Greensburg

Greensburg

NYC's Steven Learner Studio Takes Top Spot in Chain of Eco-Homes Competition

Mon

Oct

New York City is different. This, for many of us, is what we like about it, the "more" of it all, the fact that we have more of everything -- good, bad, indifferent -- than just about any other city in the United States. All the overage can be a bit much sometimes, but even on the worst of days -- subway delays and bummer street vibes, foul weather, kooky co-workers, unpaid bills, fill it in yourself -- many of us can barely stomach the prospect of leaving this honking, vertical, mess of a city. And yet... there's something about the idea of a house of one's own, neither above nor beneath someone else's, that unquestionably works. It's probably a stretch to say that it's that urban yearning for space that helped the New York-based Steven Learner Studio design the very cool Meadowlark House, which claimed first place in the Chain of Eco-Homes Competition. But it's no stretch to describe the home as one that could make even the most ardent New Yorker wonder what life would be like with both a front and back yard.

Greensburg, Kansas to Rebuild Public Buildings at LEED Platinum in Aftermath of May Tornado

Thu

Jan

by Stephen Del Percio

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Last May, the city of Greensburg, Kansas was devastated by a tornado that killed ten people and injured over fifty of its 1,400 residents - as you can see from the image, the level of destruction was almost incomprehensible. Back on December 17, though, the city passed a resolution to rebuild its public buildings greater than 4,000 square feet to a LEED Platinum level. In a USGBC press release from yesterday that announced the resolution, Rick Fedrizzi noted that “[t]he city of Greensburg has taken the extraordinary step of committing to rebuild their community to a new vision, not settling for simply recreating what had gone before.” The resolution also requires that qualifying projects reduce their energy consumption by 42 percent over code through achieving all ten of the LEED optimize energy performance credits.

In October, Greensburg selected Kansas City-based BNIM Architects to create a new master plan for the city, grounded in sustainable principles implemented through zoning refinements and streetscape design, among other features. BNIM has worked on a similar effort before - it designed a 940-square-foot green home in the Lower Ninth Ward through its work with Brad Pitt’s New Orleans: Make it Right Foundation.

You can check out the text of the resolution here; note that the language does not explicitly require formal certification from USGBC, but rather that projects “conform to the Platinum rating of the USGBC LEED [system].”