Consulting the Green Building Brain
This article previously appeared on www.planningpool.com, a multidisciplinary and multimedia blog about city planning and urban issues.
The long days and relaxed schedules of summertime have a way of inspiring giant, ill-advised and time-consuming projects. In this spirit, I recently found myself perched up a ladder in my steamy south-facing apartment during a heat-wave, painting over the eccentric and bold colour choices of some previous tenant. More to the point, that is how I became faced with the question of how to dispose of several gallons of crusty old paint in shades like “raspberry” and “burnt umber”. Enter the Green Building Brain, a shiny new website that was able to identify a paint recycling facility right in my neighbourhood. Success!
According to its description, the Green Building Brain is a research tool designed for and updated by people active in the green building industry. At its core is a user-generated database that catalogues and locates individual green building projects, products, resources and strategies. The site’s interactivity goes beyond gathering information - it crowdsources the evaluation of data that has already been posted. Registered users can rate the “greenness” of building tools and strategies, as well as adding more information.
Projects catalogued in the database are illustrated by remarkable photos contributed by the community of users. Not only do I now know that the Zion Visitor Centre in Springdale, Utah features a low-energy sustainable park information centre, but I have also seen a photo of its very handsome stone passive down-draft cooltower. These types of illustrations help to explain the significance of items in the database. However they do not yet seem to fill the potential role of linking between relevant posts. In the case of the down-draft cooltower, for example, I would appreciate a link from the fascinating photograph to relevant articles explaining how the feature works. This kind of unfulfilled potential betrays the newness of the Green Building Brain - the beta version only went live earlier this summer!
As with our physical grey matter, the Green Building Brain can be used in very different ways and for different ends by people with a variety of interests and motivations. For instance, I first discovered and used the interactive map not as a planning student but as an urban resident with the very practical problem of needing to dispose of old paint. The Brain’s flexible and interdisciplinary approach may be just the kind of tool that can bring together professionals and enthusiasts from around the world. In learning from each other’s work, we are empowered to creatively collaborate towards a more sustainable built environment.
Check out the Green Building Brain online at www.greenbuildingbrain.org. Programmer-developer types might be interested in the wiki at http://greenbuildingbrainwiki.
No comments:
Post a Comment