect dirt and airborne contaminants, releasing them later.

The Palazzo Las Vegas Becomes World's Largest LEED Certified Building

The Clean Edge describes the largest LEED-certified building in the world. Excerpts below.

Link: News - Clean Edge - The Clean-Tech Market Authority.

The Palazzo Las Vegas, a Las Vegas Sands Corp. property, recently announced that the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) presented a Silver LEED(R) Certificate (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).

During the ceremony Governor Gibbons issued a proclamation in recognition of The Palazzo's commitment to energy conservation. The DOE presented The Palazzo with "The Energy Innovator's Award" which recognizes businesses, individuals, and governmental agencies that have successfully developed or deployed energy-efficient and/or renewable energy technologies, services, or policies.

According to USGBC, The Palazzo is not only the largest LEED- certified building in the world, but is over four times bigger than the second-largest.

The Palazzo employs such effective environmentally-efficient technologies that it conserves enough water to provide each Nevada citizen with 266 eight-ounce glasses of water for a year and saves enough energy to light a 100 watt light bulb for 12,100 years. It even promotes alternative modes of transportation by offering valet parking-for bicycles. Key features include:

• Artificial turf, drip irrigation and moisture sensors in planted areas result in over a 75% reduction in irrigation needs.
• Swimming pools at The Palazzo are heated with an expansive solar pool heating system. In the summer, the excess solar energy not needed for the pools is directed to the hotel's hot water system, reducing the need to heat water for guest suites.
• Air conditioning controls in guest suites that automatically setback by several degrees when guests are not present and reset to the desired temperature upon return.
• Team member service areas equipped with lighting occupancy sensors that shut off lights when no one is in the area.
• Interior plumbing fixtures use 37% less water than conventional buildings as a result of water-efficient showerheads, high efficiency toilets and low-flow lavatory faucet aerators.
• Moisture sensors monitor real time, site specific air temperature, humidity, rainfall and other factors to provide daily watering cycle adjustment.
• A waste recycling program implemented from demolition through completion diverted over 70% of waste from the landfill.
• The building's structural steel averaged 95% recycled content, while the concrete averaged a 26% recycled content rate.

The First LEED Platinum Carbon Neutral Building

EcoGeek describes a building on the forefront of green LEED design.

Link: The First LEED Platinum Carbon Neutral Building | EcoGeek | Building, Green, Comment, Buildings, Author.

The Aldo Leopold Foundation Headquarters, in Fairfield Wisconsin has just been opened to some hoppin' green reviews. LEED is the organization that certifies buildings as energy efficient, and this center has won it's highest award. And while that's been done before, it's never been done with a 100% carbon neutral building.

It wears it's carbon neutrality right on it's sleeve with 198 solar panels that is rated at about 40 kilowatts, or 15% more than the center needs. The building also uses passive and radient heating and some geothermal energy. And hey, it only cost 'em $4 million.

For more pictures and information, check out Inhabitat.

NCIDQ Offices to be LEED Certified

The National Council for Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ) is growing green.

Link: NCIDQ on the Move.

As a leader in the interior design profession, we want to show our commitment to sustainable design. In the last three years, we have implemented recycling in the office and purchased more products with recycled content. Our new space is a perfect opportunity to continue our environmental evolution.

The Board recently voted to work toward the highest level of LEED certification possible for our new office space. The location of our new space will factor into the level of certification we can achieve. Such issues as existing HVAC systems and windows can affect the number of points a project can receive in the LEED certification system.

Green Buildings

BusinessWeek says "Green building technology has reached a tipping point that makes it more feasible — and elegant — choice for new construction."

Link: Green Wonders of the World

View the Slide Show

Ten years ago, large-scale green building was still a pipe dream. Most of the designs were the architectural versions of horsehair shirts, neither very comfortable nor very pretty. Using less energy inherently meant making do with less—less heating, less cooling, less of the symbolism and grandeur that define great architecture.

Yet by the turn of the millennium green had become glamorous, and today it's even economical. The cycle of innovation for sustainable building technologies is now staggeringly short, given how long it takes to complete a building. In short, we are close to the tipping point at which green design becomes the default option for smart building.

HEARST TOWER.  At least that's what the Hearst Corporation found when it hired Norman Foster to design its new headquarters, which opened this spring in midtown Manhattan. "We wanted the best building we could possibly build, so we explored every bit of technology available, and that meant green technology," explains Brian Schwagerl, director of real estate and facilities planning. And Hearst wasn't alone. Broad demand for sustainable technologies has driven prices down and increased options. "The market came to a point where we could buy the materials at a cost that wasn't a huge uptick," says Schwagerl.

MOMENTUM BUILDS.  Quietly competing with LEED is the Cradle-to-Cradle protocol, developed by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart. C2C considers the entire life cycle of a product, from manufacture to recycling; or, even better, "up-cycling." The first C2C home, a 1,623-square-foot, two-bedroom house in Roanoke, Va., will be completed next month.

And green even has a new (unofficial) spokesperson in Brad Pitt. This week the architecture-loving actor trumpeted the benefits of green building at a design competition for a low-energy apartment complex in New Orleans.

All this points to the ever increasing momentum of green design. The Green Wonders of the World feature that follows takes stock of the monuments completed so far. It celebrates the combination of high life and low energy by seeking out the buildings that both minimize their energy use and pack a symbolic punch. Think of the monuments that follow as symbols of possibility, often with an influence that belies their size.

Adobe Achieves LEED Platinum

Treehugger describes Adobe's West Tower, the first building in the United States to receive the platinum certification of the Green Building Council's existing-building program. (Spec Book Pro creates specifications in the Adobe's paperless PDF format.)

Link: Treehugger: Adobe Achieves LEED Platinum

Adobe Systems, developers of the fabulous and ubiquitous Photoshop, Acrobat and other solutions for the design and publishing enthusiast, have broken new ground again, this time in green building. The software developer recently announced that one of their San Jose buildings has reached the highest level of environmental efficiency and friendliness. Their West Tower recently achieved the U.S. Green Building Council's highest award: LEED-EB Platinum for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design in an existing building. It's the first building in the country to receive the platinum certification since the Green Building Council's existing-building program went public in 2004.

The building features a bevy of cost-saving, energy-saving systems, including a computer system that checks the weather forecast before turning on the sprinklers. The $3,600 smart irrigation system will pay for itself in less than five months, by saving $10,000 each year. By retrofitting parking garages in the East and West towers with fluorescent lighting, Adobe will save $100,436 a year on an investment that cost only $157,775.

::Mercury News via ::Hugg

New Software Speeds Green-Building Certification Process

Link: GreenBiz News | New Software Aims to Speed Green-Building Certification Process.

Johnson Controls, Inc. has developed software intended to simplify building certification. Leedspeed, a Web-based software application, navigates the user through the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating Systems.

"Johnson Controls is the premier partner for forward-thinking companies that want to achieve the financial, social and environmental benefits of green buildings. This software program takes our best practices and helps facility owners assess multiple buildings, evaluate return on investment, manage green building projects and prepare and submit the LEED certification application," said Paul von Paumgartten, director of energy and environmental affairs for Building Efficiency of Johnson Controls. Johnson Controls has used the system for the past three years in hundreds of buildings and continues to offer the service to its own customers.

The program is divided into two sections: Assessment/ROI Planner and Project Management/Certification. The pricing is structured so building owners can buy the full package or a specific portion, and it can be purchased for single or multiple buildings.

Is LEED Broken?

Source: Top green-building system is in desperate need of repair | By Auden Schendler, Randy Udall | Grist Magazine | Soapbox | 26 Oct 2005.

LEED is a design process that should, in theory, produce buildings that conserve resources, reduce operating costs and pollution, help address global warming, improve marketability and durability, preserve the ozone layer, protect occupant health, and improve worker productivity. When the program was launched, the hope was that it would transform the design and construction of commercial buildings.

But LEED's early bloom is fading. Green building has a robust future, but this certification system may not. LEED is broken.

The program's results thus far have been sorely disappointing. Since 2000, LEED has certified only 285 buildings. By contrast, over the same time period, the U.S. Department of Energy's Building America program helped builders design and erect more than 20,000 new homes, with a minimum 30 percent reduction in energy use for heating, cooling, and hot water at no net cost.

We're concerned that LEED has become expensive, slow, confusing, and unwieldy, a death march for applicants administered by a soviet-style bureaucracy that makes green building more difficult than it needs to be. The result:

• mediocre "green" buildings where certification, not environmental responsibility, is the primary goal;
• a few super-high-level eco-structures built by ultra-motivated (and wealthy) owners that stand like the Taj Mahal as beacons of impossibility;
• an explosion of LEED-accredited architects and engineers chasing lots of money but designing few buildings; and
• a discouraged cadre of professionals who want to build green, but can't afford to certify their buildings.

Green Building Question 10

Green Architect Eric Corey Freed discusses green buildings....

Source: Greener Buildings | News.

After nearly 15 years in green building, I have observed widespread misunderstanding of some basic principals of sustainability. In the future, all buildings will be green. It is inevitable in order for our species to survive. The sooner everyone comes to a basis of understanding how to be environmentally responsible, the better off we all will be.

10. Why aren't ALL buildings built to be green?

Green Building Question 9

Green Architect Eric Corey Freed discusses green buildings....

Source: Greener Buildings | News.

After nearly 15 years in green building, I have observed widespread misunderstanding of some basic principals of sustainability. In the future, all buildings will be green. It is inevitable in order for our species to survive. The sooner everyone comes to a basis of understanding how to be environmentally responsible, the better off we all will be.

9. Why should I care about green building?