The king willed it – so it was built…Michael Arndt questions the ‘greenliness’ of KAUST, granted the US Green Building Council’s highest LEED certification possible. The American Institute of Architecture recently hailed The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) as one of its top ten most environmentally responsible building designs. This follows other […]
Central Tel Aviv, Cira 1940’s: A Sustainable Idea Then and Now All over the Middle East, many old and often historical buildings are being torn down in order to “make way” for new, modern ones. This trend is especially true in cities like Cairo, Egypt and Tel Aviv, Israel, where the quaint and classical architecture of the “colonial […]
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 […]
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 […]
Way before there were electronic ways to condition our temperatures, cooling methods were built into the architecture of traditional Middle Eastern homes. Such as the beehive homes found in Syria.
Can’t stand the climate change heat? Why not move underground? For Reynard Loki and Jennifer Daniels, the future might lie, for some people in places such as Israel or Australia, in what they are calling Underground Desert Living Units, UDLU for short. Loki began working on the idea in March 2008, and he later found […]
Carbon emissions from the building environment are globally one of the major contributors to climate change. On average up to 50% of all carbon emissions are related to domestic use of energy – our household consumption. How then will our personal conduct have any influence on the global climate? The answer to that is it […]
Slated for a 2011 finish date, Knafo Klimor Architects look to be the first Israeli firm hired to design a green building in China. Their concept: to bring the greenhouse inside the house. The team breaks from the model, where historically, Israelis look to the United States, or at least Europe to fulfill their design […]
Two things were clear from attending the International Renewable Energy Conference that took place in Eilat this week. The first is that Israel is now a world leader in clean energy. The second is that there is a small but growing group of players in the field who see this not just as a huge […]
Within a few years Israel’s greenest building will be located at Tel Aviv University (TAU). That’s the goal of Joseph Cory of Geotectura. He and two other architecture companies have won first prize in an architectural competition to design a 4,000 square meter green building for TAU’s Porter School of Environmental Studies (PSES). Cory’s partners […]
Mifal Hapayis (the Israel National Lottery) is opening new windows of opportunity for environmentally aware artists and designers. This year, the Arts and Culture Council turned to the public for suggestions on areas worthy of support and the people spoke up! Letting in a breath of fresh air in more ways than one, the new […]
During these tough times in the south of Israel and Gaza, it’s heartening to discover that some events are continuing, and that the determination to green things up, either by accident or design, continues apace. Here at Green Prophet, we’ve kept a keen eye on green design and sustainable architecture, both here and abroad. I […]