Building ‘green’ reaches a new level in Portland, OR.

Michelle Walsh looks out a wall of windows in her airy new condo high above the Willamette River. Across hills and forests loom snow-capped Mount Hood and, when it’s clear, Mount St. Helens. Below? Construction chaos all around.

Walsh revels in it. She and her husband, Edward, proudly wear "urban pioneer" buttons the builder handed out to early move-ins at the nation’s first large-scale redevelopment to go 100% "green."

Call it "eco-friendly." Call it "sustainable." Portland’s $2.2 billion South Waterfront project, rising on a decaying industrial site south of downtown, signals a watershed in the green-building boom.

A trend that has taken hold across the USA in the past few years is evolving to a new level. What has been a patchwork of green buildings in many cities is expanding to whole communities, whole neighborhoods. Portland, well known as an urban-design innovator, particularly for its transit-oriented developments, is leading the way again.

The green ethic — energy-efficient, water-stingy buildings full of features that stress the natural over the chemical, the recycled over the new and the renewable over the finite — is firmly mainstream.

By Alan S. Weiner, for USA TODAY

Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-07-26-green-construction_x.htm

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The Experimental Home. A new, sustainably-built home seeks produce as much energy as it consumes. http://www.matr.net/article-20005.html

The Un-Coal. By investing in energy efficiency, we could vastly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and save money. http://www.matr.net/article-19991.html