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Month: August 2023

Repurposing Old Buildings – France’s Post-War Public Housing

Repurposing Old Buildings – France’s Post-War Public Housing

For their three decades of work, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Phillippe Vassal won the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture’s highest honor. The selection committee cited their work for consistently contributing to humanity and the built environment. Their projects improve the lives of many and respond to current environmental and social urgencies, especially in the field of urban housing. Emphasizing sustainability, the pair believe firmly in the “never demolish” principle, instead favoring upgrading and transforming existing structures.  In 2011, Lacaton and Vassal…

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Repurposing Old Buildings – An Abandoned High School in Pennsylvania

Repurposing Old Buildings – An Abandoned High School in Pennsylvania

In 2019, Jessie Wig, together with investors, bought an old high school, which had been abandoned for 10 years, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, for $100,000 and converted it into a 31-unit apartment building. Renovations started in 2020, took 18 months to complete, and cost $3.3 million. In exchange for keeping the historical significance of the building intact, Wig and his team received historic tax credits from the state and the US government.  From a social perspective, Wig, who is a nearby…

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Examples of New Build Green Buildings

Examples of New Build Green Buildings

With environmental concerns leading design and construction decisions around the world, a new build’s “green” credentials have become more important.  Let’s take a look at 10 recently-constructed green buildings from around the world: Pixel Building; Melbourne, Australia; designed by Decibel Architecture Noteworthy green architectural elements: Bahrain World Trade Center 1 and 2; designed by Atkins Noteworthy green architectural elements: The Edge; Amsterdam, Netherlands; designed by PLP Architecture Noteworthy green architectural elements: Robinson Tower; Singapore; designed by Kohn Pederson Fox Associates…

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Why don’t we have energy efficiency ratings on properties for sale or rent in the United States like the European Union does?

Why don’t we have energy efficiency ratings on properties for sale or rent in the United States like the European Union does?

Recently, I was on vacation in France and noticed that advertisements of properties for sale contained 2 colorful charts ranking properties on a scale from A to G.  Here is an example of what I saw on every French real estate listing:  I took a picture of the charts and later used google translate to figure out what was being measured. The title in green translates to “Energetic performance,” which I assume is more correctly stated as Energy performance in…

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