Efforts to save Hollywood hills from development, Vancouver Convention Centre is first to receive LEED Platinum ranking and Zaha Hadid's petroleum plant to be a model for sustainability.
UNITED STATES
A preservation group and an LA councilman have teamed up in an effort to preserve the land behind the city's famous Hollywood sign. A Chicago developer recently acquired the land, and the preservation group is trying to raise the $11.7 million needed to buy it back and convert the space into a local park. Last week, a banner which read "Save the Peak" was being draped over the Hollywood sign, in the hope that people will be donate the remaining $5 million that needs to be raised.
CANADA
The building where the world's media will be housed for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, the Vancouver Convention Centre West, has been awarded LEED Canada Platinum. Designed by LMN Architects, the building is the first convention centre project in the world to earn LEED's highest rating. The design includes a six acre living roof landscaped with 4,000 native plants and grasses.
SAUDI ARABIA
Funnily enough, the King Abudullah Petroleum Studies and Research Centre, designed by Zaha Hadid, hopes to achieve an LEED Platinum certification. The facility, to be built in Riyadh, will house research and development facilities on energy and environmental exploration and analysis. Natural ventilation and lighting, LED lights and photovoltaics will help the building to achieve a Platinum status.
CHINA
Plans for a new urban centre in Beijing's Dawangjing District have been unveiled by SOM. The plans feature an integrated heating and cooling solution designed to reduce energy use and carbon emissions and a park that uses a geothermal heat exchange system to help passively heat and cool all of the district's buildings. The district will also have a strong focus on public transport, aiming to get 80 per cent of residents travelling by car, subway, walking or cycling.
HAITI
Habitat for Humanity has set a goal of helping 50,000 earthquake-affected families in Haiti to improve their shelter conditions. Its plan includes distributing emergency shelter kits; debris recycling and removal; house repairs; transitional shelter; new construction and on-the-job training in house construction skills. Habitat's three-fold plan begins with the distribution of 10,000 emergency shelter kits that contain tools and supplies to help families make immediate house repairs and construct temporary shelters on their home sites.
