We have been designing large-scale residential and commercial rainwater harvesting systems in California since 1997, primarily for irrigation use in the landscape. We like to consider our landscapes that incorporate rainwater harvesting as “closed loop systems,” as we begin the design by determining our end-water usage.   It Starts with Plant Selection   It starts with the [...]

Advances in green technology and a fondness for reused or reclaimed materials have led to more innovative and creative sustainable products for the home. As a new addition to Green Architecture Notes, we will be posting a new section on products that we find to be perfect examples of how green IS beautiful, practical, and inspiring.  [...]

Cork is a fantastic, 100% natural, material that has been used as an insulting material for years, although is not well known by most of the people working on sustainable and zero carbon projects.  So what makes this material special?  Cork is the bark of Cork Oak (Quercus Suber), collected every 9 years and later [...]

As a new segment of Green Architecture Notes, we plan to periodically share images from talented photographers and authors who are focusing on Sustainability and Design.  Our inaugural post is drawn from the aptly named Green is Beautiful book by photographer Claudio Santini and Dafna Zilafro.  Green is Beautiful offers 30 stunning residences each exemplifying [...]

I’ve had several reasons for designing living roofs and have faced many challenges in implementation. Luckily living roofs can come in many forms and serve many purposes. In this post, I will try to briefly walk you through the second of my forays into this exciting and challenging subject. For our House Ocho project in [...]

I’ve been exploring various aspects of living or green roofs since I first started my own architectural practice about ten years ago. In fact my very first project was to fix up a shingled Victorian in San Francisco. It had a tiny garage in front of the house dating back to 1912 and a nice [...]

My wife, Cathy, and I really liked our one-story cottage near downtown Palo Alto, but the floor plan didn’t work for us at all. The most direct path to the backyard was through the master bedroom, and loving to backyard-entertain as we do, running through our bedroom with plates of meat headed to the grill [...]

On the central plateau of Kenya, near the lush city of Nyeri, the windswept arid town of Mweiga stands in the shadow of Mount Kenya.  Locals diligently farm the land, but their livelihoods are beholden to an average of 6” of rain per year.  Despite the lack of water, the people have a thirst to [...]

I recently wanted to build a home. After spending over 30 years in the energy industry focusing on energy efficiency, energy R&D, environmental issues, and energy policy, I wanted this home to be energy efficient. My wife wanted our home to look very beautiful, and be “green”. A LEED home sounded nice. We didn’t really [...]

Comprising 70 percent of our bodies, covering 70 percent of our earth’s surface, and providing more than 50 percent of the world’s ‘renewable’ energy, water is also the ultimate adaptor: evaporating, condensing, crystallizing, icing, melting, flowing and filling, according to its environment. The beauty of water, and its emotional power as a latent energy force, [...]