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“There’s no other building like this going up in the nation, or in the world for that matter, that we know of.”

April 21, 2010

MUM to Erect Walls of New Off-the-Grid Building on Earth Day

Sustainable Living Center Will Be Unique in the Country

Press Conference and Earth Day Event Scheduled for 12:45 p.m. April 22

On Earth Day, April 22, the walls and the roof will go up on Maharishi University of Management’s new Sustainable Living Center — a building that will set a new standard for green building in America by being completely off the grid with respect to electricity, heating and cooling, water, and waste.

The Sustainable Living Center has been designed to meet the Living Building Challenge, the highest standard for sustainable design and green building in the world. It will be one of the first three to achieve this. And it will be unique because it will be the first to combine that standard with the standards of LEED Platinum certification, Building Biology, and Maharishi Vedic Architecture.

“There’s no other building like this going up in the nation, or in the world for that matter, that we know of,” said nationally known green building expert Mike Nicklas, who co-designed the building and whose company Innovative Design has designed over 4000 buildings that use renewable energy solutions.

Whole Tree Post and Beam Construction

Construction will proceed quickly on Earth Day because the structure uses Whole Tree post and beam techniques. The walls will be tilted up and roof trusses placed on them.

The entire shell of the building should be completed within about a week, and the building is expected to be ready for occupation in late fall.

A Building That Teaches

The Sustainable Living Center will serve students in the university’s Sustainable Living major. It will have classrooms, workshop, meeting room, greenhouse, kitchen, research lab, recycling center, and offices, as well as east and west covered verandas and a porch on the north.

It has been designed as a building that teaches. In addition to embodying sustainability, it will allow students to monitor performance and energy efficiency and make adjustments.

“The Sustainable Living Center will be a living, evolving building,” said David Fisher, head of the MUM Sustainable Living Department, who helped plan the building. “The building itself is an educational tool, not just a passive one like most classroom buildings. It will provide participatory education where students will be continually adding to, or altering, the building and grounds as well as systematically checking its effectiveness.”

Off the Grid

The Sustainable Living Center will be completely off of the energy and utility grid. Every feature will exemplify healthy and sustainable green building — and will be geared to teaching those principles.

Construction uses all non-toxic materials from local sources (as defined by the Living Building Challenge requirements). All energy will be provided from solar panels on the building and from an outside wind turbine. Rainwater catchment will be the complete source of the building’s water, with purification of drinking water via ultraviolet technology. Wastewater will be treated onsite using a constructed wetland. Natural daylighting will illuminate the entire interior. Geothermal technology will assist with heating and cooling.

An Embodiment of Sustainability That’s Feasible and Practical

This achievement is remarkable because none of the systems in the building are new or experimental, according to construction manager Dal Loiselle. “The Sustainable Living Center is being constructed using ‘state-of-the-shelf technologies,” he said. “This building proves that we can meet our environmental goals for our built environment with the materials, technologies, and green building protocols we already possess.”

A Community Oriented Toward Sustainability

Sustainability has become a major focus at Maharishi University of Management, which has long used techniques for living in harmony with natural law, including the Transcendental Meditation technique and other Vedic technologies including Vedic Architecture. The University has filed a climate action plan to be 100% carbon neutral by 2020 as part of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.

Fairfield, too, has taken a strong direction toward sustainability, hiring a sustainability coordinator and moving ahead with various initiatives. In 2009, MSN.com named Fairfield Mayor Ed Malloy as one of the nation’s 15 greenest mayors — alongside the mayors of New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and Salt Lake City.

“Our city will benefit enormously by having this building on the campus of MUM as a demonstration of a new standard of design and will reinforce our commitment in Fairfield to changing the culture towards a more sustainable future,” Mayor Malloy said.

The Sustainable Living Center has also benefited from material donations by nationally recognized leaders in green building materials: Gerdau AmeriSteel, Pittsburgh Corning and United States Gypsum Corporation, as well as from Green Building Supply of Fairfield, IA.

• • •

A press conference will be held on Earth Day, April 22, at 12:45 p.m. at the site of the Sustainable Living Center construction just north of the MUM library on Highway 1.

Available for media interviews: Sustainable Living department head David Fisher, construction manager Dal Loiselle, Fairfield Mayor Ed Malloy, and associate design architect Jon Lipman.

The Building will also be a showcase for the public, and will feature meeting rooms, a real-time energy and renewable systems monitor, and displays of materials and building systems featured in the building to showcase partnerships with leading technologies and materials manufacturers.  For more information please contact: Marco Sunseri @ 641-472-7000 x2449.

Posted in Architecture, Education, Sustainable Living | 1 Comment »

Max Perelman to present “The Green Dragon” at M.U.M. and discuss Sustainable Building in China

January 9, 2010

The Sustainable Living Department of Maharishi University of Management will offer a free showing of the film, The Green Dragon, in Dalby Hall on Monday, January 11, 8:00 pm, at the Argiro Student Center.

The Green Dragon, a documentary film, tells the story about the potential for expanding sustainable construction and development in China. This film portrays the sheer scale of China’s construction industry while engaging the viewer in the reality of how this industry works. It also provides an in-depth discussion of the barriers and opportunities for China to ‘go green.’

“The rapid development of China’s green building movement, from nothing in 2000 to what is now, approximately 4 million m2 of green building construction (not including sustainable developments), is a story worth telling,” says Ken Langer, President, EMSI, an international leader in green building and sustainable community design consulting. For reference, the US now has 12.5 million sqm after 30 years of a green building movement.

Max Perelman

Max Perelman is the research director and co-producer of the Green Dragon Media Project,  a 9-week research and filming expedition to 9 cities along China’s east coast. Interviewees included Chinese government officials as well as the leaders of major developers, professional services firms and product manufacturers.

Based in California, Max Perelman will be in Iowa to show the film, followed by a Q & A session. “Before making this film I had no idea of what an amazing journey I was embarking on. I had been told that over half the world’s construction takes place in this one country, but only when you see it do you believe it.”

Max Perelman is a LEED Accredited Professional and is a project manager with BuildingWise, LLC a high performance building consulting firm headquartered in Moss Landing, CA. Max is also the president of American Environmental & Agricultural, Inc., an import/export and trade consulting firm specializing in environmental technologies and focused on trade between Asia and North America. He is also an advisor to the Joint US-China Cooperation on Clean Energy. Max speaks and reads Japanese and Mandarin Chinese.

Max has a BA from Cornell University, as well as an MBA and MA in International Environmental Policy from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He has presented at a number of green building conferences including the USGBC’s Greenbuild 2007 in Chicago and WestCoastGreen 2008 in Silicon Valley. He has also published research in the Woodrow Wilson Center’s China Environment Series.

Max’s recent volunteer work includes fundraising for strawbale construction in the Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang and Sichuan, and volunteering for the local Pacific Grove, CA city government as a Planning Commissioner.

While visiting M.U.M. and Fairfield, Max Perelman will also meet with students, faculty, and community leaders, and anyone else interested in sustainable building, international environmental policy, and urban development in China and the US.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, email sustainableliving@mum.edu and visit the film’s website www.greendragonfilm.com.

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ABC Nightline News Report on TM, M.U.M., Maharishi Vedic City, and David Lynch in Iowa

January 8, 2010

A positive Iowa news report for your enjoyment and edification. (Postponed again, sorry.) Just aired last night, July 5, 2010. http://bit.ly/cDxWqj


http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/transcendental-meditation-vedic-city-iowa/story?id=9218475

Transcendental Meditation Thrives in Iowa
Adherents of Transcendental Meditation Have Called Hawkeye State Home Since ’70s
By John Berman and Maggie Burbank
Jan. 8, 2010

When you think of Iowa, you think of cornfields, you think of caucuses, you think of old-fashioned country-living.

Chances are, you don’t think of meditation <http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/popup?id=7249295>  and communal living.

Welcome to Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa — the only city in the country built on the tenets of transcendental meditation <http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=7263240> , for meditators, by meditators.

Meg and Erik Vigmostad moved here from St. Louis in 1982.

“We wanted to come to a meditating community,” said Meg Vigmostad. “We had two children at the time, one of them was an infant, and we felt like it was the best place to bring up our children <http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=7263240> .”

Watch the full story tonight, Jan 8, 2009 on “Nightline” <http://abcnews.go.com/nightline>  at 11:35 p.m. ET

Vigmostad acknowledged that the couple’s families thought they were “crazy” for making the move. Crazy, because those words, “transcendental meditation,” sound, well, different. Many people first heard of transcendental meditation, or TM, in the 1960s, when the Beatles started following Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the official founder of TM.

“Transcendental meditation is a simple technique practiced for about 15-20 minutes sitting comfortably in a chair with the eyes closed,” said Bob Roth, a national director of the TM program. “It allows the body to get a profound state of rest while the mind just settles down and experiences a state of inner wakefulness, inner calm, inner coherence.”

The followers of Mahesh Yogi — mostly from East and West Coast universities — moved to Iowa en masse in 1974 to set up their own college, the Maharishi University of Management. The group chose Iowa because that is where they could find the land.

Now the settlement features two huge domes, one for men and one for women, with residents streaming in to meditate together twice a day.

But at the university and in the city, the commitment to Vedic principles of natural law and balance, derived from ancient Sanskrit texts, goes far beyond meditation. The community has banned the sale of nonorganic food within its boundaries. And that’s not all.

“The primary characteristics of Vedic architecture, the most obvious one, is that ideally, buildings face east, the direction of the rising sun,” said Jon Lipman, the country’s leading Vedic architect.

‘Greater Happiness’
Lipman says the buildings at the university and most new houses in town are constructed in line with ancient precepts.

“Just like the organs in the human body, there is a right place for different kinds of functions within a building,” Lipman said.

“And so, a kitchen is typically in one location. A living room in a house is typically in another location.”

Every Vedic building has a silent core known as a Bramastan, which is lit by a skylight and is never walked on. Lipman claims miraculous effects.

“The results are that, families find that their lives are improved, that there’s greater family harmony, that there is greater financial success, there’s greater happiness,” said Lipman. “There are many many cases where members of a family had disharmony between them, and it dissolved when they moved into a Vedic home. There are many cases where even such things as chronic diseases were abated by moving into a Vedic home.”

Lipman said “it’s a real challenge” to be poor, unhappy or unhealthy if you live in a Vedic building.

The Vigmostads live in a Vedic house, and seem like happy customers.

“It feels harmonious, it feels orderly, there’s a lot of silence here that was definitely not in our other house that we owned,” said Meg Vigmostad.

The talk of order and inner peace might sound unbelievable. But it is also the work of Vedic City to make it all … believable. Fred Travis, director of a university facility called the Center for Brain Consciousness and Cognition, demonstrated an EEG monitor of neurological electrical activity that he said shows that TM makes the brain more organized.

“What this is measuring is the electrical activity of the brain,” Travis explained as a member of the community hooked up to the machine sat and meditated.

“You see this one going up and down?” Travis said, pointed to a gauge. “Look at the one next to it. It goes up and down in a similar way. This is called coherence. When the similarity of two signatures are very close, it suggests those two parts of the brain are working together.

Neurologist Gary Kaplan, a proponent of TM, said such “coherence” will bring happiness, success — even world peace.

“What we notice is that this electrical activity becomes more harmonious or coherent between left and right hemispheres,” Kaplan said. “There have been studies that have documented that the TM technique, when practiced in large groups, seems to have some effect on society in general, whether it’s in war-torn areas where people are sitting to meditate together, or in high-crime areas that the trends reverse when you have larger groups meditating together.”

David Lynch and TM
It is a lot to digest — but then you don’t really have to. The TM followers insist they are not a cult. They all have normal jobs, for the middle of Iowa, and they are not out to recruit you. They just want you to know the option is there.

Famed filmmaker David Lynch spends a lot of time in Vedic City. He started the David Lynch Foundation, which, in the last four years, has provided scholarships for over 100,000 kids to learn to meditate for free in schools across the country.

“It’s not a religion. It’s not against any religion, it’s not mumbo-jumbo. It truly does transform life,” Lynch told ABC News. “Kids come to school and they meditate together for 15 minutes in the morning. And before they go home they meditate for 15 minutes. A lot of them come from, you know, bad situations, and so this gives them this thing you know, at the beginning and the end of the day, the rest of the time you just watch the violence stop. Watch relationships improve. Watch happiness in the hallways, in the classroom, watch creativity flow more and more, watch that heavy weight that we are living under gently lift away.”

“Nightline” was told there wasn’t enough time to properly learn transcendental meditation on a short trip to Vedic City. But to get a feeling of the Vedic way of life, we did visit the Ayurveda Health Spa in Vedic City — the leading spa of its kind in the country. Ayurveda is a system of health and healing involving food and behavior that originated in India thousands of years ago.

“We take your pulse, we put three fingers on the right hand,” explained Mark Toomey, an Ayurvedic health expert at the spa. “And it’s what I would say is like plugging into the inner intelligence of the body.”

Toomey said he can learn a lot from feeling a person’s pulse. He demonstrated on our correspondent.

“It’s a strong pulse,” Toomey said. “That means that, good expression of intelligence. It’s clear. Your pulse has a little bit of tension there, so maybe you’re working a little too hard, too many deadlines.”

Next up was the Shirodhara treatment.

“So what we’re going to be doing is pouring this oil for about 20 minutes on your forehead, in a continuous stream,” said Toomey. “Your job is just to relax and enjoy.”

And what’s so wrong with that? In Vedic City, they have made that their way of life … in the middle of Iowa.

“We really have all we need here,” said Meg Vigmostad. “You can go to a city anytime. But this is sort of a haven, you know? And it’s a place of comfort, and community.”

Copyright © 2010 ABC News Internet Ventures
——————————————————–

Here are two of my favorite famous relevant quotes on understanding truth and accepting the changes they bring for the better—a paradigm shift.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered;
the point is to discover them.
— Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)

All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
— Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

Posted in Architecture, David Lynch Foundation, Education, Health, Peace, Videos | Leave a Comment »

Extreme City: Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa

September 3, 2009

Associated Content | Travel
Extreme City: Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa
August 29, 2009 by Sherri Granato

Capital of the Global Country of World Peace

Iowa is often referred to as the American Heartland so it comes as no surprise that a vast amount of people would find a peaceful refuge within its borders, or at least within one of the cities located within the state. The city of Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa named for the famed yogi Maharishi, Maharishi Vedic City is the fastest-growing city in all of Iowa. So the question is why are people suddenly flocking to this small community in leaps and bounds, and is it worthy of sharing?

The Travel Channel decided to investigate what they dub an “Extreme Town” for themselves and share their discoveries with anyone who cares to know the hidden secrets and vast treasures that are luring citizens into relocating to the Midwest region of the United States. So pull up a chair and learn a little bit about Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa, and “Welcome to the Capital of the Global Country of World Peace”.

The city itself is spectacular in the fact that it is squeaky clean and virtually crime free. The Travel Channel was so enamored by their findings that they included the city on their list of most unique zip codes and brought it to television for viewers to catch a glimpse of something you wouldn’t otherwise believe.

The unbelievable part is that every person that lives within the city limits of Maharishi Vedic City happens to practice Vedic Natural Law, which is in layman’s terms an ancient Indian science focusing on transcendental meditation. The ultimate goal in this practice is nothing more than a deep mental cleansing and physical peace that is practiced for 15 to 20 minutes twice a day. The ending result leads to revitalization and happy thoughts that are free and clear of stressful situations.

From the beginning the original idea of the city was the master plan of San Francisco real estate developer Chris Johnson. In 1991 his idea evolved into a working municipality centered on the principles and teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, including his views on architectural design.

Due to his vision the town offers homes all facing toward the east, clean cut lines, beautiful in nature, and all offer a gold colored kalash on the roof. Since 2001, the population has grown ten times its original size with 1,200 residents now calling it home.

The significance of the kalash on top of the house is that it completes the desired form. The mental peace one finds in the heart of a temple whose top is a dome-shaped kalash and having a kalash placed on the peak most obviously testifies the importance of the roof-component of Vedic architecture. All homes built in the city must face the east simply because the design promotes health, happiness, and good fortune.

Maharishi Vedic City is made up of a ring of ten circles covering slightly more than one square mile, the town has its own observatory with ancient astrological and astronomical instruments to orient itself within the cosmos. City leaders and educators recognize that the solution too many problems with today’s youths is a lack of proper education that develops the total brain potential in every child.

With this in mind the city developed an ordinance on January 28, 2004, to establish Maharishi Vedic University to provide a public university, colleges, and primary and secondary schools for the city’s residents. Just a few miles south of the city is Fairfield, Iowa, the home of Maharishi University of Management, formerly known as Maharishi International University.

Many residents moved to Fairfield to participate in the practice of Transcendental Meditation. The university campus, located on the north side of Fairfield, is home to two large golden domes used for the group practice of TM-Sidhi program. The other technique, referred to as the Yogic Flying technique consists of sitting in the cross-legged lotus position on a foam mat while the body lifts up and the subject moves forward in short jumps.

Living in Maharishi Vedic City is for anyone that wishes to live the remainder of their life on Earth stress free. The whole city enforces this notion by the way that the citizens do things day to day. Everything from the local businesses to the schools and restaurants are geared to maintain inner peace throughout a life style that is the choice of the people living there.

Everyone including school children stop what they are doing to meditate 15-20 minutes per day, everyday, twice a day. The mind is then cleared of lack luster debris, replaced by positive thoughts that promote all things good and wholesome.

The Raj Ayurveda Health Center offers comfortable lovely rooms, organic vegetarian food, and is simply one of a kind as it sits in the middle of a cornfield is this oasis. The health center explains everything you ever wanted to know about ayurvedic and transcendental meditation.

Visitors learn how individual factors in their make-up affect physical tendencies, moods, cravings, motivation, and behavior. The ultimate lesson from visiting the center is simple shifts in diet, exercise, and daily and seasonal routines can enhance their progress toward increased strength, stability and vitality. Contact the Raj for individual and group rates. Call: (641) 472-9580, ext. 0, or email: theraj@lisco.net.

As for the dietary plan of the good citizens of Maharishi Vedic City, Organic is in, and synthetic chemicals are out! Even the restaurants support the beliefs of the residents by only cooking with the purist of ingredients. City officials recognize the importance of healthy food for the citizens and have banned the sale of all non-organic food from its city. Construction has begun on the first of a planned 100 acres of greenhouses at Maharishi Vedic City Organic Farms which will grow organic produce for residents of the City and Midwest.

The city has been featured in various media venues from newspapers, magazines, radio, and news and most recently on the Travel Channel under Extreme Cities. For more information on the traditions being practiced in the American Heartland, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mo2326.

Places of Interest to Visit: the Rukmapura Hotel, a large Stapatyavedic, log-built hotel and see the nearby Pandit Campus, where nearly 1000 Pandits from India help create peace and harmony in the world.

http://tinyurl.com/msvfwr

Extreme City: Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa
Neighborhood: American Heartland
Maharishi Vedic City, IA 52556
United States of America

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Developer Celebrates How ‘Green’ Is Its Building

September 3, 2009

Picture 26
Developer Celebrates How ‘Green’ Is Its Building
Rockville Structure Gets Environmental Kudos
Picture 27
By Rick Rojas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 3, 2009

Two Thousand Tower Oaks Boulevard off Interstate 270 in Rockville looks like most modern suburban office complexes. It’s a sleek and shiny metal and glass structure that seems to have plopped down like an alien spacecraft on a freshly mowed plot.

What’s special about this building, its developers say, is the technology inside, which earned it the superlative from the state government of being the “greenest” office building in Maryland.

Walking into the building, made of an assortment of recycled items including old bluejeans and wheat products, visitors might think they are entering an office with dirt floors, joked Marnie Abramson of the building’s developer, Tower Companies, which is based there.

The building’s insulation is made of recycled denim. A composite of wheat products makes up the doors. The floor is old carpet that has been shaved down.

But, Abramson said, the structure has the amenities of the average office building and then some.

The building has a fitness center, a three-level underground parking garage and flat-screen televisions embedded in its elevator walls. Every work space has an outside view. The air-conditioning system circulates fresh, filtered air in the building every 51 minutes.

Abramson said the building challenges preconceived notions about environmentally friendly structures, such as that having a green building involves sacrificing certain conveniences or that environmental friendliness is counterintuitive to business success.

Tower Companies received $1.6 million in a state tax credit for the building, Abramson said, and dangling carrots like that in front of the business community is a simple and effective way to encourage them to take part.

Because of the tax credit, the idea of green practices as the norm “permeates into the marketplace,” she said. “In the long term, we can build our way into a sustainable future.”

The tax credit, which was created in 2001, allows developers to recoup 6 to 8 percent of construction costs if a building qualifies for platinum status in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, rating system.

Reaching platinum status includes using 100 percent wind energy, limiting water and electricity consumption, reducing air and light pollution and making sure 90 percent of occupants have outside views.

Tower Oaks was the first building in Maryland to qualify and was named the greenest office building in Maryland by state Comptroller Peter Franchot (D) last month.

Joe Shapiro, a spokesman for the comptroller, said the building is a “shining example for the rest of the state . . . because it has an economic value and an environmental value.”

Shapiro said LEED platinum buildings save on utility costs and increase productivity. State officials hope the tax credit encourages prospective businesses to reach for platinum status, he said.

Abramson said prospective tenants have told her, ” ‘I don’t know if I can afford the premium for a green building.’ ” Her response: “I don’t think you can afford not to.” Constructing something like Tower Oaks isn’t just environmental citizenship; it’s smart business, she said.

Going green increased overall construction costs by slightly more than 1 percent, she said. But employee productivity has increased, and fewer employees called in sick this past winter than in any other year, Abramson said, crediting the fresh air and natural light.

Debbie Webb, director of property management for Tower Companies, has taken notice of the difference in her own work space. She has been at Tower Companies since it moved in February and worked for other property management companies for 18 years.

“You start off in the basement or in some place where no one wants to rent,” she said of the standard property management work area. And, she said, with the lights flipped off and the midday sun flowing in, “it’s just such a healthy environment.”

Abramson said the company is looking toward the next step: finding a way to generate its electricity on site.

“We’re superheroes,” she said. “It’s our job to save the planet through real estate.”

http://tinyurl.com/mrkf7x

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