Building Profiles:

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Project Profiles:

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- The HB Team

Vancouver has a stated goal to become the worlds greenest city by 2020. To take the next step toward reaching that goal, the city is looking within, to a VertiCrop green roof developed by Vancouver-based Valcent Products, Inc.

VertiCrop, an urban farming innovation, allows for higher crop yields relative to traditional methods, while using a fraction of the resources. More tangibly, the product avows to provide up to 20 times the yield of soil crops while requiring only 8% of the water. It accomplishes this feat via a hydroponic system that rotates suspended trays of crops on motorized conveyors, providing optimized quantities of light and nutrients in the process. This system earned VertiCrop the distinction of being named one of TIME Magazine’s 50 Best Inventions in 2009.

Vancouver plans to implement this technology by providing a memorandum to EasyPark, a firm that owns parking garages throughout the city, to begin to install VertiCrop systems on the structures currently-unused rooftops (pictured below). Doing so would make Vancouver the first home to VertiCrop systems in North America.

The resulting harvest from one of these parking garage roofs is expected to produce an yield equivalent to 16 acres of California farm, conserving resources in the process. Not only do the crops require less water, but growing them on-site allows for dramatically reduced shipping and distribution costs.

Construction on the first of these systems will begin this month, with the initial crops expected to be ready this April. Depending on the success of this initiative, the VertiCrop model may be one we see repeated throughout the continent.

What makes the Lulea data center so efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective? As Business Wire reports, there are many factors working in tandem:

• Sweden’s highly advanced electric grid reduces Facebook’s need for backup power generation by 70%.
• The electric grid has the capacity to be run with 100% renewable energy, including abundant hydroelectric power. This means there is no embedded carbon in electricity use.
• Lulea’s climate is cold enough to significantly reduce the amount of cooling power needed for the data center.
• Last but certainly not least, Sweden’s power costs are lower than many other places in Europe and the tax system is favorable to business, allowing Facebook to run the center at a good price.

“After receiving numerous responses for the first phase of development, we are another step closer to the new Willets Point,” Thomas McKnight, an executive vice president of the city Economic Development Corporation, told the New York Times. “This project will create thousands of jobs and allow an environmentally contaminated area to become a model center of economic growth for Queens and New York City.”

Although a confidentiality agreement prevents companies from acknowledging their involvement in the process, the New York Times reports that Related Companies, Silverstein Properties, and the team of Macerich and AvalonBay Communities, have all expressed interest in becoming involved in the first phase of the project. The one developer that we know for certain has submitted a bid is TDC Development, who has posted on their website that they are a “finalist” in the competition.

Willets Point via New York Times.

West Village tower, covered in solar panels (via KQED News).

This week, the University of California at Davis unveils a new mixed-use campus housing center called West Village. The $300 million project is one of the most innovative and ambitious of its kind. What makes it so special? For one thing, it sets a precedent with its scale: 130 acres, including 662 apartments and 343 single-family houses, 42,500 square feet of commercial space, a recreation center and village square. For another, it’s ingeniously designed to not only generate as much energy as it uses (with a 4 megawatt solar panel system) but to make sure that residents don’t need a lot of energy in the first place (for example, wooden slats keep sunlight from heating rooms too warm, creating the need for air conditioning).

“First you reduce the energy demand through the layout of the community and investing in energy efficiency,” Bob Segar, UC Davis director of campus planning, told KQED News reporter Ana Tintocalis. “And then you produce green power on site.”

Bob Segar (via KQED News).

Tintocalis writes:

Another way West Village plans to produce its own green power is with a waste-to-energy bio-digester – an invention patented by UC Davis engineer that will be in full use next year. It will convert the village’s garbage and waste, also referred to as “feed stock,” into energy.

“The technology will allow us to put all those ‘feed stocks’ into the bio-digester, which will decompose at different rates that will then make methane and hydrogen to be burned for electricity,” Segar said.

The project was led by UC Davis and West Village Community Partnership, LLC (a joint venture of Carmel Partners of San Francisco, and Urban Villages of Denver) and was made possible by a public-private funding model. In a press release, Nolan Zail, Carmel Senior Vice President of Development, said: “UC Davis West Village is a visionary model for integrating pioneering sustainable principles with high-quality living environments, creating an eco-friendly lifestyle for students, faculty and staff. We believe the success of this innovative public-private partnership and demonstrated zero net energy living community will inspire other public and private institutions to build similar sustainable communities.”

To learn more about the project or connect with people and companies associated with it, follow it on Honest Buildings.

Esquire reported on the garden when it was first installed by the Rose Bar Manager, Kevin Denton, in summer of 2010. More recently The Feast posted a video about the garden’s features, many of which are innovative solutions that Denton and his team came up with on the fly. These include “a rain-water irrigation system built from retired oil drums, a compost topped with a discarded duck roaster, and [...] tomato plant pulleys.”

To follow the project and connect with people who worked on it, visit the Honest Buildings project page.

Photo via Esquire.

Jonathan Rose, Jonathan Rose Companies president and 107-145 West 135th Street. Via The Real Deal.

The Real Deal reports that the $50.9M effort was the work of apartment complex owner, Jonathan Rose Companies, as well as Enterprise, a Maryland-based provider of developer capital and expertise for affordable housing. The project team was the the first in the nation to make use of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Green Retrofit Program, which used stimulus funds to improve the efficiency of buildings nationwide.

Among the improvements made on the 198-unit complex is the replacement of 32 boilers with 10 high-efficiency boilers and the installation for solar panels. Bright Power, an NYC energy services company, performed a feasibility study for a solar PV system at the site, and oversaw installation of of a 25 kW system.

Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley views retrofit plans on the rooftop of the West 135th St. Apartments in New York City. Via White House blog.

In January 2010, Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, visited the apartment complex. In a blog post, she wrote that the project “will enhance quality of life for the residents, reduce energy costs, cut water consumption, improve indoor air quality, and create quality local jobs.”

Check out the project page here and the building profile here.

This is just an example of the work being done nationwide to improve the efficiency of schools. Once known as energy-wasters, schools are emerging as leaders in efficiency improvement projects. More than half the states, including California, Idaho, Kentucky, Montana, New Hampshire, and Virginia, have used stimulus funds to improve public school efficiency through outreach programs and facility upgrades.

Some districts have hired energy managers — or appointed the task to existing staff members. A lot of what they do is “policing” school buildings and “ticketing” staff who leave lights on with yellow notes that all can see. Through energy-reduction contests like the Green Cup Challenge, students are getting involved in the effort. Administrators have found that when students are engaged in race to reduce, the results are impressive.

We at Honest Buildings hope to work with school districts to tell the stories of their successful initiatives. We’d love to engage students to do the reporting themselves so they can learn about energy reduction and, perhaps, do some “policing” of their own at home. (Sorry, parents. Don’t say we didn’t warn you! You might want to unplug unused appliances now….)