futuristic sustainable living with the hover home!

Hello blogosphere!

Hover House 3 is an innovative model for sustainable living.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the FLOAT House – an innovative design that allows homes to “float” in cases of flooding and sea level rise. While making your house able to float on water is cool, how about a hovering house? Glen Irani Architects has worked to design the aesthetically flawless and energy efficient “Hover House 3.”

Located in Los Angeles, the goal of the house is to hover the building structure over outdoor living space in order to maximize the amount of outdoor square footage a property has in an tightly fit urban location.

These hovering structures also reduce indoor floor area significantly, which help lower building costs and consumption of dwindling building resources. The home also boasts large windows, photovoltaic panels on its roof, and many other sustainability-improved technologies.

Happy Sustainable Living!
- Emily

Renewable Energy Comes of Age, Part 8

Last week, I attended the Clean Economy Summit in Washington DC.  It was full of movers and shakers in the emerging markets of clean and green business.  The following series of posts are from an article by Don Schjeldahl, Vice President of Renewable Energy Strategies.

Continued Growth in Renewable Energy

“Congressional inaction aside, continued growth in renewable energy and related industries in the U.S. is expected but perhaps not as robust as it might be. Helping move the market forward in the leadership vacuum are federal and state regulators who will likely step forward to drive industry supporting initiatives. Guaranteed markets for renewable energy products exist in the 29 states that have adopted mandatory RPS. An additional seven states have RPS goals.

Limits placed on greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon cap-and-trade legislation, would help renewable energy markets to develop by shifting demand from coal to non-emitting power sources. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has authority, under the Clean Air Act and confirmed by an April 2007 Supreme Court ruling, to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. However it is unlikely that the EPA will issue carbon regulations anytime soon.

Congressional and EPA inaction on carbon doesn’t mean the EPA won’t dramatically impact the future for renewable energy. By mid-2011 the EPA is expected to finalize power plant emission regulations for mercury, SOx (sulfur oxides) and NOx (nitrogen oxides) under the current Clean Air Act. With compliance targeted for 2015, up to 30% of U.S. coal plants could be decommissioned because they use older technology and plant upgrades are not economical. When this happens greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by default and renewable energy systems become more attractive from both cost and clean air standpoints.”
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Part 7

Part 9

Renewable Energy Comes of Age, Part 7

Last week, I attended the Clean Economy Summit in Washington DC.  It was full of movers and shakers in the emerging markets of clean and green business.  The following series of posts are from an article by Don Schjeldahl, Vice President of Renewable Energy Strategies.

United States Energy Policy

“The specifics of where and when the growth of new energy economy jobs will occur remains sketchy. Big winners in terms of job growth will be those jurisdictions that carefully nurture cluster development. Germany, Spain, Italy and Japan were early entrants in support of solar, wind and biomass in the 1980s and 90s and remain strong global competitors. Since 2000 China has outpaced everyone in developing products and they are gearing to dominate renewable energy markets worldwide.

As for the United States, a lack of continuity in government policy and the 50 state fragmentation of utility regulation have retarded domestic job growth. Continued bickering in Congress also does little to reduce uncertainty in domestic markets but goes a long way in bolstering development of foreign manufacturing clusters.

In the wake of the November mid-term elections it appears unlikely that Congress will pass significant energy legislation over the next two years – including legislation that would accelerate industry growth such as regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, a national renewable energy portfolio standard (RPS) that mandates renewable energy production, or initiatives in support of power grid redesign.”
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Part 6

Part 8

Renewable Energy Coming of Age, Part 1

Last week, I attended the Clean Economy Summit in Washington DC.  It was full of movers and shakers in the emerging markets of clean and green business.  The following series of posts are from an article by Don Schjeldahl, Vice President of Renewable Energy Strategies.

The New Energy Economy: The Smart Grid

“A characteristic of the new energy economy is how technologies and markets are interlaced. The smart grid provides a mechanism for accommodating power generation alternatives like solar, wind, and geothermal.  The smart grid also provides an opportunity for increased protection from cyber attack and will facilitate the incorporation of power storage. One power storage option gaining strength is the integration of after-market electric car batteries for storing distributed power from renewable sources such as solar modules on a residential rooftop. Incorporation of storage batteries on the power grid would accelerate adoption of both electric vehicles and distributed renewable energy. The smart grid’s backbone is the digital electric meter that supports two-way communications between users and producers.  Nearly 15 million smart meters are already deployed in the U.S., with over 50 million expected by 2014,  and many more in subsequent years.”

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Part 2

Share comments with President Obama after the State of the Union!

Business: working toward a clean economy, now.

I have exciting news to share.

I have spent the last two days at the Clean Economy Summit in Washington, DC and met amazing and influential people from all corners of the country.

This weekend, I became acquainted with Greg Nelson, Deputy Director of Public Engagement for President Obama.  As we spoke about energy policy and real estate development, Greg was curious to hear what my thoughts would be on the President’s energy policy–to pass on to the President.   And I’d like to hear from you to help formulate what I will share.

Here’s what I’m looking for: watch President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight at 6 pm PST, January 25.  Take notes on what your opinions are regarding the parts of his speech that refer to energy policy and business in clean economy.  Send them to me via email or Facebook.  Greg Nelson will be sending me a text file of the President’s script for me to make notes on and send back to the President.  I look forward to sharing with him my tenets about sustainability, green innovation, and business.

-Kevin

Vision Plus Research & Development Equals…

From our friend, green architect Benjamin Parco:

See his last three posts here: Design and Consumer Products | Distilling Customer Desire | Great Engineering

“Vision + R&D = a lineage of products, which become a legacy

Finally, what Apple has that so many lack is vision and the audacity to manifest it. While Apple’s leaders understand what their customers want and need, they also see the possibilities. They see how things could be at some point in the future. They see their customer’s wants, needs and desires before their customers even knew they wanted, needed or desired them. Apple literally visualizes a world based on how they think it should be and then one product at a time, they build that world. Each product builds upon the last and before we know it  they’ve painted for us all a cohesive family of products, which all support and draw upon each other. And when the economy is down and other companies are slashing costs anywhere they can Apple pours resources into R&D, continuing to design the world they know they are creating.

So what can the world of architecture and construction learn from this?  I’ll elaborate on that next, in future posts.”

Thanks, Ben!

Distilling Customer Desire for Smart Design

From our friend and colleague, green architect Benjamin Parco:

See the previous post on Design and the Future of Consumer Products here.

“Distill the why from your customer, derive the how from that, and design the what around both:

Apple also understands that consumers aren’t designers. Surveying your market can be incredibly useful but only if you know what questions to ask. Ask the wrong questions and you could be off on a very costly wild goose chase. Far too much market research done today tries to get the consumer to answer the how question, and in the worst examples even the what question.  This puts the cart way before the horse.

However, if asked the right kinds of questions, customers can help product designers understand why they might want, need or use a new product. The tricky part is that you can’t ask your customer the why question directly. Instead, the why of it must be cleverly distilled from the customer’s wants, needs and desires. With this information in hand, a good designer can design how a product might be used in a way that strikes a subtle and elusive but very powerful chord in the consumer, a chord that will have them coming back for more over and over again. Apple is painfully consistent about this approach and in doing so has created the greatest consumer technology cult following ever.”

More tomorrow from Ben.

Design and the Future of Consumer Products

This, from our guest writer and friend, sustainable architect Benjamin Parco:

“This week for the fist time ever Apple’s market capitalization surpassed that of Microsoft. How did this happen?

User experience vs. technology for the sake of it:

Microsoft is a technology company. Apple is also a technology company… one wrapped in a lifestyle company. Apple gets that the how and why of what has people interacting with technology is far more important than the what of it or maybe more precisely that the how and why drive the what. One can’t design a successful consumer product unless one knows how and why people will use it. Only then can you decide what it will be. Apple understands this better than any technology company ever has.”

More from Ben on Design tomorrow.