Green Home & Building

Best Solar Garden Lights

Solar lights can give your garden that peaceful, ethereal glow without those ugly power cords or a high electricity bill. These garden lights are available in a variety of shapes, sizes and quality, which makes it challenging to find the… Read More

Best Smart Thermostat

The best smart thermostat will save you money by taking you out of the equation and controlling your home’s heating and cooling directly. However, with sensors, algorithms, and geofencing – when your thermostat tracks your smartphone – smart thermostats come… Read More

Best Solar Pool Heater

Solar pools heaters are a great option for the swimming pool owner that needs a little extra heat in cooler months or even year round. Not only do they extend your soaking season, but a solar pool heater can also… Read More

Best Outdoor Solar Lights

The best outdoor solar lights for 2021 balance durability, cost, and ease of installation, and enjoy several benefits over their wired cousins. Running extension cords through the yard is a pain, and there’s always that danger of forgetting about them… Read More

Best Solar Christmas Lights

Solar Christmas lights are a great way to decorate your home for the holiday season, and cut down your energy bill. Beyond the environmental benefits, they’re also extremely convenient and versatile, since you don’t need any electrical outlets! No more… Read More

Portland Gets on Board With Tall Wood Construction

Portland, Oregon, is getting a new 12-story building with an innovative award-winning design – and it’s going to be built with wood. The Framework building, planned for Portland’s Pearl District, will be a mixed-use retail, office and residential space, and… Read More

Heat Your Home With Compost

Some crafty individuals are putting their compost piles to another good use – heating their homes. Compost, besides making a wonderful garden fertilizer, gives off a lot of heat as it decays. Creative and green-minded homeowners can trap that heat… Read More

California Gets World’s Largest Green Roof

You don’t usually think of taking the elevator up to the roof to enjoy your lunch in the park, but that’s exactly what shoppers in Cupertino are going to be able to do once the world’s largest green rooftop is … Read More

Wood Construction Reaches New Heights in Quebec

Wood construction is about to hit a new milestone as the tallest wooden building ever built in North America is set to begin construction in Quebec City. The tallest wooden building in North America is currently the Wood Innovation and… Read More

Bringing Décor to Life with Photosynthetic Furniture

Say goodbye to the houseplants you keep forgetting to water, and embrace a new trend: decorative, functional microorganisms. Innovations in industrial and architectural design might soon bring photosynthesis into your home in a completely new way – by building algae… Read More

Taking Vertical Gardens To New Heights

Patrick Blanc might have invented vertical gardens, as he claims, or perhaps he simply popularized an earlier concept, as editors at Wikipedia confidently attest. In any case, Blanc is the reason these “green walls” are popping up with increasing frequency,… Read More

Bringing A Touch Of Green To American Capitals

There’s a step-by-step, city-by-city effort unfolding to add a little green to U.S. capitals, and three more cities have just been added to the program: Lansing, Mich., Madison, Wis. and Olympia, Wash. Run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Greening… Read More

Net Zero At Unprecedented Scale On Illinois Campus

Net zero isn’t new, but it remains very ambitious. And at this scale? Unheard of. We’re talking about the new Electrical and Computer Engineering building at the University of Illinois. This is a 230,000-square-foot project on the Urbana-Champaign, Ill., campus,… Read More

You Might Call This The World’s Greenest House

Two years ago, we told you about a project unfolding in the wine country southwest of Portland, Ore., a net-zero home that was attempting to become the first in the world to earn a trio of green building performance standards… Read More