Since the foundation of the first Kibbutz in Israel, which today is a modern commune with various democratic, socialist or anarchistic systems in place (or not), nations around the world have looked to the Israeli model for communal living. You’ve seen American style communes and the problems there in the 60s in Mother Nature News, but Israel started differently as it was building up its newly established country.

I’ve lived in a kibbutz in Israel for one year when I was 29 and it was life-changing. Great for someone single, yes. Great for someone with young kids? Yes. Great for old age. Most definitely. But in the end, I chose the freedom of the city and owning my own home in the country.

There are religious kibbutzes in Israel, ones based on ecological and social experiments including open love and organic food. You can find one for all walks of life. But what if you are not in Israel and are thinking about making your own intentionally community in Portugal? In Costa Rica and which is not at Pacha Mama?

Start research on communal living with CALL

One of the cornerstones to learn about the foundations of the new commune and kibbutz movement is CALL (Communes at Large Letter), a free seasonal magazine that reports on intentional communities in Israel and the rest of the world. It’s a great resource to connect with offering a sober and realistic take on what building a commune entails? What about millennials? The last issue offers some very handy resources.

For those interested to know more about intentional communities, you can subscribe to CALL. It is a modest magazine that explores all ways of community living, and includes information on international conferences and events. This link here takes you to the latest 20/21 issue.

And a film worth checking out on the Israeli kibbutz movement is Apples and Oranges (2021), about sex, love, drugs and volunteering at a kibbutz in the 60s:

Communal living and how do we do it right is a particularly relevant concept in today’s world where some of us strive to build homes that are less impacting on the environment. We are seeing hundreds of queries of people looking to move to the nature in Portugal for instance (or to Texas – check out this course that helps you build straw bale homes) , but it’s happening anywhere and everywhere there is nature to be explored.

COVID accelerated the desire and need for people to find a new way of living.

CALL the organization itself, was started in 1976 at the initiative of the late Mordechai Bentov, a kibbutz member and cabinet minister.

Today their headquarters are at the Yad Tabenkin Institute, on the campus of Seminar Efal, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Check out their website and newsletter. Intentional communities are not just a kibbutz thing. There is also social permaculture, a way for people to farm and better the land with the support and interest of like minds all around. See our post on regenerative farming for more and check out the CALL newsletter in the link below.

::CALL

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With the increase of jobs and lure to tech in the Bay Area, where to lay one’s hat is still a main problem in today’s housing crisis. Maybe you are a carefree environmentalist who can work at the office by day and rent  a sleeping pod by night but if you are over the age of 27 living in teeny tiny houses and sharing “pods” and vans with friends, being green is probably no longer a fun experiment. Covid has taught us the importance of a stable home and WiFi, the need for a good kitchen and healthy food –– and also about community and space where we can wander or retreat with our bubble of friends or family. 

So what are the options for Bay dwellers? A new planned community called Lagoon Valley is being built between the Bay Area and Sacramento, and the project developers believe they are doing their part for planet earth. They are raising the green flag for all the people around the planet who may love Burning Man and glamping but ultimately want to settle into a place that helps define values and community and which may include aging parents. 

Using green building codes that will go above Californian standards, Lagoon Valley says they will also protect, improve, and preserve more than 1,300 acres of land and resources. Eighty-five percent of the community’s specific plan is dedicated to open space and parks and recreation — creating an environment where wildlife and people can thrive.

With the Bay Area as the largest tech market in the United States, San Francisco has a cost-of-living index of 269.3, almost twice as high as Vacaville, California. Lagoon Valley, on the outskirts of Vacaville, which broke ground in June, anticipates its first residents will move in summer of 2023. It is just 53 miles from San Francisco and will provide fourteen neighborhoods with 1,015 homes varying in size and price ranges, including neighborhoods offering affordable housing, as well as age-qualified residences, and estate homes designed to encourage multi-generational living. 

“We know that creating a conservation community is the right way. However, it is not the easy way, and Lagoon Valley has taken decades to plan,” says Curt Johansen, Development Director, Triad Lagoon Valley, LLC “Investing in the planet means living on it as lightly as possible. We’ve done that with this dynamic community.”

5 ways Lagoon Valley protects the earth and improves “human” well-being

Gardens in the center: The community’s organic, community-supported farming teaches children and adults to respect, protect, and care for the land in ways that inspire stewardship, social connection, and wellness, not to mention delicious dishes. 

Wetlands preservation in situ: Communities that combine wetlands preservation and expansive wildlife habitat in their neighborhood planning create positive change. In addition to encouraging the ecological literacy of community residents, they help maintain a balanced ecosystem. 

Solar Powered Homes: Solar energy, both active (for electricity) and passive (for winter heat retention and summer cooling), is no longer optional – it is essential to reduce our carbon footprint, reduce impacts to the biosphere, and mitigate climate change.

Car-optional community: like big cities where people can walk to work or walk to their local shops and community centers, Lagoon Valley is an intentional community that will make it easy for people to navigate and shop by foot or by bike.  

Using reclaimed water:  California’s drought problems are a liability if you are buying a home. Will you have water for the bath tomorrow? Lagoon homeowners have the option to reduce potable water consumption by up to 50% through reclamation of greywater built into their home. 

Some 72% of Lagoon Valley’s 2,400-acre specific plan is dedicated open space and 13% for parks and recreation. The neighborhoods are interconnected with trails that offer easy access to adjoining villages, the Town Center, the Community Farm, neighborhood parks, recreational facilities, an 18-hole golf course seeking Audubon certification, and a Community Event Center with a full complement of amenities. It will be the first conservation community of its kind in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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If you’ve ever had the experience of driving through a vast, mostly uncluttered landscape that is suddenly interrupted by a large, ill-fitting manmade structure, then this project by MZ Architects will appeal to you. Sustainability experts with offices in Lebanon, Morocco, Abu Dhabi and elsewhere, the designers have pushed the stadium underground and set it apart from the remaining void with sharp planes that are camouflaged from a distance. The concept has been designed for Al Ain – Abu Dhabi’s second largest city.

Sinking The Rock has multiple benefits. First it allows the building to blend in with the surrounding landscape, adding to its allure rather than destroying it. But it also allows the designer to utilize passive cooling strategies that will minimize the stadium’s energy loads once it is “up and running.”

Very concered to minimize non-renewable resource consumption and harmful toxins in their projects, MZ Architects will reuse the materials that are displaced during the construction of the stadium. This further reduces the embedded carbon footprint as fewer materials will have to be shipped in from afar to realize the program.

Like many contemporary architects, the firm has taken inspiration from the ancients both conceptually and philosophically. The first Greek stadium ever built took the surrounding topography into consideration and many subsequent stadia were partially submerged, while the Temple of Anahita – a grand entrance into the underground world – will lend a metaphysical aspect to Al Ain’s desert sporting events.

While large developers continue to construct obscene projects that pay absolutely no heed to environmental or planning concerns, sometimes to tragic effect as the recent fire in Qatar reveals, it is very refreshing to notice a more thoughtful trend emerging from designers servicing desert countries. Although informed by longstanding strategies, this new trend is by no means backward. It merely recognizes that nature will eventually prevail.

:: World Architecture News

More on Desert Architecture:

Curvy Desert Home Designed by Iranian Students Mimics the Snail

Iraqi Mud Architect Talks Corruption and Sustainability in the Middle East

Yemen’s Manhattan of the Desert Boasts 400 Habitable Towers

The post The Rock Stadium Rises from the Desert in Sharp Planes appeared first on Green Prophet.

Sometimes these terms are overused, as Brian pointed out with his interesting post on the “S” word, and sometimes they don’t paint a complete picture. Now there’s a new word floating around – locatat – that refers to building a habitat using materials sourced within a 100 mile radius. It’s like locavore but for builders and it has critics.

The birth of a word

Arch Daily writer Vanessa Quirk seems to have been the first person to coin the term locatat. Whether or not it will become widely used remains to be seen, but it is inspired by a unique initiative underway in Vancouver, Canada that we can all take inspiration from.

The Architecture Foundation of British Columbia recently launched the 100-Mile House design competition, which is premised on the notion that in the past, people built homes using local materials. Whether these homes were built from cedar or sod, carved out of caves or ice, the pre-industrial age mandated local innovation.

Now, any old Joe can walk into a hardware store, buy a pile of lumber that might have been shipped from halfway across the world, and build an un-conscious home. Globalization has made life convenient, which has turned the majority of us into shopping zombies who know very little about the source of the materials we use and their associated environmental impact.

Loca-build

The AFBC competition is inspired in part by the locavore movement, which encourages people to eat food that was produced within a 100 mile radius. Not only is this expected to reduce “food miles” or the carbon footprint associated with shipping food great distances so that it is possible to eat winter squash in the heat of summer, but it also supports community engagement and development.

Although critics of the locavore movement worry that supporting only local products and developments discourages innovation and deprives international producers of a profitable market, AFBC hopes that the challenge of building a house with materials sourced within 100 miles will spur ingenuity that can then be shared.

In the competition brief, AFBC says “It is hoped that necessity, as the mother of invention, will foster/ create prototypes that could be modified and the ideas exported to any geographic area.”

The winner of the 100MH will be announced on May 19, 2012. Stay tuned!

More on Local Architecture:

Earth-Friendly Vernacular Date Palm Architecture

World Famous Architects Admire Vernacular Moroccan Architecture

Iraqi Mud Architect Wins Prestigious Sustainability Award

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One of the most exciting exhibits we’ve heard about is currently on display at London’s Royal Geographic Society. What makes it so exciting? Amidst stately buildings made of brick, vernacular desert architecture is enjoying its month of fame, and dozens of websites are talking about the event.

Polish designer Sandra Piesik is curating the exhibit Arish: Palm Leaf Architecture, which is being hosted by His Excellency Abdul Rahman Ghanem Al Mutaiwee – UAE Ambassador to the United Kingdom, following three years of exploring the role that date palm leaf architecture plays in Emirati history. She has published a book by the same name.

Arish refers to a structure that was built entirely out of date palm using the same techniques that desert dwellers employed 7,000 years ago. In addition to being a renewable resource, palm leaves permit a great deal of natural ventilation that brings interior temperatures down by a whopping 30 degrees.

They are also remarkably stable. A Brownbook magazine journalist who is on the scene claims that Arish has stood defiantly against vicious April storms that have been pounding at it. It’s as though the newly-erected structure invoked the ghosts of ancients, who are saying “see, we told you so!”

And this is partly why the exhibit is so important. As Nick Leech from The National explained in a recent interview with Green Prophet, although design techniques adapted to the Arabian peninsular’s particular climatic constraints over hundreds of years, western design has almost entirely eclipsed that vast reservoir of knowledge.

Following in the footsteps of famed explorer Wilfred Thesiger, who received a Founder’s Medal from the Royal Geographic Society for his documentation of United Arab Emirate vernacular architecture, Piesik has immortalized them, ensuring that they don’t slip into absolute obscurity.

The exhibit will be on display until May 25th.

:: Brownbook

More on Vernacular Architecture in the Middle East:

World Famous Jørn Utzon Admired Morocco’s Vernacular Architecture

Yemen’s Manhattan of the Desert Boasts 400 Habitable Clay Towers

Hassan Fathy is the Middle East’s Father of Sustainable Architecture

The post Earth-Friendly Vernacular Date Palm Leaf Architecture Revisited in London appeared first on Green Prophet.

Kerry Bingham’s off-grid earth bag home in Turkey only cost $3,761 to build.

Everybody’s talking about earth bag construction lately, including The National, which reported this weekend that a British woman has built an earthbag home a la Iranian architecture Nader Khalili. Using dirt from her own 6,500 square foot plot of land, the artist and writer filled dozens of polypropylene sacks that were then stacked to create a striking circular structure overlooking Turkey’s magical Olympos Valley. Despite disbelieving critics, Kerry Bingham’s home is durable and doesn’t melt when it rains.

See this off grid solar solution kit for off grid inspiration.

Bingham told The National that building her own off-grid home was inspired by a desire to become more mindful of her consumption habits. “My goal,” she says, “is to change my lifestyle, to be aware of how I consume and how I can consume in a more responsible way.”

Not only has she built a house using locally-sourced and sustainable materials – including lime plaster that has yet to be applied to the outer wall, but she has slashed her carbon and water footprint in other meaningful ways as well.

Bingham is building a compost toilet (with a view) that requires absolutely no water to function, and any grey water that she does use for washing dishes and clothes will be recycled after it goes through an on-site constructed wetland that relies on nature to filter out harmful impurities.

She also intends to build a water pump that relies solely on power from the sun to function.

Unlike the splashy steel and glass monstrosities popping up all over the Middle East, this project genuinely deserves the stamp “sustainable.” And the building’s flat roof and additional doorway also leaves room for expansion .

The neighbor – a pomegranate farmer named Dudu – was not convinced of the merits of earth bag construction, but the resiliency of Bingham’s pride and joy has had a transformative effect on all of its critics.

The National reports, “Dudu is now a believer, arriving almost daily with gifts of fresh vegetables and pomegranates. Other villagers, who in the beginning warned that the house would never stand up to the torrential winter rains, also arrive regularly, trying to push down the walls. They fail. And the rains have come, but the house is still standing strong.”

While at first many people will balk at living as close to the earth as Bingham has committed to doing, in time, when water and electricity prices grow prohibitively high at the same time that she pays virtually nothing for the same, they may well change their mind!

More on Earth Architecture:

13 Principles of Sustainable Architecture by Nader Khalili Student

Iranian Architect Nader Khalili Built Earth Buildings Fit For Space

Hassan Fathy is the Middle East’s Father of Sustainable Architecture

The post Woman Builds Off-Grid Earth Bag Home in Turkey for $3,761 appeared first on Green Prophet.

If the architecture mentor is successful, his or her student will first absorb and then build upon their lessons until they eventually supersede the original teachings with new knowledge. Certainly this is true of Kelly Hart, a student of the Iranian architect Nader Khalili, who conspired with NASA to create earth architecture that has lunar and space applications. One of the folks behind Earthbag Building, Earth Bag Structures, and a host of other informed eco-building sites, his own legacy is very much grounded on this planet. Hit the jump for a look at our adapted list of Hart’s 13 principles of sustainable architecture.

1. Think Small

The combined problem of natural resource depletion and population growth is so serious that it’s no longer reasonable for anyone to use up more than their fair share of either. Not only that, but there’s something special about creating a home or office that speaks to the specific needs of your particular family. Small homes are more affordable, use fewer resources, have less of an environmental impact, and also require less energy to heat and cool.

2. Heat With the Sun

Speaking of heating, fossil fuels are on the wane but the sun is still going strong. Consult your local green building expert for the best way to orient your home in order to maximize solar gain when appropriate (and reduce it when there’s too much.) Orientation combined with a green building material that absorbs the sun’s energy during the day and then dispatches it slowly at night can drastically reduce your energy requirement.

3. Keep Your Cool

The same principle works for cooling a home, a particular challenge in the Middle East where there is no shortage of long hot days. Passive design, digging into the earth, and insulating a home well will work wonders, as will Islamic design techniques such as the Mashrabiya screen, which beats the heat at the same time as it promotes natural ventilation.

4. Use Renewable Energy

We know this is hard in the Middle East, where solar panels are still quite expensive, but an investment in the short term will pay off in the long run. Plus, who says it’s necessary to buy into the most expensive renewable technology? In Cyprus, Egypt and Israel, lower income people have been using the sun to heat their water for years. Theirs may not be the sexiest roofs in each country, but their energy bills are smaller, and their ability to withstand municipal price and supply fluctuations far greater than grid-dependent folks.

5. Conserve Water

There are as many ways to conserve water in your home as there are reasons to do so – particularly in our dry region. Firm up faucets, harvest rainwater, recycle gray water, take shorter showers, and turn off the tap when brushing your teeth. Also consider planting indigenous plants that don’t require a lot of irrigation, and if you must irrigate, trying using drip irrigation or other modern developments.

6. Use Local Materials

When you’re building a home out of materials harvested in some distant land, they have to travel a long way to make it to your little plot. This creates an unnecessarily high carbon footprint and also reduces the level of control you have over how those materials are harvested. But if you use local materials, as will be the case with Gaza’s 20 new Eco-Schools, your carbon footprint shrinks considerably and benefits your local economy.

7. Use Natural Materials

Natural materials not only have more aesthetic appeal, at least in our view, but it turns out that they are better for our health. A home that is built with a porous natural material such as mud or stone or lime breaths and promotes natural circulation in the home. Anything else creates a terribly unhealthy internal environment. Natural materials also promote daylighting and superior acoustics, whereas all kinds of interventions are required in more artificial surroundings.

8. Save the Forests

Our forests are beautiful and deserve to be protected in their own right. But they also serve important environmental services – including sucking the globe’s carbon. With escalating levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere and a bevy of attendant climatic changes, protecting our trees is more important than ever. The average timber home uses 100 trees – and that’s not sustainable at all. Kelly Hart recommends using wood carefully – for decoration or for roofing – and opting for abundant earthen materials to build the rest of the home.

9. Recycle Materials

We belong to a throwaway culture – something the earth’s finite resources simply can’t support. Recycling materials not only gives new life to something discarded or disused, but also provides an opportunity to be creative and resourceful. See how old windows have been given new life is this wonderful design project.

10. Build to Last

We have showcased several earth architecture buildings that have lasted centuries, such as Yemen’s Manhattan and these awesome cave homes in Iran. Despite stringent new building codes, many materials used in contemporary architecture are designed NOT to last so that the supplier can prolong their business opportunities. This makes absolutely no sense. Build to last as much as possible and save the earth while you’re at it.

11. Grow Your Food

Growing food at home improves quality control and increases resilience – both very necessary in our region where food security is poor and where environmental regulations regarding food quality are poorly enforced. We have published 7 agricultural solutions that will save the Middle East. Take a look and be inspired to start growing your own food immediately!

12. Store Your Own Food

This is something we haven’t considered in a long while, but it used to be that most people built pantries into the earth in order to keep their food cool and fresh. As demonstrated in Palestine’s numerous geothermal projects, the earth’s temperature remains constant even as our atmosphere warms and cools. If you use the right building material, you can build a wonderful earthen pantry that will keep most of your food fresh year ’round. Make sure to consult a professional until you get the hang of this.

13. Share Facilities

Finally, Kelly Hart promotes co-housing and eco-villages as a good way to save space and share facilities. He suggests that building common areas (like the Israeli Kibbutzniks have done for years) in addition to private areas in any housing project saves space and promotes social activity. We’d also like to add that a shared community is likely to grow into a more evolved and tolerant community, which promotes all kinds of goodness.

If you are considering building a new home, remember to consult this list to determine whether you have achieved the greatest amount of sustainability for your time and budget constraints.

More on Sustainable Architecture in the Middle East:

Why We Need an Earth Architecture Revolution (VIDEO)

Iranian Architect Nader Khalili Built Earth Architecture Fit For Space 

Hassan Fathy is the Middle East’s Father of Sustainable Architecture

The post 13 Principles of Sustainable Architecture From Nader Khalili Student appeared first on Green Prophet.

Jonathan Eric Defante submitted his “One Bottle, One Life” YouTube pitch to the United Nations as a potential solution for poor recycling performance around the world.

The Filipino man living in Dubai suggested that people can build their own homes made out of discarded plastic bottles or “eco bricks,” thus empowering themselves and keeping plastic waste out of landfills.

One of three new UN Citizen Ambassadors, Defante takes his ideas from the Hug It Forward campaign that has already built 14 schools out of plastic in low-income communities. Step in for a look at the “proudly Dubai” pitch and script that won the UN’s confidence.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcF1MDHbF2o[/youtube]

Hug it Forward constructs perfectly sound learning facilities that are then insulated with recycled plastic, chicken wire, and cement. According to their website,

In our first project in Granados, Guatemala, in October 2009, over 5,000 plastic bottles were used to build two classrooms, containing 2053 lbs of trash and using 9720 lbs of cement. 297 children and youth currently attend the school, which serves a municipality of 13,860 people throughout 95.75 square miles.

Since then, 13 new schools have been erected using this method, diverting thousands of pounds of plastic waste from landfills and providing safe and sustainable classrooms for underprivileged students.

Defante believes this same technique can be used to create model communities in every nation in order to raise awareness of the need to recycle and create long-lasting sustainable solutions. This is the script he delivered to the United Nations via YouTube:

Excuse me Mr. Secretary-General. Every year more than 75% or about 2.7 million tons of plastic bottles end up in landfills. The message across the globe about recycling is not strong enough. So let’s create a MODEL COMMUNITY in EVERY NATION, made out of used plastic bottles or “Eco Bricks”, built by people themselves and are sustained by livelihood from recycled plastic bottles. The communities can be organized into cooperatives to enable them sustain their livelihood for years to come, changing lives one bottle at a time.

According to Gulf News, on average people in Dubai and the neighboring Emirates go through up to 450 plastic bottles each year – particularly since they lack freshwater resources and rely so heavily on desalination. But residents of Gulf countries have been slow to catch on to recycling their plastic waste and much of it ends up brewing under the hot desert sun.

Defante hopes to change all of this by turning trash into a valuable resource, and as a respected UN Citizen Ambassador with a two year post, he might just stand half a chance.

:: Gulf News

More on plastic waste in the Middle East:

Ugly Plastic Windows Become Chic Minimalist Furniture Pieces

15 Year Olds Pocket Money Can’t Save Camels Killed by Plastic

Will Bridges of Plastic Waste Work in the Middle East?

The post Plastic Eco-Brick Proposal Wins Dubai Resident a UN Citizen Ambassadorship appeared first on Green Prophet.

Masdar is constantly reinventing itself  in order to ensure that the Gulf’s first genuine low-energy and low-carbon building project succeeds, and its latest reincarnation may well become one of its most useful. The company has teamed up with the leading German research institute Fraunhoefer Gesellschaft to build a Facade Test Center (FTC) within Masdar City, where they will conduct thorough tests to suss out the most sustainable building materials available to builders. This is a groundbreaking project that could dramatically improve the energy performance of construction projects in the Gulf and wider MENA region.

Breaking ground

Representatives from Fraunhofer’s Institute for Building Physics (IBP) and Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) will lend ten years of combined research expertise to the Masdar team in Abu Dhabi. Taking design inspiration from Fraunhofer’s own facade test center in Munich, Germany, the FTC is expected to break ground within the next few months.

The center’s goal is to test and quantify the energy performance of integrated building materials, including solar panels, to reduce energy waste in the United Arab Emirates and other countries. But it will also position Masdar as a leading building materials consultant, and thereby enable the company to diversify its revenue-generating income.

Masdar’s technological leadership

Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Chief Executive Officer of Masdar, said: “It is important for Abu Dhabi to host a dedicated facility of this stature, given its relevance to the integrated facades that need to be constructed in line with the Emirate’s Estidama guidelines. Offering ratings on the material selection for buildings in Abu Dhabi assumes enormous significance and we are pleased to provide such a service in partnership with a world-renowned organization.”

He added that the FTC will help the company provide technological leadership to the region and that the Fraunhofer partnership will lend credibility and third party endorsement to the project.

It is common to overlook the importance of materials that have high thermal massing and superior light penetration when considering which to use for building projects, but the FTC will ensure that this critical issue is put at center stage – a crucial development for our region.

More on Masdar City:

Exclusive: Masdar City Open House Photos

Masdar City Faces New Setbacks

Masdar’s Carbon Capture Program Could Lead to Mass Delirium and Seizures

The post Masdar Aims to Become the Guru of Sustainable Building Materials appeared first on Green Prophet.

We have a real soft spot for earth architecture, such as Nader Khalili’s gorgeous domes and arches fit for space, and these amazing Syrian beehive-shaped buildings that have lasted hundreds of years, but we also acknowledge the great strides that contemporary Israeli architects have taken to realize modern buildings more sustainable than their antecedents. In addition to the LEED Platinum-hopeful Porter School of Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University, Netanya’s new City Hall is one of them. By giving this twisting tower a light frame with a mashrabiya-type screen, Yaniv Pardo has considerably reduced the required building materials and energy footprint. More pictures and sketches of this proposed structure below. 

The new Netanya City Hall aims to be an iconic structure that will put this relatively obscure Israeli city north of Tel Aviv firmly on the map. It is comprised of three prisms facing different directions, which gives it the sensation of “twisting.”

The tower is covered in greenery, which acts as a carbon sponge as well as providing the building with a little extra aesthetics. It is flooded with natural light but maintains energy efficiency thanks to Arab-styled mashrabiyas that provide shading and protection against solar gain.

The Netanya City Hall will get some of its power from geothermal sources and will provide a gathering space for the community in addition to its municipal services. This will be a mixed-use development complete with cultural, commerce, leisure and retail services.

Modeled after a weather vane, this striking building will be dynamic, efficient, and vibrant and hopefully transform this once unknown city along the Mediterranean Sea!

April 2, 2012 update: Karin Kloosterman from Green Prophet contacted the firm and they did not win the contract to develop the geothermal tower for the City Hall, but they say they will keep trying to develop green architecture in Israel.

::Yaniv Pardo Architects

More green architecture from Israel:
Construction of Israel’s First LEED Platinum Building by Geotectura Begins
Breathtaking Jaffa Flat by Pitsou Kedem
Shopping Malls go Green in Israel

The post Yaniv Pardo’s Twisting Tower for Netanya in Israel appeared first on Green Prophet.