Wednesday, July 27, 2011

New art museum changes its name

Bainbridge Island Review 

By CONNIE MEARS
Bainbridge Island Review Staff writer

Jul 22 2011, 11:10 AM · UPDATED



The board of directors for the new art museum, scheduled to open in 2012 at Island Gateway, voted to adopt a new name: Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, said Executive Director Greg Robinson.
The name change from Bainbridge Art Museum was prompted by a couple of reasons. Foremost was to avoid confusion with Bellevue Art Museum, which shared the BAM acronym. Secondly, board members felt that adding the word Island was a more specific identifier for the community.

The museum's focus will be on showcasing art from Kitsap, Olympic Peninsula and Puget Sound areas,
"We're right in the heart of that," Robinson said.

The change will take some time to execute, but it is in the process of filing the paperwork with the Secretary of State to formally change the nonprofit's name.

He said the museum never promoted the use of the term BAM, but the art world tends to be acronym-heavy. The museum may or may not end up using the new BIMA acronym.

The museum has held a number of focus groups seeking input from the community. When looking for an alternative name, the board revisited the focus group comments and found that the name Bainbridge Island Museum of Art was a popular choice.

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

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!

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: 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