ON 'TRAVEL AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT' News flash: The distance between a residential development location and the metropolitan center is one of the strongest factors influencing how much residents will drive. The density of a neighborhood, in and of itself, turns out to be the weakest of the commonly considered "D" variables, key dimensions of the built environment that influence how — and how much — people move around. — Published 2010.0818
	POSTCARD FROM FRANKFURT Dear ArchitectureWeek, The Passivhaus standard for energy efficiency isn't just for houses. This we learned in Germany recently, on a fascinating tour of green building and design there, organized by the Ecologic Institute environmental think tank with funding from the German government. — Published 2010.0428
	BURJ KHALIFA In 2007, several records fell as the Burj Dubai skyscraper climbed above that city-state's skyline. In May 2007, the Burj surpassed the height of the tallest building in the United States, the Sears Tower (recently renamed the Willis Tower), designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in the 1970s. SOM's Adrian Smith designed the Burj in the early years of the new millennium, but by the time the new skyscraper zoomed past Sears (at 1,450 feet, or 442 meters), Smith had left SOM to start his own firm. — Published 2010.0421
	GREEN GAS STATION? The irony of a LEED-certified gas station includes the fact that U.S. gas stations each currently deliver, on average, about 850,000 gallons of fossil fuel per year, representing about 8,200 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per gas station annually — not to mention the wide range of environmental impacts along the overall petroleum production chain. This station is a beautiful structure — but how green can it be? Does a greenwashing project like this — however elegantly designed as a structure — deserve coverage in a professional architecture magazine? What about the designers of such a project? Author Philip Jodidio discusses the broader context below. Comment online. — Editor — Published 2010.0407
	MAYA LIN - UNCHOP A TREE As we wait and listen around the world to hear what new increment of our collective fate will emerge from the final days of the Copenhagen climate conference, this new video piece by Maya Lin, itself an increment of her "What is Missing?" environmental memorial project, speaks deeply on the disaster of ongoing deforestation. — Published 2009.1216
	GREENBUILD REPORT 2009 "Almost 40 percent of the global warming pollution in our country comes from old, inefficient, leaky buildings that don't have to be that way." So said former Vice President Al Gore as he opened Greenbuild 2009. — Published 2009.1209
	WE CAN'T IGNORE CLIMATE CHANGE At a Clean Energy Economy Forum at the White House on October 7, 2009, J. Wayne Leonard, the chairman and CEO of Entergy Corporation, a Fortune 500 energy company based in New Orleans, spoke about the urgency of addressing climate change. —Editor — Published 2009.1021
	MAKING BUILDINGS GOOD The days of making the business case for sustainable design, or even explaining what LEED means and why it is important, have passed. Today's green building challenges have moved to more complicated areas of policy — permitting and politics — and the motivating sense of competition to be "the greenest." — Published 2009.0722
	BUILDINGS AND THE CLIMATE BILL It's important to "get things right" when a new building is constructed. More so than perhaps anything else we create, new buildings will be with us for a very long time. The greenhouse gas cap-and-trade section of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill gets most of the attention, as it should, but the bill has many other provisions, some of which are directly important to the building industry. — Published 2009.0624
	PELLI'S PLATINUM VISIONAIRE At first glance, the glossy new 35-story condominium tower slicing into the lower Manhattan skyline doesn't stand out as a beacon of sustainable design. Its sleek form — an extruded curving wedge accented with red terra cotta bands — looks more Ferrari than Prius. And the structure's granite base and travertine lobby walls are elements not usually associated with green building. — Published 2009.0610

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