Harvard's Green Campus Initiative

Last evening, Dan, Connie, and myself attended a meeting for the Council of Student Sustainability Leaders (CSSL) hosted by the Harvard Office for Sustainability. There we learned about Harvard's green building goals as a way of meeting the university's 2016 carbon reduction goal. You can find information on Harvard's Green Building Standards and case studies of LEED certified buildings on campus at the following link:

http://green.harvard.edu/theresource/

What are your thoughts on Harvard's progress/current initiatives around green building?

COMPETITION

ARCHITECTURE AT ZERO is an international open ideas competition with a focus on the specific challenges of creating urban zero net energy (ZNE) buildings. The competition seeks creative and feasible approaches to urban ZNE building to broaden the conversation around how a site zero net energy project will be approached now and in the future. Further, it seeks to raise the profile of ZNE building among built-environment professionals, students, and the general public in California and beyond.

RURAL SCRAPER

In spite of some questionable representation techniques, interesting proposal for increasing urban farming yield. For the super high rent districts only of course...

"Hungarian practice atelierarchitects proposed 'the ruralscraper', a conceptual highrise structure for the eVolo 2011 skyscraper competition. a response to a projection stating 70% of the global population will live in urban areas, this vertical farm would act as a substitute for the rapidly shrinking amount of arable land throughout the world. energy and land will be saved by moving food resources into city centers placing consumers close to the production source of their daily provisions.

Plastic bag cultivation, glasshouse culture, home gardening, tray method and late field growing occur within the tower's diverse levels. farmers live within integrated houses. Vertical circulation accommodates the various machines and equipment necessary for production and harvesting. prompting social interaction in a communal market setting, awareness is raised about growing methods with the ability to converse with the farmer. tanks for water collection can be redirected for irrigation and turbines generate electricity. glasshouses enable year round production while open air spaces may be used as ice skating rinks for the community."

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/16345/atelierarchitects-the-ruralscraper.html