By Harriet Blake

The benefits of a rooftop garden are not only environmental, but extend to the human spirit. At the Ulfelder Healing Garden atop Massachusetts General Hospital’s Yawkey Cancer Center, those benefits are realized.

The 6,300-square-foot foliage-filled healing garden gives cancer patients and their families a much-needed retreat and helps the hospital conserve energy at the same time. It is just one of the many Boston sites included on tours during this week’s GreenBuild International Conference, a large annual gathering of builders and remodellers sponsored by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

Bringing green design into health care and hospital building is a growing trend across the U.S.. At Dell Children’s Medical Center, which opened in Austin, Texas in 2007, green has been the focus from the ground up. In fact, says spokesperson Matilda Sanchez, the hospital is waiting to hear if they have achieved “platinum status” in the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) program sponsored by the USGBC. Among the many green elements at Dell is a four-story interior healing garden with a waterfall that starts on the top floor, as well as a three-acre healing garden with a labyrinth that can be seen from many of the hospital rooms.

“Dell is setting the bar for hospital buildings,” says Sanchez. “While we were still under construction, many other hospitals looked at what we were doing. There was even a delegation from Australia who came to get ideas.”

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By John DeFore
Attendees at this week’s Going Green Conference in San Francisco will hear from a CEO who may have placed second in a contest to get there but hardly needed the extra accolade: Kevin Surace’s Serious Materials has already been touted by Time, The New York Times and others as one of the [...]

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By John DeFore

The idea of training plants to grow into odd, useful forms isn’t a new one. It’s been done for ages, has been the subject of enthusiast-penned books, and in recent years has attracted the interest of fine artists and architects.

Now two professors at Tel Aviv University hope to move eco-architecture into the commercial realm, designing products that can be sold and grown around the world.

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By John DeFore

The green roof concept — in which some form of plant is grown atop a building — is spreading in multiple directions in the States. Not just the realm of futurists (though we love this idea) or extravagant fashionistas (see some lovely examples here), the field is drawing interest from homeowners and corporations with a range of motivations.

Now a study by the University of Texas at Austin’s Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has quantified some of the issues motivating folks to put plants on the roof and found that the benefits are substantial, although results can vary widely depending on how the roof is composed and installed.

At the Wildflower Center, a team led by ecologist Dr. Mark Simmons studied roofs made by six different manufacturers with an eye toward helping the fledgling industry make better performing products. “Just having a green roof may not mean anything in terms of preventing water from reaching the street level, for instance,” Simmons has said. “Green roofs have to be done right, and our hope is to help manufacturers understand how to improve their designs.”

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By Julie Bonnin

If you’re in the market for a custom-built home, there really isn’t a reason not to build green. Who doesn’t want a smaller utility bill? Or to leave a reduced carbon footprint on your corner of planet Earth? FreeGreen, a web site with free green home designs, allows users to browse a listing of green house plans that range from strikingly modern to suburban friendly.

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Even those among us who spend a fair deal of time daydreaming about living in a solar-powered home may stop short of actually shopping for the required equipment. You can’t just hop down to Home Depot and pick up a photovoltaic rig, after all, and we all know it’s expensive.

Happily, some pioneers are making themselves guinea pigs and sharing their experiences with anyone who’s interested.

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By Tom Kessler
Colorado developers have announced what they say is the country’s largest net-zero energy, master-planned community in Arvada, Colo., a suburb of Denver. Geos Neighborhood, which will begin infrastructure construction this fall, will feature 250 residences and can generate enough renewable energy to supply 100 percent of the annual energy needs of the entire [...]

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By Paula Minahan
The idea of living in a truly sustainable green environment is a homeowner’s dream: Lower energy bills, healthier materials,

Photo: Barley & Pfeiffer Architects
Overhangs provide protection from the sun.
the satisfaction of “doing the right thing.” But with our slumping U.S. economy, many worry about holding onto their home — let alone building a [...]

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By Paula Minahan
Peter Pfeiffer doesn’t mince words. His passion for green building takes an almost proselytizing tone at times. And it’s no wonder. The straight-shooting architect has spent the past 30 years at the forefront of the

Photo: Barley & Pfeiffer Architects
 
Peter Pfeiffer’s green house in Austin
green building movement. The award-winning work of his Austin-based firm, [...]

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By Julie Bonnin
Era Ford met EcoBroker Stephanie Edwards-Musa at a class on green building offered at Rice University in Houston.
Now the two of them are on a home tour in the Heights, a historic neighborhood near downtown, and just a few steps inside the door Ford is all but pumping her fist in the [...]

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By John DeFore
As counterintuitive as it sounds for those raised to think of all trees as environmentally precious, there are some varieties that prove a nuisance, possibly even a hazard, in certain areas.
Western juniper, for instance. While natural wildfire/regrowth cycles once kept juniper under control, modern firefighting efforts have sometimes allowed the trees [...]

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By Michele Chan Santos

On a quiet street in the tree-covered city of Rollingwood, a suburb of Austin, Texas, sits a house designed to epitomize everything technology and modern design can do to make a home environmentally friendly and safe for families with children.

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