Well said!  Anyone who understands that all new buildings must be net PRODUCERS of electricity will prosper.  Architects and builders who cannot get past the 1960s mindset of a building that sucks down electricity and water while producing light pollution and sewage will need to retire soon.

I am proud to be part of the generation of engineers who will change the way people think of the buildings they work and live in.  A home doesn't just provide shelter from wind and rain; it should provide food, water, winter warmth, and a respite from summer's heat.

Whatever the details mean, I could not care less; anyway, I could not understand them in decades.

But the evening photograph of that building is gorgeous!, with the broad roof held up on forks, and warmly lit.  Hopefully it is not a university structure; one would not like to waste such art on unappreciative undergraduates, who pay attention to nothing but their handheld mechanismata.

You cannot build a 19th century mansion in hardwood and slap solar panels on it and call it new.

The Bauhaus was driven by technology.  It said: we can build momuments from rebar and concrete.  Form follows function.

Today, our society is Netcentric.   It's composite, multi-variate, mobile, online.

The architecture must reflect that...where is that architecture?

Anyone who understands that all new buildings must be net PRODUCERS of electricity will prosper.

Brilliant!  That was the paradigm shift I was looking for.

An architecture for a Producer society, not a node on the grid that can only consume!

I don't trust these "Green Architects" -- they end up designing compounds that look like Goldfinger's Hideout.    

But you are truly right -- show me homes that make energy!   Design with nano-technology, not just hammer and nail.   Be an input node not a bulb outlet.

New energy efficient buildings are going to be vital of course, but why have a go at 19th century buildings?  There are huge numbers of older buildings throughout the western world which represent an vast amount of embodied carbon.  There are plenty of ways to make older buildings more efficent (in a sympathetic way), and in many cases, are more efficient than the structures put up in the last 30 years.  
Building a home from scatch may allow you to incorporate the latest in energy saving technology, but almost every house built today still uses a large amount of cement, wood, glass, etc - all of which have a carbon footprint which has to accounted for before any savings can be made by the news houses design.  By contrast, my 19th house only has to save current carbon use.  Reuse, and recycle first, rebuild where you can't.

If I were designing a new architecture, it would be about re-agrarianizing America.

We need to leave the center cities and move beyond the suburbs back onto the farms.

19th century buildings?  Yes, but only if they are big red barns.

Computer technology and retail technology make agrarian living the new intellectual and bohemian centers.

WILL USING PROPANE PROPELLED MACHINE (SUCH AS CONCRETE BUFFERS) IN THE CONSTRUCTION/REHAB OF A "GREEN BUILDING" HAVE ANY AFFECT ON THE "LEED" CERTIFICATION OF THE PROJECT.  PUTTING PROPANE IN HOMES IS CONSIDERED "ENERGY EFFICIENT" BUT WILL PUTTING IT IN A TANK OF INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT EMIT VOC'S AND HOW HIGH WOULD THE VOC EMISSION BE.  IS IT GOOD OR BAD TO USE SUCH A MACHINE ON A GREEN PROJECT?