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THE LITTLE BUILDING THAT COULD

Can a building produce electricity instead of consuming it, even in sometimes frigid Minnesota? That was the question designers of the Science House at the Science Museum of Minnesota asked two years ago when they built the 1,400-square-foot building. With a year's worth of data in hand, the answer is yes. From February 2004 to February 2005, the building generated 8,000 kilowatts of electricity and used 6,000 kilowatt hours. The little building is the centerpiece of the museum's 1.75 acre Big Back Yard, where a mini-golf course illustrates geological landforms and edible plants soften the former industrial landscape. From May to October, the Science House holds experiments and exhibits and provides restrooms and shelter. Designed by architects Barbour/LaDouceur, with energy modeling done by The Weidt Group, the building has six-inch-thick walls filled with high-grade foam. Energy-efficient windows draw in southern light without letting a lot of heat escape. High clerestory windows bring in daylight and minimize the need for lights. About 12,000 square feet of razor-thin photovoltaic film applied to the metal roof converts 8 percent of sunlight to electricity, which is stored in four direct-current boxes on the building's side. The technology used in the Science House won the award for most innovative method at this summer's conference of the European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.
Minneapolis Star Tribune, 5 Aug 05, p ARCH0807, by Linda Mack.

GREEN DESIGN: ALL SKIN AND NO BONES?

By focusing almost exclusively on the skins of buildings, while virtually ignoring their bones, proponents of sustainable design have overlooked one of the most important determinants of architectural form. If the primary goal is to use fewer resources, one way to accomplish this is to rethink the relationships between material and form. Standard structural members (columns, beams, studs) are over designed, not just in size, but also in shape, to aid assembly. Mark West, director of the Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology at the University of Manitoba is experimenting with textile-formed concrete. Compared to conventional concrete formwork, textile molds can achieve forms that are at once more complex and cheaper and easier to assemble. For a typical beam, this technique uses up to 300 times less volume and weight in formwork material and half the concrete of an equivalent rectangular beam. The resulting fluid form, says West, "places material only where it is needed and uses the material at optimum stress lvels at every point along its span." Although Thomas Jefferson and Antonio Gaudi used visionary geometry, examples of strategies among contemporary designers are rare—but compelling—and mostly come from engineers, not architects. One example is New York structural engineer Guy Nordenson, who has combined vertical and lateral load systems by experimenting with torqued forms not unlike Gaudi's.

ECO-DƒCOR, FOR A GREENER HOME

It's getting easier and more stylish to be green at home with these new furnishings: 1) Crate & Barrel has jumped on the bandwagon with the Bento collection of furniture, using boards made from pressed bamboo. 2) Hudson Furniture offers a king-size platform bed with attached night tables made from sustainably harvested American cherry wood. It uses dove-tail joinery rather than screws and nails and has a hand-hued finish rather than glue and polyurethane. 3) Q Collections, which uses natural materials, makes ceramic garden stools that are fired in a wood kiln and glazed clear without harmful colorants. 4) The Pee Wee side table, by Oly, is made of a solid teak slab from an Indonesian supplier that replants trees. 5) The Sophia Collection, from Q Collection, is 96 inches long and has cushions stuffed with down and feathers harvested, the makers say, from free-range chicks.
The New York Times, 8 Sep 05, p D7, by Marianne Rohrlich.

UREA-FORMALDEHYDE-FREE PARTICLEBOARD

Roseburg Forest Products of Roseburg, Oregon, has introduced SkyBlendú, the first general-use particleboard produced with phenol-formaldehyde (PF) binder instead of the industry-standard urea-formaldehyde (UF). While SkyBlend is not the only particleboard product on the market made with PF binder, it is the only conventional particleboard with this distinction that Environmental Building News is aware of. SkyBlend particleboard is made from western softwood fibers and is Green Cross-certified by Scientific Certification Systems as being made from 100% recycled wood fibers (a post-industrial waste product from lumber mills). The wood fiber is not FSC-certified. SkyBlend particleboard costs about twice that of conventional particleboard. Even with the premium price, the product is very competitive with other particleboard and medium-density fiberboard products that are not made with UF resins—including Sierra Pines Medite II¨ line and the straw particleboard products WoodStalkú and PrimerBoardú, all of which are made with non-formaldehyde MDI (a polyurethane binder).
Environmental Building News Sep 05, p 9, by Alex Wilson.

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