The Independent

Winnie Brimacombe-Nelissen may have a home dating back to 1598 but it is made from a building material that is enjoying a distinctly 21st-century revival: mud. Her six-bedroom farmhouse near Crediton in Devon is built from cob, a mud-based mix first used for construction in north Africa in the 11th century. Some 300 years later it had become the standard building material in the UK and remained so until industrialisation made manufacturing bricks cheap.

Fast Company Magazine

Forward-thinking architects and real-estate developers are already envisioning the post-bust cycle of home building. And smaller is better.

Ed. note: a great, in depth article on housing, and its relevance to any strategies involving climate change.

Tree Hugger

At Expo Zaragoza in Spain, an event that opened in June and is dedicated to bringing awareness to water scarcity issues throughout the world, one of the best exhibits was the Pavilion THIRST. With strong images and simple graphics, this Pavilion first explained who in the world has thirst, concluding that “Everything is thirsty.” But rather than dwelling on the problems, this pavilion showed some innovative design solutions used all over the world to improve how humans our dealing with water issues, whether they be health- or drought-related.

The Globe and Mail

British Columbia is escalating its war on greenhouse gases, examining a measure that will require some new buildings to be carbon neutral as early as 2016 – and every new building to have no carbon footprint by 2020.

WorldChanging

The Vattenfall/McKinsey Report “A Cost Curve for Greenhouse Gas Reduction” contains a graph (below) that everybody needs to see. The graph shows how much greenhouse gas abatement potential lies in some popular strategies/technologies, and simultaneously shows the monetary cost of each strategy.

Environmental Leader

The number of sustainable buildings has soared in the past years and along with it, the market in green-building products and services has increased to more than $12 billion today from around $7 billion in 2005.

“Two Seattle architecture and design firms have been recognized by the American Institute of Architects with a “Show You’re Green” excellence award for work on affordable green housing.

Runberg Architecture Group received the award for its Denny Park Apartments, in Seattle, while Mithun was lauded for an urban community in north Portland, New Columbia.”