Out of San Francisco comes a fascinating new green idea—reusing shipping containers for housing that would otherwise collect and clutter shipping yards and overtime rust and degrade the acres of land they are stacked upon. The man behind it: Joel Karr, an architect who has devoted much of his career to sustainable solutions involving underused shipping containers (50% of shipping containers receive only a single use due to the cost of reusing them for shipping). Container Nation, a subsidiary of Karr’s firm, Group 41, recently revealed some of its newest concepts for reuse of shipping containers.

Karr’s first experiment in Tokyo involved using the containers as trash receptacles to power surrounding buildings with methane gas created by the waste. Since then, his ideas have become even more inventive progressing from rough reuse in the shipping yards to stacking containers to create mixed-income apartment housing. It seems improbable, but a housing project in Salt Lake City, Utah, begs to differ. There, shipping containers may provide a low-cost building material creating a simplistic and synergetic solution to low-cost housing and container reuse. Proposals for the project scheduled to begin in early 2010 include two different stacking designs: the “Red Container Scheme” and the “Curve Scheme”.

"Red Container Scheme"

"Curve Scheme"

Besides this ingenious use, containers may also be used for homeless housing or emergency housing. To see more on this, check out Container Nation's video for Google’s 10 to the 100th competition.

http://www.containernation.com/project-google.php

The blocks and neighborhoods of New York City are in a constant state of demographic, cultural, and physical change.  As attitudes and tastes change, architecture changes with them, and new replaces old in a continuing cycle.  The clash of old and new in the City has helped shape the evolution of historic preservation in America -- for example, the demolition of Penn Station in the 1960s galvanized the preservation movement that was able to save Grand Central Station from a similar fate.  One result of the Penn Station debacle was the creation of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, the small City agency charged with preserving the City's heritage as expressed in its built environment.  Last week, the New York Times set out to evaluate how that agency is doing today.  Now is an important time to think about preservation, as the City has been enjoying a remarkable building boom in recent years and development pressure has never been higher.  

Unfortunately, the report shows that the agency is underfunded and understaffed to successfully pursue its mission in a City where there are so many people who care about the physical environment.  The LPC is forced to choose between "pursuing its own priorities" and being able to respond to landmark requests from the public, many of which reflect the real concerns of real people about the imminent loss of important parts of their neighborhoods.  The LPC lacks the resources it needs to protect the public good in NYC, and it appears not to leverage effectively the resources it does have -- the commissioners do not play an active role in what buildings come up for designation, for example.  A State Supreme Court judge recently ruled that unreasonable delays in responding to landmark requests undermine the very purpose of the LPC and must be addressed.  The City should take steps to improve its preservation agency while there are still landmarks to be saved.  

http://www.irinnews.org/PhotoDetail.aspx?ImageId=2008102028

Due to climate change, much of Bangladesh’s minimal land (144,000 sq km) is rapidly returning to the sea with projections of 1/5 diminished land area by 2050. The solution for the nation's occupants? Go with the flow.

Mohammed Rezwan, a native of Bangladesh and a trained architect, proposed utilizing boats for schools, health facilities, libraries, and agricultural training in a country where land, even where available, is not always stable. He then formed an NGO that builds boats for these purposes. Now, even schools continue through monsoons as students board boats rather than waiting for floodwaters to recede before they can travel to the school. For a country that oscillates between land and water, the concept of a water village provides an innovative and attractive solution.

http://www.irinnews.org/PhotoDetail.aspx?ImageId=2008102030

The villages would also be sustainable. Equipped with solar panels, each community boat provides for its own energy needs and also charges inexpensive solar lamps for houseboats. These lamps, also developed by the NGO which Rezwan runs, are given to top students at the school and made available to others for $7.30 US dollars. Though students would be able to charge their lamps at the school for no charge, the rest of the community would pay $.60 US each a month to charge their lamps on the community boats.

A village on water proposes an interesting approach to planning in overcrowded areas. Rather than creating land through fill (which would not be possible in Bangladesh), ignore the confines of land and simply create a floating village on the water.

Sunset on Swan Lake in Bigfork

Virginia City Streetscape

Virginia City streetscape

Interior of the Dry Goods store

It's common to every workplace; we want to impress our employer, and we will usually do what it takes to keep our jobs. As ht help politicians understand what we expect of them. To do so, we need to be well informed ourselves to give concrete feedback about their actions. Unless this happens, politicians will focus their efforts on large scale projects which sparkle and easily impress the untrained eye.

Though the wind plan is not feasible in NYC, channeling wind or solar power offers sustainable solutions for energy production in cities as the demand for energy continues to increase. Outfitting a big city to run off vertical turbine wind power proves expensive and near impossible due to structural realities, but other options for harnessing wind power are constantly being developed. In Guangzhou, China, the Pearl River Tower will capture wind through large scoops placed incrementally throughout the exterior walls of the tower. Once captured, the wind will be directed to turbines inside the tower, and the energy will then be used to power the HVAC.

Images: Top, Statue of Liberty with windmill in hand; Bottom, Pearl River Tower in Guangzhou, China                        

The NYT recently wrote about this accomplishment.