Greening Hollywood Meets Opportunity Green

Opportunity Green hosted its inaugural "after-work gathering for young green-minded professionals" the first Tuesday in May at the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles. Admission to the event included the A and D Museum's New Main Exhibit "After the Flood" which showcases alternative and sustainable architecture and re-building options for New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. Bringing talented professionals together who are also environmentally and socially-minded can only produce positive outcomes, is the philosophy behind Opportunity Green. Hence, the Room 367 Event.

Photo by Michael Goodman

Speakers included Michael Danenberg, Head of Operations of GOOD Magazine who made the point that you can do good and make money and help others to make money by doing good, as well. The two goals needn't be mutually exclusive, he said. He credited his commitment to the multimedia, hotly buzzed about magazine GOOD to its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt whom he met at a Sustainable Living event a few years ago. Greenblatt is the cofounder of Ethos™ Water and is actively involved in the XPrize Foundation. Greenblatt also spent more than five years in the Clinton administration where he served in the White House and US Department of Commerce.

Maria Giudice, CEO of Hot Design Studio also spoke as well as Bret Mosher [Editorial Addendum] of Blue Velvet who replaced Scott Mattoon, Western U.S. Chief Architect for Sun Microsystems as speaker at the A + D Museum Room 367 Event. Organic hors d'oeuvres were provided by Le Pain et Quotidien and Ciudad and beer from the sustainable Micro-brewery New Belgium which produces Fat Tire was on hand as well as mojitos made with the Costa Rican Rum "Witch's Rock" which is made from 100% pure sugar cane. Witch's Rock claims to be the purest rum in world by more than 10X - no impurities means less hangovers.

After The Flood's exhibit at the Architecture and Design Museum is easy to spot because it has a bright pink tent out in front of it in its courtyard on Wilshire. TRANSitional CONDitions or TransCond will give you full coverage and updates of the world tour of After The Flood: Building on Higher Ground and also offers the symposium, Sustainable Dialogues.

TRANSitional CONDitions is a collaborative "research effort that responds to emergent behaviors of contemporary urban society and that proposes new strategies through architecture, film and digital media." Their current focus is on global sustainability and re-building New Orleans.

Opportunity Green events are a gathering of like-minded professionals drawn together to network, to socialize and to use their areas of expertise -- whether it be law, media, architecture, business - toward creating and maintaining a more sustainable, eco-friendly planet and future. One of the sponsors of the event was Greenopia, which is the "urban dweller's guide to green living in Los Angeles." The cool thing about the guide is you can add your own reviews by going to the website.

For these and many other events, check out GoToGreenLA. Jessica Peltz tirelessly compiles this weekly list, updated constantly, that tells you where and what is happening that is Green in LA on any given day of the week.