Green Community

October 23, 2008 - October 25, 2009

Exhibition Resources

Green Community: Design Choices

Green Community: Press Materials

Green Community: Find Out More

Shop Green @ the Museum Shop

Also of Interest

Programs

Book of the Month: The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum
July 7, 2009

Three Movements in Architecture: Greek Revival
July 11, 2009

News

The Lay of the Landscape

Words, Words, Words

Audio and Video

	Great Green Places: U Street June 8, 2009
	2009 Honor Award: Visionaries in Sustainability June 4, 2009

In Our Shop

		Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature $75.00
		Strida Folding Bike $800.00

Great Green Places

Sustainable Communities

Green Community E-Cards

Second floor galleries

The National Building Museum is proud to announce that Green Community has won a 2009 MUSE Award for Interpretive Interactive Installations!

The health of our communities, our planet, and ourselves depend on how we plan, design, and construct the world between our buildings. Green Community explores the origins of our precarious ecological situation and introduces communities large and small where citizens, political leaders, planning and design professionals, developers, and government agencies are working together for a more sustainable future.

Prairie Crossing
Courtesy of Prairie Holdings Corporation, Photo by Vaughn Wascovich

FOCUS ON: Prairie Crossing
Grayslake, Illinois

It is possible to conserve land and maintain a natural environment, even if you need to live near a big city. Believe it or not, northwest of Chicago, there's a little suburb on the prairie.

What makes a community green? A green community conserves its land, offers multiple options for transportation, provides open space for recreation and cultivation, and uses its natural and cultural resources wisely.

Green communities aren't a new idea. In fact, for most of human history, "green" wasn't something special--it was simply how people lived. We arranged our days around the rising and setting of the sun and our years around the seasons. Healthy land resulted in healthy crops, which resulted in healthy people. Living in cooperation with nature wasn't a matter of choice; it was a matter of survival.

Previous generations may not have used terms like "sustainable development" or "smart growth" but they knew that healthy places had clean air, fresh water, fertile soil, and viable ways to move goods and people around.

As people invented new technologies, we changed how we live. Without the old constraints of nature, we can travel the world easily, use electricity to light up our nights and extend our days, and keep warm in the winter and cool in the summer. These conveniences, however, have had consequences for our personal health--and for the health of our civic spaces and our planet. It turns out that living in cooperation with nature is still a matter of survival. Humans, however, are still inventive and many communities are now investing in new technologies--as well as relooking at some old ideas--to create greener approaches to modern life.

Interested in taking a tour of Green Community? Click here to learn more.

Tell friends and family about Green Community and encourage them to help the environment with a free e-card!

Related Programming

Sustainable Communities Lecture Series

Sponsored by United Technologies Corporation, this year-long lecture series expands on the themes presented in Green Community and examines examines how and why we plan, design, and construct the world between our buildings. Program topics include graying suburbs, national transportation security, and cleaning up Chesapeake Bay. The Series features online Q&A forums following the programs, giving online visitors the opportunity to submit questions to speakers.

Green Community International Student Design Competition
The National Building Museum and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture are proud to announce the Green Community International Student Design Competition. The Competition expands on themes from the Green Community, as well as themes in past exhibitions in the sustainability series, Big & Green (2003) and Green House (2006-07). The Student Design Competition asks multi-disciplinary teams of college design students to focus entirely on the issues of sustainable development—how we plan, design, and construct the world between our buildings. Prize winning submissions will be highlighted in the magazine Architectural Record and presented at the National Building Museum in the summer of 2009.

1909 – 2109: Sustaining the Lasting Value of American Planning
The American Planning Association & the National Building Museum will present a half-day symposium on Thursday, May 21. Federal officials, community activists, and others reflect on the first 100 years of the planning movement in the United States. Learn about the current state of planning and where the movement is headed in the next 100 years.

Reserve your copy of the Green Community catalogue today!

Sponsorship Opportunities

For more information about Green Community sponsorship opportunities, click here or contact Shar Taylor, Vice President for Development at 202.272.2448, ext. 3907 or staylor@nbm.org.