An Israeli bank tries to sell “green mortgages” with installation exhibit on busy boulevard. As part of their campaign to sell “green mortgages” (in other words, mortgages for homes built with environmentally friendly construction or for financing the installation of solar home energy systems), Bank Hapoalim has sponsored an exhibition of futuristic green homes along […]
Tareq Emtairah built this eco-house to prove that energy efficient buildings aren’t always prohibitively expensive. Jordan’s Prince Hassan does not shoulder his environmental concerns alone, nor is the Red-Dead canal project the singular answer to Jordan’s worries. In 2005, Tareq Emtairah, a consultant with the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University in […]
With a mantra to “design like you give a damn,” Sinclair has transformed thousands of lives. Whether to save governments billions of dollars in mutual conservation efforts or to share information about the harmful effects of meat, great things happen when people get together to achieve a common good. Few people know this better than […]
The demand for Jerusalem stone comes with a social and environmental cost We have applauded Jerusalem’s living building, and we have drooled over delicious vegan dishes offered by Eucalyptus Restaurant in the Khutzot HaYotzer artist’s quarter. But nothing defines the city’s visual character more definitively than the prolific presence of Jerusalem stone.
Foster+Partners, architect firm, claim projects like Masdar City are sustainable. Are they? Meet Foster + Partners: one thousand employees work in their twenty-two offices scattered around the world. Their employees hail from 50 nations, which diversity they say leads to “creativity, innovation, and motivation.” They are the people behind projects such as Masdar City that […]
“The New York Times reports the unveiling of the French architect’s latest Middle Eastern project To some, the desert comprises an intimidating plain of dirty barren nothingness; to others, like Lucy, a source of happiness and inspiration. And to others still, like Ilana Meallem, it is a way of life. Ilana graduated from the Arava […]
Is it really sensible to squish one million people into this self-sustaining city/building? Like many of Dubai’s projects The World, which will exacerbate shoreline erosion and habitat loss, and Burj Dabai, reputedly the world’s tallest building, are flashy and expensive. They are also divorced from the United Arab Emirates’ environmental hazards such as scant freshwater […]
When you live in a city and pass the same developed areas day after day, you can forget that the concrete jungle is unnatural. Sure, it may feel natural to you after a while, but you would undoubtedly also enjoy some greenery. Some botanical specimens to offset the amounts of carbon dioxide released by the […]
From a heritage building in the historic region of Cappadocia, Turkey, this hotel works with local crafts and craftsmen. It is important to apply eco-friendly labeling carefully. This is especially true of the tourism industry that is often guilty of green-washing potential patrons to lure them to their site. We have written about eco-lodges such […]
A beautiful, uber-designed kindergarten was recently completed in Ramat Hasharon, a suburb of Tel Aviv in Israel. A collaboration of Sarit Shani Hay (who makes unique toys, children’s furnishings, and textiles) and Lev-Gargir architects, the design philosophy for the space was that “the environment children grow up in strongly reflects how their sensibilities develop and […]
The Jerusalem Seminar in Architecture, an international conference series initiated in 1992, is devoted to discussing contemporary issues in the fields of architecture, urban planning and design. And since green design is one of the most important issues in contemporary architecture, the last conference (25-27 of January, 2009) was on the subject of Green Design: […]
We’ve had our eyes on Greek-Israeli green architect, Elias Messinas, for a while. President of the NGO ECOWEEK (active in Greece, Cyprus, and Israel), and an environmental consultant to the Kramim Eco Village project in Israel, he’s also been busy over the past year in organizing a “green” civil engineering lecture series for the city […]
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may still be considered as one of the most conservative from a religious standpoint. But with the opening of the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, otherwise known as KAUST, a new era in academic learning, combined with new innovations in ecological architecture and design, has begun in which […]
Boycotting and destabilizing a country’s business heart for political reasons is fine in my books. But boycotting art, schools, or the environment? Spain, with which Israel has a number of high profile collaborative environmental projects in solar energy and in water, have decided to boycott a solar science project from an Israeli academic team because […]
Israeli architect Zvika Tamari (of TeaM Architects) recently proposed a conceptual plan for a Globe Ecological Hub in Modiin, a city in the center of Israel between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. What is a Globe Ecological Hub? In Tamari’s conception, it is an organically shaped, grass-roofed eco-dome located in the center of the city and […]