Green Cities Florida : Interview with Eric Corey Freed

Here’s my quickie interview with Eric Corey Freed at Green Cities. Click HERE for Audio and awesome blogpost by Derek. Transcript below.

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May 20, 2009

…Talking with Eric Corey Freed, organic architect, who is also a member of Urban Re:Vision.
So I just spent an hour talking to a room-full of people about urban revision and our entire story of how we started with a series of five competitions that looked at different aspects of sustainability, energy, water. And then our big competition which just closed in May, and we just had the judging yesterday, and we announce the winners next week of a city block in Dallas for a real block, for a real place in a real city that will really get built, and we pick three winners and three honorable mentions, and people can go online at urbanrevision.com and see them next week.

So if you can tell me, not the winners, but name an entry that you found particularly interesting.
There was an entry that I found very interesting that was a building that absorbed carbon and filtered the air, and they had a lot of science and documentation reams of paper showing how this could work, and it was a very intriguing idea of a building that’s truly regenerative not just in terms of providing energy but fixing some of the problems such as carbon emissions. There was one, actually showed it today that took aircraft fuselage, the tubes of the airplane, and cut off the ends and stacked them into a rack and became apartments, kind of a modular housing thing.

Very cool.
So there was a lot of great ideas. I mean the range and depth of the entries was phenomenal. In fact that’s what made it such a long two days because we had to narrow down 100 incredible entries down to three.

So you were impressed with the entries then?
Oh very impressed! It was far above what I ever could have imagined coming in. And they clearly spent hundreds of hours putting these things together.

So was it mostly professionals then who were entering the contest, or did regular citizens and students get involved too?
We had everybody. The entries were anonymous and then at the end we were able to look to see who did what, and there was a range of everything from students to big large gigantic corporate firms to everybody in between.  That was the real intent of the competition was to get that broad range of entries. And you wouldn’t know it by the entries… I mean they were just so overwhelming, but people can go online and look and see what was entered.

Cool thanks for talking with us!
Thank you.

Podcast: Advanced Solar Photonics

Another piece of work I did (along with Derek Gordon on the ole blog posting, again) for Green Cities Media.

Advanced Solar Photonics Podcast

The solar industry is on fire… in a good way.  Solar panels and solar farms are popping up all over the nation, but do you ever consider who is behind the production of this hot technology?  Maureen McHale of Advanced Solar Photonics (ASP) took a minute to speak with Kimberly Miller of Green Cities Media at Green Cities Florida to discuss some of their recent advancements and the status of solar in the Sunshine State.  One thing is clear from this interview; Florida is keeping Advanced Solar Photonics busy.  Born from a laser systems producer, Advanced Solar Photonics quickly found a home in the sustainability industry by creating parts for solar panels.  The demand for parts led to the idea of selling entire solar panels and even the production of solar farms.  Green Cities turned out to be the perfect opportunity for this rapidly expanding company.  The media attention and sheer number of participants made it a perfect place for Advanced Solar Photonics to spread their message to a diverse and attentive audience.