There aren't enough down-to-earth, Web-based tools to help you visualize a greener home. The Green Building Studio is for architects, while Lucid Design Group's energy dashboard is found only in a slim number of buildings. Yahoo's Green House is pretty, yet it can't be personalized.
By contrast, the Department of Energy's frightful Energy Hog.
But I just wasted a fine chunk of the afternoon playing with a kids' Web site that makes a great model for what I'd like to see for adults. My Abodo is an excellent, Flash-based interface that walks you through building a virtual green home. Created in part by the British government, it's more happy-go-lucky than our Department of Energy's Energy Hog games (though not as fun as killing cows in the McDonald's Video Game that it reminded Josh of). My Abodo lets you hand-pick various parts of the house, from the flowery green roof to your own vegetable garden, while adjusting trash in the nearby dump accordingly. When you're done, you can embed your abode on a blog or other Web site, just like so below.
I'm crossing my fingers that someone might offer some freebie to bring green building down to earth for grown-ups. Google Earth (more here) and SketchUp provide so much potential for environmental imaging and modeling. Imagine if the search giant also served up an amateur architecture tool that let you design buildings online from the inside out.
AUSTIN, Texas--You can think of Green Building Studio (GBS) as a mashup between Autodesk and Google.
The Santa Rosa, Calif.-based company makes a computer automated design application for architects and builders that evaluates a building's energy efficiency. And after it does that, it pops up product recommendations for insulation, lighting and other products to increase efficiency. It makes money from the software as well as generating leads for product suppliers.
The company essentially exists to tackle two problems, according to CEO John Kennedy, who spoke at the Clean Energy Venture Summit taking place this week in Austin. First, the company's software encourages the construction of more energy-efficient buildings.
"Buildings are the largest energy users in the U.S. and the world and consequently the largest producers of greenhouse gases," he said. "And the trend is getting worse."
Second, it hopes to make money by helping companies market their products. Building products right now aren't marketed with laser-like efficiency. Approximately $60 billion gets spent a year on marketing them, according to Kennedy.
GBS launched its first version in 2004 and will come out with version three in the fall. Autodesk sells the software through its reseller channel and the two companies have launched a training program to educate 50,000 architects on how to use the software by 2010.
The company also sells private label versions of the software to manufacturers like Owens-Corning, he said.
Green Building Studio is a mashup of various services to help architects build greener buildings.
(Credit: Green Building Studio, Inc.)
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