AIArchitect

The office building used by President Barak Obama as his White House transition headquarters in Chicago is in line for its share of the General Service Administration’s(GSA) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act economic stimulus money. The 44th president’s time at the John C. Kluczynski Federal Building wasn’t the first time it’s been touched by history. Completed in 1975, the Kluczynski building was one of Mies van der Rohe’s last projects. 

According to Bloomberg , the 43-story building in the heart of Chicago’s Loop is waiting on $100 million dollars worth of energy performance upgrades, a small part of which has already been distributed for design and construction management services. The GSA selected the Chicago architecture firm O'Donnell Wicklund Pigozzi and Peterson for the project. This project is part of the $4.3 billion the GSA is spending on green building energy efficiency modernizations , and it’s estimated that 500 to 900 jobs will be created from this office building project alone.

Continue reading "Mies (and Obama’s Old Office) In Line for GSA Stimulus Dollars " »

I'm working on a story for AIArchitect this week that focuses mainly on the economics of building a solar-powered house for the Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon, but I don’t want all this talk of owner ROI and scales of prefab production to get in the way of a good design conversation. 

So: This year, more so than the last competition in 2007, marks an important signpost on the road to net-zero energy homes required for such buildings to ever be mass produced and palatable to a wide range of consumers.

Basically, I noticed that the houses all looked quite a bit different from each other.

Continue reading "Solar Houses Are the New Cars (In a Good Way) " »