Inhabitat

Don’t Miss Our Live Webinar with Boston Bike Czar Nicole Freedman TODAY at 3:30pm EST!

Do you like the green / health benefits of cycling, but are concerned about the safety of biking in your city? Would you like to see your city made more safe and convenient for cycling? If you care about bicycles and the urban landscape (and we hope most of you do!), then be sure to JOIN US today at 3:30pm est to talk to …

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Join Our Live Webinar with Boston Bike Czar Nicole Freedman TOMORROW at 3:30pm EST!

Our Green Talks series of interviews with green thought-leaders has been a smash success so far – garnering hundreds of registrants and viewers from all over the globe, and we’re super excited about the next one, which is happening TOMORROW at 3:30pm est! with Boston’s Bike “Czar” Nicole Freedman. We’re beyond thrilled to announce this interview with Nicole, as she is the driving force behind the first citywide bike-sharing system in the United States! …

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ANNOUNCING: Our Next Green Talk with Tom Hicks of the USGBC!

ATTENTION GREEN BUILDERS!
We’re still energized from the success of our Webcast Editors Roundtable yesterday, and we’re thrilled to announce the next installation of Green Talks this coming Monday! On Monday, October 19, at 2:00pm EST, Inhabitat founder and editor-in-chief Jill Fehrenbacher will be moderate a live conversation with USGBC Vice President Tom Hicks on greenbuilding practices, LEED and the USGBC. The second installment in our series of Green Talks will provide an inside look at the USGBC, exploring advances and initiatives that are driving sustainable building both stateside and abroad. This presentation and discussion is sure to be really thought provoking, and we want YOU to join us!

SIGN UP HERE TO JOIN IN THE CONVERSATION >

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Join our Inhabitat Editors Roundtable Webinar TODAY at 1pm est!

CALLING ALL INHABITAT READERS – Don’t miss the Inhabitat Editors Roundtable Webinar (and your chance to win this awesome $1700 Biomega bike!) TODAY at 1pm est!

Last week we kicked off an exciting new project for Inhabitat called Green Talks. This series of live webinar discussions and presentations will engage with green thought leaders around the country to bring you the freshest ideas in emerging green design and innovation. Our very first ‘Green Talk‘ kicks off the series today as a roundtable discussion with four Inhabitat editors: Editor-in-Chief Jill Fehrenbacher, Managing Editor Mike Chino, New York Editor Yuka Yoneda and Technology Editor Ariel Schwartz.

We’re super excited about this opportunity to connect with our readers, so if you have a question about green design, about Inhabitat – or about anything at all, come join our conversation.

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GREEN TALKS: Meet the Inhabitat Editors and Win A $1700 Folding Bike!

Hey Inhabitat Readers from around the globe! Want to meet the editors of Inhabitat and win this awesome folding bike – valued at $1700?
As we head into October we’re thrilled to announce a fabulous new initiative at Inhabitat: GREEN TALKS! We’re going to be harnessing the power of the internet to bring you LIVE presentations about future-forward green initiatives from public officials and renowned innovators – thanks to Adobe Connect Pro meeting software. We’ll be kicking off INHABITAT GREEN TALKS this month with our first ever Meet the Inhabitat Editors webcast!

We’re inviting you to share your questions and comments about our website and get to know the editors — and to encourage active conversation and participation from our readers, we’ll be giving away a super sleek Biomega Boston folding bike valued at over $1,700 to one lucky participant! So if you have something to say to the Inhabitat editors, and you want to win a sweet bike while you are at it, please JOIN US IN THIS CONVERSATION NEXT WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 14th at 1PM EST!

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Introducing Inhabitat’s Green Talks Webcast Series!

Announcing Green Talks! Starting next week, Inhabitat will be hosting a series of webcasts with sustainability luminaries from across the US, and we want you to join in the conversation! These interactive online meet-ups will focus on green architecture and design in three cities that have been making huge strides toward sustainability – Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. We’ll be harnessing Adobe Connect Pro to bring …

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Inhabitat Exclusive Video: The NYC High Line Opens!

This week the highly anticipated High Line Park in NYC opened to the public for the first time. We were super excited to be on the scene for a sneak peek of the new elevated park, which was built on the remains of an abandoned rail system in New York City. Check out our video of the new High Line, with exclusive interviews with the design team including Lead Designer and …

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VIDEO: Tennis Ball Chair Designer Hugh Hayden

We love being on hand for the Spring design shows because they offer rare up close and personal access to the designers we mostly admire from afar the rest of the year. This year, we were fortunate enough to score some face time with FUNature creator Hugh Hayden at BKLYN Designs. In between bounces in his whimsical chairs, we listened as Hayden discussed everything from the short lifespan of a tennis ball to how …

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VIDEO: Inhabitat Green Tour of BKLYN Designs

It’s hard to capture all of the excitement of this year’s BKLYN Designs in words and photos alone – which is why we’re thrilled to bring you a video tour of our favorite green design picks from the show! Follow Inhabitat founder Jill Fehrenbacher and crew as they scout out hot new products and get exclusive interviews with the designers that created them. For more coverage of the stellar show, be …

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Energy 101 INTERVIEW: IBM’s Drew Clark on Future Smart Meters

In last week’s Energy 101 column, we looked at some of the home energy monitoring devices currently available and explored the ways that they can help us live more efficient, eco-conscious lives. But with smart grid technologies rapidly approaching, a new group of energy-tracking devices is emerging. We had the chance to speak with Drew Clark, Director of Strategy for IBM’s Venture Capital Group, about what the future holds for smart meter technology.

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INTERVIEW: John Viera of Ford Motor Company

Just yesterday we had the chance to sit down with John Viera, Ford Motor Company’s Director of Sustainable Business Strategies, to talk about how the Big Three manufacturer is going green. Viera touched on a number of topics, but we were most interested in what he had to say about Ford’s future in plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and electric vehicles (EV). Read on for our exclusive interview!

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Objectified Director Gary Hustwit Interviewed by Dwell

Our good friends at Dwell Magazine recently conducted an excellent interview with director Gary Hustwit (of Helvetica fame) about his upcoming film Objectified. Whether you’re an industrial designer, a design junkie, or just eagerly anticipating the coming film (we are!), their extended conversation offers an insightful look at the nature of good design, the objects we use everyday, and the current state of industrial design.
Check out the …

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INTERVIEW: Mark Wigley on Greening Architecture Schools

Buildings account for almost half (48%) of all greenhouse-gas emissions annually.
This oft-repeated statistic highlights what many architects and designers have long realized: The building industry has a profound impact on the state of our environment. But is environmental awareness really making enough inroads into the curriculum of design schools, in the places where it could potentially have the most impact on the future of the industry? As a graduate student in Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), I am both concerned and optimistic about the changes I see taking place in architecture academia. While environmental design isn’t nearly as entrenched as it should be into the core curriculums of design schools, students seem to be clamoring to learn more about this topic and are demanding new classes and are shaping their own academic paths. Recently I sat down with Mark Wigley, dean of Columbia’s GSAPP, to talk about the changes currently taking place within architecture schools to address the growing concern of sustainability. Read on to hear what Mark Wigley has to say about sustainable design….

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VIDEO: Tom Dixon on Sustainable Design

Tom Dixon, design pioneer and all around renaissance man, was one of the big hits of the recent HauteGREEN festivities, where he spoke about issues, concerns and contradictions in sustainable design, including materials, production, recycling and economics. Thanks to the video producers of Scribemedia, we have a great video of his conversation with design journalist Julie Taraska, in which he discusses his own work, sustainability, and his brilliant new Second Cycle initiative for Artek.

This video is just a quick snapshot of his thought-provoking talk. For those of you who are interested, watch the entire, unabridged version here at Scribemedia >

+ Tom Dixon @ HauteGREEN

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INTERVIEW: YVES BEHAR ON SUSTAINABILITY

The designer behind the One Laptop Per Child Project, Yves Behar is truly a world-class designer, balancing aesthetics, function, and socially-based initiatives. Founder and principal designer of FuseProject, he also happens to be the Chair of the Industrial Design Department at San Francisco’s California College of the Arts. Recently, he facilitated a design studio in which Industrial Design students partnered with South Korean cell phone manufacturer Pantech to design new cell-phone models, taking on the future of mobile communications and addressing the idea of emotional networking. I had a chance to speak to Yves about the studio, sustainability, and more…

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INTERVIEW WITH CIVIL TWILIGHT

Last week, we mentioned Civil Twilight’s lunar-resonant streetlighting, a project that won the top honor from Metropolis Magazine’s Next Generation contest this year. But we were pleased (but not surprised) to discover that this project is just the tip of the iceberg; the Bay Area-based collective has a slew of other equally-engaging projects in the works (including the mycofarmhouse, in which mushrooms break down and recycle wood-frame buildings). They describe their design process as “brilliant simplicity, across scales and media.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Read on for some more info about their winning streetlights, other projects, their approach to sustainability, and the trio of talent that is Civil Twilight:

On sustainability: “While we feel a sense of responsibility, we aren’t motivated by a grudging sense of duty or ideology, but rather by a general sense of wonder in the world. We try to instill that sense of amazement through our projects—the idea that sustainable design could mean a moonlit walk in the park.”

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INTERVIEW: Designer Fumi Masuda

Japanese designer Fumi Masuda, whose Pile Chair was featured this morning, was recently in São Paulo, Brazil to give a lecture about sustainable design. He also conducted workshops involving Brazilian and Japanese design students and some members of Coopamare, a group of people that earn their bread collecting used papers from the street to sell for the recycling industry. I had the chance to talk to Fumi before the lecture. He told me a little bit about his history and offered some interesting perspectives on the sustainable design market…

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MARK WIGLEY Interview from BLDGBLOG

Our friend Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG recently published this fascinating interview with Columbia’s dean Mark Wigley. In case you aren’t familiar, Mark Wigley is Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University (architecture school of Inhabitat’s Founder, Jill Fehrenbacher). He is also the author of Constant’s New Babylon and The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt, among others, and co-founder of Volume magazine. The interview focuses mostly on Volume, but also touches on sustainability, architectural education, and more. Check it out…

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INTERVIEW WITH TOBY LONG: Living Classroom

As a follow-up to our previous Toby Long interview, we thought it fitting to highlight one particular (and very exciting) community-based green building project that Toby and Clever Homes have been working on in San Francisco’s Hunter Point neighborhood. Breaking ground within the next few months, the Living Classroom is a community building that will house a variety of programs put forth by LEJ (Literacy for Environmental Justice), a non-profit organization supporting urban environmental education and youth empowerment in the Bayview/Hunters Point area.

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INTERVIEW: Cameron Sinclair, Open Architecture Network

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Cameron Sinclair to talk about his recently-launched Open Architecture Network. He describes it as a “gift to the design community” with a simple mission: “to generate design opportunities that will improve living standards for all” by providing an open-source platform through which ANYone can view, post, share, and adapt sustainable, humanitarian-based, scalable solutions. The idea that designs and all associated documents can and should be shared within the decidedly proprietary architectural industry is truly innovative, and could very well aid in the reshaping of the entire architectural profession into a more socially-focused and responsible vocation. Read on for a full transcription of the interview and a video of Cameron at last year’s TED conference.

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INTERVIEW: Ed Mazria from Architecture 2030

[Image: Ed Mazria, photographed by Doug Hoeschler for Metropolis].

Last year, Ed Mazria and his New Mexico-based non-profit organization, Architecture 2030, released the 2030 Challenge to get the building industry completely carbon neutral by the year 2030.

Buildings are the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions, worldwide. As Mazria states in the following interview: “48% of total US energy consumption… can be attributed to the building sector, most of which… can be attributed just to building operations.” By 2030, to prevent “catastrophic” climate change, the building sector must become carbon neutral ‐ reaching that state is the 2030 Challenge. If this sounds impossible, Architecture 2030 reminds us that “these targets are readily achievable.”

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PREFAB FRIDAY: Interview with Leo Marmol

At the recent Dwell On Design conference in Palm Springs, I had the opportunity to talk one-on-one with Leo Marmol of Marmol Radziner about prefab architecture and sustainability. I asked him about his trajectory as a designer, and what opportunities he sees for prefab to have a larger impact on a wider, more affordable market. His response was thoughtful and optimistic, and provided some great insight into the mind of a forward-thinking and increasingly green designer.

Click on the image above to watch the interview or read below for the full interview transcription.

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PREFAB FRIDAY: Interview with JENNIFER SIEGAL

We love the work of Jennifer Siegal’s Office of Mobile Design, and at this past weekend’s Dwell On Design conference in Palm Springs, I had the opportunity to talk to her in person about green architecture and her prefab designs. The recent completion of her ShowHouse serves as a great example of efficiently and effectively executed prefab construction combined with a seamless integration of green materials and technologies.

Watch the video here or read on for the interview transcription.

+ Office of Mobile Design

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INTERVIEW: Workshop APD’s Sustainable New Orleans

Back in late August, Global Green and Brad Pitt announced the winners of the Global Green Sustainable Design Competition For New Orleans. The winning proposal, titled GreeNOLA and submitted by Matthew Berman and Andrew Kotchen of Workshop APD, calls for six houses and two multifamily units which employ energy-efficient appliances, solar power, and recycled building materials, as well as providing social services like child care and a community garden. Workshop APD’s proposal is designed to cut pollution and decrease operating energy use by 50-60 percent, compared to traditional homes. The success of the GreeNOLA design is its seemless integration of cutting edge green technology with the traditional building wisdom of the region. This combination creates healthy and affordable new residences for displaced residents of New Orleans. Groundbreaking of the new complex starts this January.

I sat down with the two architects to discuss their winning design proposal for rebuilding in New Orleans….

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