Dosier’s fearlessness of the science of construction sets her apart from her peers [image courtesy of flickr] We were so intrigued by Professor Ginger Dosier, the Architect at Sharjah University who grows bricks by combining sand, common bacteria, calcium chloride and urea, that we decided to dig deeper. Some architects, like those at Geotectura, develop mindbending […]
The Better Brick? Although kinks need to be worked out, applying microbiological principles to design could revolutionize building materials. This researcher says she’s found a way to “grow” bricks from sand and urine. Finally! Suzanne LaBarre of Metropolitanmag.com brings us a design worth writing home about. In the same tradition as Hassan Fathy and architects […]
Does The First Arabian Construction Week Signal a Greener Middle Eastern Building Policy? [image via flickr] We have brought disturbing news from Dubai this week: a smuggled baby crocodile died and hyenas and baboons were confiscated from a private home. So it gives us pleasure to be able to provide our readers with a tidbit of […]
Qatar Wants World Cup Action, but the Environmental Price May be Too High. This relatively obscure Middle Eastern country, slightly smaller than Connecticut, is putting itself on the map. Oil and gas revenue, according to the CIA factbook, comprises 50% of the nation’s GDP, but Qatar is diversifying its portfolio. As part of its National […]
The third “Think Green” conference, held in Amman this week, encourages green buildings and sustainable communities. [image of an apartment building in Amman via: Sezgin Aytuna] We heard about Jordanian Queen Rania’s activities earlier this week, and now we will hear what HRH Princess Sumaya Bint El Hassan has been up to. For the past […]
By taking into account embodied energy, Catherine and her husband half the energy required to build their home. In her recent Ted talk, Catherine Mohr encourages us to look at the bigger picture when discussing and analyzing green stories. Whether we weigh the benefits of a LEED certified project against the energy required to ship […]
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 […]
Near The Dead Sea fault, can Israel’s home synagogues withstand the next big earthquake? The San Francisco Chronicle announced that the Sherith Israel synagogue, completed seven months before the 1906 earthquake that ravaged San Francisco, survived that earthquake with minor bruising. However, this “remnant of Israel” built for Jews who flocked to California during the […]
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 […]
Qatar’s Green Building Council (QGBC) founder and chairman Eng. Issa M. Al Mohannadi will speak at the “Planet and Profit in Partnership” on April 11, 2010, another in a series of conferences that teach Qatari leaders about sustainable building practices. It remains to be seen whether Qataris will pursue development projects like Urjuan that pay […]
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 […]
Hassan Fathy, an Egyptian architect saw the value of natural building long before it became a fad in the west. Green Prophet has railed against projects like Dubai Burj Tower. We have pounded our chests at the audacity of Masdar City’s “zero” footprint claim, and we have decried the potential consequences of unsustainable approaches to […]
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 […]
Green Prophet had reported on Rawabi (for Hills), the first “planned” city for Palestinians back in 2007; We are not sure if the Israeli or American urban-style mortgage model is the one to follow for a sustainable community (as Daniella asks in her article about Palestinian malls). Now Felice Friedson editor of The Media Line, […]
Proposed vertical farms like this one in Dubai may be the only way for supplying food to Middle East countries. Dickson D. Despommier is a professor of public health at Columbia University in New York, and if he gets his way, the future will be full of “vertical farms’ (a farm on every floor) in […]