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Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Health and Happiness is one of the 10 One Planet Principles required for a One Planet Community. The Grow Community's vision is to achieve this principle by encouraging active, sociable, meaningful lives to promote good health and well being.  Here is a wonderful article on intentionally designing and developing with our children in mind:

To Save Our Cities, Put Children First


What’s the universal design principle that can make our cities great? Kid-friendliness, says architect Jason McLennan.


YES MAGAZINE
by

posted Jul 13, 2011

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

July Grow Community Newsletter

Click here to view our July Newsletter.

Zero Waste Efforts in Our Community

Zero Waste is one of the 10 One Planet Principles required for a One Planet Community.  The Grow Community will aim to achieve this principle through reduction, reuse, recycling and composting, ultimately sending zero waste to landfill.

Click here to learn about Sustainable Bainbridge’s Zero Waste Initiative.  It’s already happening right in our backyard!

Click here to read about how Sustainable Seattle is making this year’s Beer and Film Festival a Zero Waste Event!

Friday, July 15, 2011

CHICKEN CRAZY? 3rd Annual Bainbridge Island Tour de Coop

Some are saying that chickens are the new golden retriever and its certainly true here on Bainbridge Islander. Every spring the local Island feed store, 'Bay Hay and Feed' sell 1550 to 1800 baby chicks and at least 5000 50lb bags of chicken  food. They estimate 1/3 of Island households keep chickens. WOW! 

Don't miss the  Third Annual Bainbridge Island Tour de Coop 2011 Tomorrow: A Self-Guided Tour of  Chicken Coops, Saturday, July 16 from 11-4.  This year there will  be 9 chicken coops on the tour. Tickets are available at Bay Hay and Feed, and Classic Cycle on Bainbridge Island. Check out this great article in the local newspaper to learn more: 

 


Tour de Coop this weekend

By ERIN JENNINGS
North Kitsap Herald Kitsap Week


Chicken coops are hatching all over Bainbridge Island.


Some are lavish and include artwork and electricity.


Others are quaint and provide comfortable living quarters.

At this weekend’s third annual Tour de Coop,  visitors will get the chance to check out nine coops on a self-guided tour around the island.


It’s the chicken version of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” minus the gilded furniture and luxurious yachts. Instead, you’ll see ventilated egg boxes and high perches for sleeping. Eating quarters consist of water troughs and food dispensers. Chicken bathtubs are made up of a mixture of dirt and sand — perfect for dust bathing.  And one coop even has classical music piped in — the owners read that classical music helps keep the chickens calm... 


 

Thursday, July 7, 2011

From the Urban Gardens Blog...

An excerpt from Urban Gardens:

Modern Living house’s architect and the founder of pieceHomes, Jonathan Davis, has plans for Bainbridge Island, Washington. Davis is collaborating with sustainable development and investment company, Asani, in the development of Grow Community, a sustainable neighborhood, incorporating the One Planet Living principles of new urbanism, focusing on energy efficiency , but more importantly, on the creation of an interactive community–a modern eco-friendly commune of sorts. “You can’t just look at the now,” explained Davis, “you’ve got to look at how the community is going to live for years to come.”

click here to read the article

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

JUST ADD WATER (and architect): Deep green community to grow outside of Seattle

Mother Nature Network
by Matt Hickman
Eco-living expert blogs about the best ways to go green at home

The architect responsible for the Modern Living Showhouse at Dwell on Design 2011, is a force behind Grow Community, an eco-enclave with shared composting facilities and kayak storage on Bainbridge Island, Wash.  

In my post last week about the glammed up, greened out Modern Living Showhouse on display at Dwell on Design 2011, I talked a lot about the eye-catching interiors procured by Zem Joaquin and the team at ecofabulous. Honestly, I could write an entire month of posts just about all of the green goodies I saw jammed into the 520-square foot, currently up-for-auction-on-eBay prefab abode. 
 















While so focused on the great work of Zem and co. I didn’t have much time to explore the architect behind the Modern Living Showhouse: Jonathan Davis of pieceHomes, the modular-centric offshoot of L.A.-based green architecture firm, Davis Studio Architecture + Design. While Davis and pieceHomes are new to me, it didn’t take me long to appreciate his past work — get a load of the Bell Mountain Ranch — and an in-development project that really caught my attention: Grow Community, a zero-carbon neighborhood of 137 solar-powered residences (50 homes and 87 apartments) to be built on Bainbridge Island, Wash. The ambitious project is a joint venture between pieceHomes and eco-developers, Asani.

Seattle’s King5 News calls Grow Community “one of the world’s greenest communities” which is a touch hyperbolic even for this sleepy Seattle commuter island that’s home to two MNN favorites: sustainable design firm Grain and eco-architect Matthew Coates. One thing’s for sure, if all goes as planned this 8-acre "pedestrian-oriented, energy-efficient, multigenerational neighborhood" will be the largest new development in Bainbridge’s recent history. Grow Community will also be one of the only communities in the nation (certainly the first in Washington) to achieve a stamp of approval from One Planet Living's Communities program. This rigorous, 10-tier certification program developed by environmental nonprofit BioRegional Development Group and WWF International focuses on the greenness of neighborhoods instead of individual homes. The project will also seek LEED Gold certification.

Consisting of 5 different single-family home designs — ranging from 1,200 to 1,600–square feet — and apartments — ranging from 450 to 1,200-square feet — designed by Davis and the pieceHomes team, Grow Community will generate all of its own power through solar panels placed atop the residences along with additional panels installed elsewhere on the island. There will also be ample “bike and kayak storage,” organic community gardens (or P-Patches in Seattle-speak), and shared composting and recycling facilities. And, not surprisingly, the community will be so pedestrian-centric that owning more than one car could become a major hassle. Explains The Kitsap Sun:

Vehicle parking would be located in consolidated areas away from homes, making residents more likely to use the development's trail network as their primary means of getting around. The trails, including a main public one, would funnel residents toward Madison Avenue, where a farmers market, a grocery store and various Winslow shops are within easy reach. Only one parking space is planned for each home.

As reported by the Kitsap Sun, the developers expect a full-build out to take about five years and homes within Grow Community won’t be exactly cheap — the developers aren’t aiming for affordable housing status or public funding — but will fall on the lower end of things on the somewhat pricey Bainbridge Island scale: Asani anticipates that the one-, two-and three- bedroom homes will sell for in the ballpark of $250,000 to $390,000. In addition to the homes and apartments, the Waldorf-affiliated Madrona School may relocate to the community.

Find out more about this remarkable deep-green neighborhood over at Asani, on Facebook, and on the development’s informative blog. It's also worth reading more about One Planet Communities, a program that I was, until now, unfamiliar with. And stay tuned for this month's installment of “Evergreen Homes" where I'll feature a gorgeous prefab getaway in the wilds of my native state, Washington, that, like pieceHomes and Grow Community, I found out about at Dwell on Design 2011.


Click here for original article: http://www.mnn.com/your-home/remodeling-design/blogs/just-add-water-and-architect-deep-green-community-to-grow-outside-

Saturday, July 2, 2011