The House We Live In: A Series on Building the Sustainable Home in Tucson, Arizona
Last weekend I made a recreational visit to that rare creature, the combination bookstore and bar Changing Hands up in Phoenix. I was after fiction and a glass of wine, but I came across a big coffee table book called Green Architecture—a compilation of photos of green building projects with information about their green features, on a deep discount. Of course I had to get it.
I have to admit I haven’t found time to watch much of the Olympics this summer, but the spirit of international competition and stretching the boundaries of human achievement is in the air. Flipping through my new book, plus a few I already had, I realized just how far-flung these projects are from one another. Although there are of course a lot of them in California, and the list is surely weighted toward projects selected for the audiences of these books rather than being an objective collection of everything that’s out there, it’s still pretty neat to see all the countries where exciting projects have been built:
- U.S.A. (no, Texas does not get its own)
- New Zealand
- Slovenia
- Iceland
- Italy
- Mexico
- Australia
- The Netherlands
- Spain
- Czech Republic
- Portugal
- Norway
- Saudi Arabia
- United Kingdom
- Canada
- China
Before I traveled to Ireland, friends pointed me toward some projects there, as well. People are doing this all over the world. And surely there are many more that aren’t in my glossy books.
I think of the Olympics. I think of the space race. I think of the nuclear arms race. Imagine if we brought that fervor to energy independence. Imagine if the U.S. and Russia were desperately trying to outdo each other in creating net-zero buildings, throwing all their resources into one-upping each others’ green technology. The countries who do that will surely survive.
Image of map on hands courtesy Pixabay.
