Cooper Green Design | The Blog

I frequently read The Lorax by Dr Seuss to my son. In the story, The Once-ler develops a new business; chopping down Truffala trees to make Thneads (which everyone needs). As more and more trees are used, the Bar-ba-loots, who depend on the Truffala trees’ fruit, no longer have enough to eat. The Lorax pleads [...]

I spend an inordinate amount of time talking about toilet rooms at work. I’ve had meetings and dedicated to waterless urinals, pressure assisted toilets, and a variety of toilet room smells. The latest round of conference calls has focused on high efficiency hand dryers in several projects.
First, high efficiency hand dryers are the new-ish models [...]

Israel’s Pavilion is the feature of part 2 of my series on green design at the Shanghai World Expo 2010.
This is Israel’s first pavilion in a World Expo. The theme is “Innovation for Better Life,” and the design by Haim Dotan brings natural features and technology in harmony with one another. I [...]

In 85 days, the 2010 World Expo opens in Shanghai, China. For the next 10 days, I’ll be featuring some of the more interesting pavilions under construction, and their green features.
First up: Switzerland’s “Rural-Urban Interaction” Pavilion
The 43,000 sf pavilion is designed by Buchner Bründler Architects and Element GmbH of Germany. According to the official Swiss [...]

I love the question asked of Paul King by a Drexel University student at Greenbuild today. She simply asked him to give his personal definition of “sustainable.”
Five years ago at Greenbuild, it seemed that everyone was caught up in semantics: Green vs. Sustainable vs. Eco-friendly vs. Bio-inspired. Various definitions were overly debated and argued, with [...]

In 2000, I worked at the Center for Building Performance & Diagnostics at Carnegie Mellon University. My office was in the Intelligent Workplace, an energy efficient space that functioned as working laboratory on the roof of Margaret Morrison. One of the research projects that I was involved in was Building as Power Plant, [...]

Cooper Green Design with 4 Elements Group is providing LEED consulting services for the East Hartford Fire Station No. 5 in East Hartford, CT. The project is registered under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED 2009 Rating System and is anticipating Silver Certification.
Architect: Silver Petrucelli + Associates

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Cooper Green Design, with 4 Elements Group, is providing LEED consulting services for the Centerpont CT campus in Middletown, CT.  The campus includes 7 new 2-story buildings and one existing building renovation. Spaces are available for purchase or for lease in an “office-condo” arrangement. The first phase includes 3 new buildings that are registered under [...]

 
While in Trento, Italy, I snapped the perfect photo for my daylighting course. The building on the right uses many of the strategies that I discuss with my students:

The generous roof overhang is shading the windows on the third and fourth floors. The shutters are open, allowing the occupants to have a view, indirect daylighting, [...]

I spent the last week of June in Trento, Italy during the San Vigilio Festival. The city is surrounded by hills and mountains on all sides, and the Adige River to the west.  Several days into my stay, the wind was calm enough to take the cable car up to the village of Sardagna. I [...]