February 29, 2008
  Mississippi State Brings Sustainability Down Home
Architecture professor champions green mobile homes
For Michael Berk, the F.L. Crane Endowed Professor of Architecture at Mississippi State University, sustainable living truly is a matter for the masses. The architect is the creator of GreenMobile®, an affordable and sustainable mobile home that can be used on- or off-the-grid for disaster relief housing or for permanent residence. A winner of last year’s EPA Lifecycle Building Challenge, GreenMobile also was awarded $5.8 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Alternative Housing Pilot Program (AHPP) for the construction of 100 units on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in December 2006, though, as of yet, no units have been constructed.

New Delhi Office Opens New Market for IA
Heading the requests of clients who are expanding their businesses in Asia, Interior Architects (IA) opened a New Delhi office. Rather than outsourcing to local vendors, the firm saw an opportunity to provide their own level of technical expertise and quality assurance to their U.S. and multinational clients doing work in the Asia-Pacific region and to new clients acquired by the expansion. In New Delhi, they are still doing it the “IA way.”

Building a Green Team
Architecture firms decide between outsourcing sustainability expertise and developing their own farm team
Architecture firms looking to increase their sustainability practice are considering whether to augment their own internal knowledge base with external hiring. More and more architects are being hired to work exclusively on green and sustainable design issues in rapidly evolving capacities. Whether a firm chooses to augment its sustainability capacity by hiring from outside the firm or not, they often see eco-friendly design as an integrated part of their practice.

 

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This is the home of the weekly Best Practices column, news of tips and tools that you can use in your day-to-day practice and case studies illustrating “how-tos” and “lessons learned” for all stages of practice. The Practice Zone also features reports of research in architecture and related fields.