Modernism week is an annual event held every February in Palm Springs, California. Thousands of people descend on the Coachella Valley to tour some of the incredible examples of Mid-Century Modern buildings that exist here. To call them fans of modernism is an understatement. Most that I met had some deep, near fanatical, obsession with this particular period of Architecture – a period in which the term “modern” meant what it should.

Before it referred to that period of art history from 1920 to 1965, the word “modern” used to refer to a departure from traditionalism using cutting edge technology. It seems we have forgotten the beautiful power of the concept of something being truly modern. Practically all of the events around Modernism Week treated the past as something belonging to a bygone era, and a past that needs to be preserved. The general sentiment seemed to be that the unique conditions that gave rise to the Modernist movement is long gone and never to return.

While I agree the original examples of Mid-Century Modernism (1950′s and 60′s) that remain should be preserved, I found myself wanting more. One would think that Modernism itself should be so prevalent by now that we all live in our own Modernist house.

The reality, of course, we know to be much different. Truly modern buildings are reserved for special occasions: a new high-rise or maybe a new public library. In the last decade, even public buildings and schools are starting to embrace modem designs. The US General Services Administration (GSA) has committed to truly modern designs in its’ new buildings. While this progress is wonderful, the daily buildings we use are being overlooked.

Most of the houses being built today are adamantly NOT modern. Unlike the rare Mid-Century Modern examples here in Palm Springs, most existing homes are shy about doing anything beyond the traditional. In fact most subscribe to a style that could best be called, “Spaniterranean,” a hodgepodge of romantic, traditional styles that have little to do with the area in which they are built, and even less to do with the people living in them.

One of the pioneers of this Mid-Century Modernist movement is architect William Krisel. At 86 years of age, he is a wealth of architectural history. In a public conversation lecture held during Modernism Week, Krisel shared some stories of the feeling going on at the time.

“I found a group of likeminded developers and clients who felt the time had come for modern designed tract housing,” he explained.

Yes, the time HAD come. But then did it end? Today, the vast majority of tract housing (housing for the masses) is far from modern. The Tuscany-inspired, Mediterranean villas that blight our landscapes are uninspiring, boring and, worst of all, fake.

Krisel was able to convince clients to build a modern building, in part, because there was a movement going on around him helping to encourage others to join in. He told stories about looking for clients open to modern designs. Nearly 60 years later, architects are still having the same conversations.

Did Modernism fail in its’ mission? Perhaps we need a second Modernist movement.

A fact demonstrated clearly in Palm Springs. Surrounding most of these historical modern buildings are brand new, suburban sprawl, Spaniterranean buildings. New, modern buildings are still considered rare.

PHOTO CREDIT: Behr Browers Architects

While driving along the 101 Highway in Southern California, I almost got into an accident when I caught a glimpse of the Calabasas Shopping Center. Here was a new, everyday building that was clearly modern. Digging around, I was also pleased to discover it to be the first LEED Certified building in the county and the debut project of the Calabasas County Green Development Standard.

Project manager Jason Oliver, from Behr Browers Architects spoke to me about how it came about. With project designer was Francisco Behr, they began by involving the community into the design process. The community’s initial reaction was reluctant to embrace something different, and expected a more traditional design.

“Once the community members started getting educated about the goal of increasing daylighting and opening up to view corridors,” Oliver continued, “they got excited about a modern aesthetic.” By including them in the thinking that goes into the design, the community stopped seeing something modern as being imposed upon them, but rather as a clear design solution.

“Towards the end [of the process],” says Oliver, “the community was almost unanimous in their desire for a modern design.”

That this particular modern building is also the greenest in Calabasas County further helped sell the community and officials on the final design.

“Spec[ulative] developments are primed for modern, sustainable design as they are already designed to cut out the fat and superfluous spaces,” Oliver explained. Could this model be repeated in other areas?

A few hours from here, the small city of Elk Grove, California is facing their own challenge with a modern design. This Sacramento suburb, which the Census Bureau once proclaimed America’s fastest-growing city, decided to establish itself as a destination spot.

Back in 2006, they set a bold vision for the future of their city by holding an international design competition to create a master plan for a $159 million civic center complex on 78 acres.

As told in the New York Times, this town of only 153,000 people saw a bold, modern building as the solution to their relative anonymity.

The council hoped that an iconic piece of architecture could vault the young city to higher heights, à la Bilbao in Spain and its Guggenheim museum.

PHOTO SOURCE: New York Times

To this end, the City selected the more often visionary than practical architect, Zaha Hadid.

Ms. Hadid’s resulting design is a fluid, organic and bold piece of Architecture. She is, after all, the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Although most of her designs have been on paper and unbuilt, the last decade has put her in high demand.

The mayor was thrilled that they had landed such a big fish. “We hit a home run on this one,” gushed James Cooper, the mayor at the time. “The citizens are so excited. The big thing is to let her be an architect and not stifle the process. We want her to think of something different. This is a new chapter in Elk Grove’s life.”

The community loved it when selected back in 2006, but now in a recession, the usual lack of vision is taking over. A new Mayor and new council members vehemently oppose the design, for no reason other than a fear of the new.

So perhaps it was no surprise that the council members did not attend any of the meetings — some of which included very positive comments from the public — over the nine months of planning until the final presentation of the master plan last week.

So, why this unfounded fear of Modernism?

It would be understandable had modern buildings been shown to destroy communities, bankrupt cities or prove structurally inferior… but cities did that through traditional planning, not through Modernism. Instead, modern buildings have been shown to attract visitors, revitalize cities and push the art of Architecture forward. We can’t afford to not build them.

The secret lie in learning from the past without copying it. Most town planners cling to traditional vernacular styles in the hopes of getting the good stuff they like in traditional styles (i.e.: maintain the street frontage, human scale awnings, etc.) in spite of the bad stuff they don’t (i.e.: an anachronistic collection of uninspiring repetition.)

Let’s study the styles of the past, learn from them and move on. Open our eyes to what worked in those approaches and adapt it to our modern sensibilities. Let’s have a new Modernist Movement. And this time, let’s make it a green one.

Originally posted at KBB

With the holidays here, I was tasked with assembling the gifts for my 2-1/2 year old daughter. This is an occupational hazard of every architect and contractor I know. Let’s see: five years of undergrad, three years of internship and two in graduate school, and architects stand out as the best in the family at putting large toys together. (I also get asked by friends to assemble Ikea furniture in exchange for pizza.)

My mother-in-law, in her infinite wisdom, gave my daughter a mini kitchen. Perhaps you have seen these in the stores: half-scale kitchenettes complete with integrated drainage board, undermount sink and cabinet lighting. The box features a young girl happily playing in her kitchen, demonstrating that toy companies may still get their marketing from the sexist Seventies. Despite the anachronism, they know their toys. My daughter, still yet unaware of the feminist movement, screamed in delight at seeing her new kitchen. The gift was, by far, the biggest hit of the holiday. She wanted to sleep in it last night.

Assembly of the kitchen was assigned to me, of course. Opening the large box revealed the same components you’d expect in unpacking a real kitchen: two large slabs of countertop, base cabinet and upper cabinets. The plastic oven, microwave and refrigerator snapped easily into their assigned spaces. Subtle design “features,” such as accent tiles, crown molding and drawer pulls were added with stickers or snap in handles. All of it was rendered in lightweight plastic, so structural ribs were integrated into the monolithic shapes to add rigidity. As I stepped back and inspected the assembled unit, I found myself admiring the thought that went into the design of the assembly.

From the graphical layout of the numbered instructions, to the predrilled holes provided for the screws, the entire act of putting this thing together was deliberately designed to be easy to understand, affordable to produce and to minimize the chance of poor craftsmanship. Nothing was left to chance and it was all by design.

If only our real kitchens could be so simple.

The irony is that the price to have this simplicity at the end requires a vast amount of design complexity at the upfront. Consider the following lessons from my daughter’s toy kitchen:

Design for assembly: Since we know our kitchens have to be put together and we may not be present when that happens, we should design and document the sequence of events. A great exercise may be for you to imagine you have to create an instruction manual for your client to assemble the kitchen.

Design for shipping: The various components of the kitchen must be delivered from some place, so we could reduce cost and unpacking labor by better understanding the constraints and size limitations in the shipping. After all, have you ever worked on a project where the cabinets were unable to fit through the front door? (I know it happened to me once…)

Eliminate any decisions that need to be made by a contractor: Most of the stress and worry during a project comes from when the realities of construction meet the abstract nature of the design drawings. Architects and designers should anticipate the decision points a contractor would have to make and eliminate them. Better drawings, better design could do this and reduce headaches at the end of the project.

Prefabrication: Entire chunks of the kitchen could be prefabricated in the controlled conditions of a factory rather than the unpredictable ones on a job site. Prefabrication speeds up construction, improves quality and lowers cost. These benefits would overcome the additional cost of shipping. Pre-approved assemblies could also avoid the need for on-site inspections.

Computer milling and cutting: Product and toy designers have been taking advantage of computer milling and rapid prototyping machines for years. The building industry could fabricate entire portions of their kitchens with such devices. Imagine how a 3D printer could produce a cabinet, counter, backsplash and sink all in one, solid piece. Such forms could allow you to tighten and improve design tolerances down to near zero.

Embrace appliances as components: Although appliances come in standard sizes (i.e.: dishwashers are typically 24 in.), their installation is overly complicated and prone to contractor error. Appliance manufacturers could take a cue from computers or car stereos and create a standard for installation. A standardized sleeve could be part of every kitchen into which your oven or dishwasher would snap into place. Connections to water, gas and electric would also snap into place. Installing a cooktop could take 2 minutes.

Mass production: Toy manufactures benefit from the economy of scale of the mass production of their products. It would not be cost-effective to produce customized molds for a kitchen you would only create once. Instead, we should mass produce our designs. Envision the design as a product to be marketed to everyone and design it. The idea of creating every kitchen as a one-off, customized creation is expensive, time-consuming and, frankly, narcissistic. Design entire sections of the kitchen to be recreated for other clients.

Mass customization: All of these tools can combine to allow for an infinite number of possibilities. Digital CNC milling machines could give each project a customized cabinet door or insignia. They can change the colors, but not the arrangement.

In a real kitchen environment, such ideas could transform the construction industry and return architects and designers back to their rightful role as the masters of design.

While this added upfront work would have numerous benefits to the quality, cost and sustainability of the finished design, only a handful of experimenting designers have even tried it. Sadly, most architects and designers have avoided, ignored or passed off such responsibilities. Reduced fees, bargain hunting clients and the litigious nature of the construction industry have all pushed this trend of reduced design responsibility for decades.

But the unforeseen result of this trend has been to make us into glorified specifiers. The real opportunities to improve the quality, craftsmanship, usability and sustainability of our designs is missing. The mechanized world of digital technology could, ironically, spur a return to warm craftsmanship. As designers, we could prove our value by designing projects that are more beautiful, less expensive and of higher quality. All just by learning some lessons from our toys.

Perhaps millions of us are flocking to online communities since the real ones are so lacking.

My Grandfather used to fix and maintain his cars by himself. “Why pay someone to do something I can do?” he used to say, beaming with pride. Oil changes, tune ups, transmission work…he did it all. Today, I fix and maintain my computers. We were both responding to the prevailing technology of our time, but both unaware of how fully it will transform society. My Grandfather, who passed away in the 1960’s, probably never considered how the automobile eventually shaped US cities, culture and economic policy. Can we ever fully understand the impact the current technology will have until it is too late?

(Incidentally, my Grandfather, whose name was Frank, was how I was first told about Frank Lloyd Wright.)

IMAGE: Courtesy of 60 Minutes

This week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed on 60 Minutes, discussing the future of his company, which has 500 million of us online an average of 7 hours a month. Zuckerberg presented his new paradigms for social interactivity and how Facebook was helping to facilitate that. The interview also included a tour of the Facebook offices in Palo Alto.

IMAGE: Courtesy of 60 Minutes

But the irony was not lost on the reporters after touring the Facebook offices. The company that has redefined social interaction has none in its own office. Long rows of anonymous desks and computers are manned by people not speaking. The room is nearly silent save the clickety-clack of the fingers on all of those keyboards.

IMAGE: Courtesy of 60 Minutes

It looks as if it were designed by the computer engineers themselves (which it probably was). Any discussions with others are done through instant messaging, even if the other person is seated right next to them. The line between person and machine gets blurred.

IMAGE: Courtesy of 60 Minutes

This is a missed design opportunity. As designers, we should be designing spaces for social interaction that complements the types of interactions we find so appealing online. In short, we should be designing reality to be more appealing that virtual reality. Online community is our competition, and we should be rising up to meet the challenge of designing livable, joyful and connected environments.

Perhaps millions of us are flocking to online communities since the real ones are so lacking.

In the 1980s, as computer use began to surge, many raised concerns to the pending isolation in the modern world. Instead, computers connected us together in ways most never imagined while our built communities languished and remained relatively the same for decades.

There is even a new film about this surge in online community. Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology is a new film by filmmaker Tiffany Shlain that explores these ideas.

You can watch the trailer for Connected here:

We cannot fully realize the long-term effects of such digital interconnectedness. Today’s kids will be working in careers that do no yet exist. The top 10 in-demand careers of 2010 did not even exist back in 2004. Which means we are preparing today’s students for careers that do not yet exist and they will probably use technologies that have not yet been invented, in order to solve things we don’t even know are problems yet.

Pathways to Success (PTS) is a career mentoring program in a Southern California desert area called the Coachella Valley. (The Valley is home to the famous Palm Springs.) PTS brings experts into classrooms to connect the kids with the people in whose footsteps they may want to follow. Part mentoring program, part scholarship, PTS has helped thousands of high school students prepare and attend college.

So last week, I was asked to visit a high school in Palm Desert, California for its annual Career Day. On a Saturday morning I spoke with about a hundred students about Sustainability and Design and the potential that awaits them in those areas.

When I polled the room with, “Who is planning on going to college?” everyone in the room raised their hand. I continued, “Who knows what they want to do?” I was shocked to see only five hands remaining. College is now the place you go expecting to find yourself and your dream job (I hope they are not too disappointed).

Many of the students were asking sweetly hopeful questions, such as, “What is the real story with Global Warming? My science teacher says one thing, but my dad said it is a hoax.” (This, by the way, is a typical comment I get from students.) Sadly, none of the news I had for them was good as I explained the bitter reality of pumping 5.8 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere, the 1.1 billion people without access to clean drinking water and how we stalled and dragged our feet for decades over doing something about it.

It was just announced that once again we broke the record and this past 10 years was the warmest decade on record.

Their tiny faces fell as I explained how the construction and operation of buildings was the biggest culprit for this damage. I also encouraged them to view the data for themselves. These students need to get to work on redesigning everything. We need to change our built environments, and we need to do it quickly. If not, perhaps the online communities will be all we have left.

You can watch the 60 Minutes interview here:

Originally posted at: KBB Collective

I spoke last week with Alex Wilson, founder of BuildingGreen and executive editor of the Environmental Building News.

Alex was just named the 2010 winner of the Hanley Award for Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Housing, and will be speaking at the upcoming West Coast Green Conference in San Francisco.

BuildingGreen has been in my secret toolkit for many years and it is the first place I turn when needing information on a green material. Looking for a “green” cabinet manufacturer? Well, BuildingGreen lists 74 articles and product listings for you to review, as well as a detailed discussion of the issues in cabinet manufacturing, including formaldehyde and wood species. Think of it as the Consumer Reports of Green Building. Their unbiased (and often surprising) reviews don’t play any favorites or have blind faith in any company.

For nearly two decades, BuildingGreen has published their Environmental Building News (EBN) and has always been ahead of the curve on controversial topics in Green Building. They explained the good and bad side of the vinyl industry way back in 1993. EBN discussed the controversy surrounding waterless urinals in 2002. Any green building issues you’re grappling with now are ones they’ve likely dealt with years ago.

While Alex and his staff are inundated with new product information, he continues to be surprised with new innovations in materials. He is particularly excited to see the West Coast Green innovation pipeline.

When asked for a wish list of products he’d like to see, Alex immediately asked for an alternative to polystyrene (you may know it by the brand name Styrofoam™). This oil-based product raises many concerns over the chemicals, flame retardants and the blowing agents used to install polystyrene. He is currently obsessed with finding below-grade insulation alternatives to polystyrene, and has been featuring some on his weekly blog.

Recently, BuildingGreen revised their previous position on another controversial subject—the use of fly ash in building products.

Fly ash is the powdery soot byproduct from coal-fired electric power plants. Since the burning of coal provides up to 85% of our electricity (depending on where you live), a great deal of this waste product is produced. Some 71 million tons of fly ash were produced last year, resulting in 71 tons of mercury byproduct.

Depending upon the use of the concrete, fly ash can be substituted for 20%-50% of the Portland Cement in the concrete mix. There have been reports of some people using as high as 70% fly ash substitution.

“Like most people in the Green Building field, we used to think fly ash was great virtually all of the time, since it kept this waste material out of the waste stream,” Alex explained. “But concern about the leeching of heavy metals [mercury, for example] has caused us to modify our position somewhat. We are no only recommending fly ash in applications where 1) it’s locked up, as in concrete, and 2) the fly ash replaces the carbon emissions that would normally come from manufacturing Portland Cement.”

Officially, BuildingGreen no longer considers the use of fly ash in products to be beneficial unless it offsets greenhouse gas emissions.

Portland Cement, the key ingredient in the mixing of concrete, is one of the most carbon intensive industries. The processing and heating of the cement are responsible for 8%-12% of all carbon emissions. Since concrete is a required part of virtually every building, a substitute like fly ash could go a long way to cut carbon emissions.

I wrote about it back in 2006 and the logic of using fly ash to replace a portion of the Portland Cement still makes good sense. After all, cement manufacturers are already substituting up to 15 percent of the Portland Cement with fly ash to save money.

You can read more at BuildingGreen, download the latest issue of the Environmental Building News and read Alex’s weekly blog.

Originally posted at: KBB Collective

I met today with Jared Asch, the National Director of Efficiency First.

They are a nonprofit that connects together people seeking green jobs with product manufacturers to promote energy efficiency. Jared and I will both be speaking at the upcoming West Coast Green Conference at the end of September and I have have been talking with all of my fellow speakers about their efforts.

http://www.efficiencyfirst.org

For 30-plus years, the modern environmental movement has been preaching energy efficiency, but it has only been recently we’ve seen it being taken seriously. Why the change? Surely rising fuel prices, instability of oil imports and our growing dependance on those imports factors into it – but these issues have persisted for decades.

I asked Jared about what has changed recently. He pointed out how the business case for energy efficiency now has a proven track record of success. “We didn’t have that just ten years ago,” he added. Jared has worked for 6 Senators, 3 presidential campaigns and several Members of Congress, and understands how policy can affect positive change. He mentioned the power of simply having an Administration supportive of these ideas. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu is an admitted “energy efficiency nut.”

Back in December, President Obama told a group of businesspeople at a Home Depot in Virginia that energy efficiency was a “win-win,” because it saves energy, helps our environment and create jobs. “Here’s what’s sexy about it,” the President added, “saving money.” Jared quotes this on the cover of their brochure.

Simple tasks, such as weatherstripping around your doors, caulking around your windows and insulating your attic can easily cut your home energy use by 30%. If American households saved just 10% of the energy used to heat and cool their homes, it would amount to 8.2 billion kW saved, equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from over a million passenger vehicles.

Not only do these things reduce energy use and cut your monthly utility bills, they do much more. As it turns out, energy efficiency retrofitting of our existing buildings is also a job creator.

Jared pointed to their Home Star Program, a piece of proposed legislation that would give homeowners rebates for energy efficiency retrofits. Home Star would create about 168,000 jobs, help homeowners save money and move us toward energy independence. He told me they are only a couple of votes shy of the 60 needed to pass it in the Senate.

Energy efficiency is at the core of every climate solution. We cannot reach the goals we need to reach (350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere) without an aggressive policy of energy efficiency retrofits for our existing buildings. Every Architect, Contractor and Designer needs to take notice and push this as part of their remodeling projects.

Just this week, the Center for American Progress released a report showing how a national energy efficiency program could create 625,000 sustained jobs over 10 years, ignite $500 billion in investment, and save people over $64 billion off their utility bills. Money in their pockets they could use to move the economy forward.

When I first began speaking publicly ten years ago, I eschewed anything to do with politics. The sustainability movement should be nonpartisan, nonpolitical in order to appeal to everyone, I thought. My talks and articles were designed to appeal to everyone, but in developing solutions for helping municipalities develop green buildings, I kept confronting the limitations of government and the game of politics that acts as a block to real progress.

This frustrated me to no end, and I found political opinion creeping back into my slides and writings. Some in the audience felt alienated, some even walked out, but most thoughtfully listened…and I got through.

This November, California voters will vote on a measure called Proposition 23. Prop 23 officially calls for a “suspension” of California’s landmark global warming law (called AB32) “until unemployment drops to 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters.” The proposal positions itself as a “jobs initiative” and tries to pass itself off as merely a temporary measure until the economy gets back on track.

Passed in 2006, Assembly Bill 32 (AB32) is referred to as the California Global Warming Solutions Act. It was the first legislation in the world to comprehensively regulate and reduce greenhouse gases. Under AB32, emissions from vehicles (oil) and energy generation (coal) are required to be cut about 15 percent by 2020 and an additional 20 percent by 2050. AB32 would push California to the forefront of the clean energy revolution, produce green jobs and stave off the threat of global warming.

Although this would only immediately affect California, it would, in reality, have an impact on the entire country. The eyes of the nation are watching California and our wonderfully progressive policies. When they succeed, other states will follow suit.

But here is why Prop 23’s call to suspend AB32 is so particularly sinister: It was placed on the ballot by Assembly Member Dan Logue, who calls it a “jobs initiative” to hide the real backers behind the bill. The bill is supported by two Texas oil companies, Valero and Tesoro and a coal company, Koch Industries. Valero alone has pumped over $4 million and counting into Prop 23. Valero and Tesoro are among the nation’s biggest polluters, and their California refineries are among the top 10 polluters in the state.

The proposed suspension may take a while. The state’s current unemployment is around 12.3 percent and hasn’t dropped to 5.5 percent for an entire year since 1976 (34 years ago). The cleverly crafted language was designed to ensure AB32 never sees the light of day.

You may be asking, “If AB32 was passed back in 2006, why the rush to stop it now?” Simple: The requirements set forth in AB32 are set to take effect this January. The November election gives the polluters just enough time to try and stop it.

This battle will play out as you’d expect: Conservatives will claim this will destroy jobs, raise taxes and increase your energy costs (using fear); while environmentalists will unsuccessfully provide the facts, only to be ignored by the middle class voters susceptible to the fear play.

Some in California worry that by regulating carbon emissions we’ll be putting our economy on the back burner. But nothing in our recent history has indicated that California must choose between economic stability and environmental responsibility.

Innovative energy policies established in the 1970s have saved California consumers $56 billion and created 1.5 million full-time jobs with a payroll of $45 billion. From 1995 to 2008, clean, safe energy-generation jobs grew by 85 percent with the highest concentration in solar and wind. In 2008, energy efficiency jobs grew by 91 percent, according to Next 10, a nonpartisan think tank.

If new, better-paying jobs, healthier air, driving money into the local economy and saving money are attractive, then AB32 is a breath of fresh clean air and worth keeping.

LINKS:

Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/19/antienvironment-californi_n_687719.html

Stopping Prop 23:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/22/five-things-you-can-do-to-fight-global-warming-and-advance-clean-energy-proposition-23-ab32/

Campaign to stop Proposition 23:
http://www.stopdirtyenergyprop.com/

California Bright Spot:
http://www.CABrightSpot.com

California Air Resources Board AB 32 Information:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/cc.htm

My editorial in Desert Sun:
http://www.mydesert.com/article/20100730/COLUMNS26/7290387/AB-32-a-breath-of-fresh-air-that-saves-money-and-adds-jobs

Where is the future?
Originally posted here

I turned 40 last week. As friends were asking, “How does it feel?” I was reminded of a drawing I did when I was 10 years old. The year was 1980 and I was living in a dense urban block of Philadelphia. I had already been obsessed with Architecture since I was eight, but now at 10, I had asked my parents for some real drawing tools, and they obliged with a set of pens, pencils and paper. I spent hours dreaming up a future of curvy, organic buildings that defied gravity. Ink smudges covered my fingers from sketching visions of the future.

My mother was 40 when I was 10, and I clearly remember thinking how I would turn 40 in the oh-so-distant year 2010. What kind of buildings would we be building in 2010? Surely the world would be unrecognizable. The boxy, lifeless and grey blocks of my neighborhood would be replaced with things I couldn’t even imagine.

Little did I know that we would still be building with skinny sticks of wood, held together by nails and with punched openings for windows. My younger self never would believe how I now spend my time having to convince clients not to put toxic materials in their home or fighting to get a building inspector to approve the use of recycled water.

Would my 10-year-old self be disappointed in how ordinary and un-revolutionary the majority of todays’ buildings really are? Where is the future we expected?

In the 1985 hit film, Back to the Future, the character Marty McFly travels back in time 30 years to find striking differences in fashion, automobiles and music. The buildings, however, were relatively unchanged. If Marty were to go back in time today, he would return to 1980. He would be confused by our skinny ties, long cars and the sounds of Devo, but the buildings would go by unnoticed.

In the sequel, Marty travels ahead 30 years to 2015 to a world full of imagination. The future they present is exciting and very different from the present. But as intriguing as some of their predictions are, they clearly overestimated certain developments.

Is it safe to expect the next five years will bring us hoverboards, self-drying jackets or Mr. Fusion? Not likely. But you aren’t expecting those things. However, the buildings they showed (which don’t seem so far-fetched) are out of reach to us. What slows the innovation in our built environment?

In order to move forward, we must embrace our own long-term economic success. We need to rebuild our aging infrastructure, update those outdated systems and stop clinging to a romantic vision of old Architecture that embodies wasted resources, energy inefficiency and poor quality environments. Let’s rebuild our buildings and save ourselves in the process.

And this is the reason I am so excited about the upcoming West Coast Green Conference. Of the 40 or so conferences I attend each year, it is my favorite if only because of their focus on innovation. (Disclosure: I am on the Advisory Board). Hundreds of the top thinkers in architecture, planning and sustainability join together for three days to share ideas and develop solutions on how to design our future. You can hear more of my thoughts on this here.

Incidentally, the entire Back to the Future Trilogy is available in a special 25th Anniversary Edition on Blu-Ray on October 26th.

—-
MORE INFORMATION:
West Coast Green Conference
September 30 – October 1, 2010
http://www.westcoastgreen.com

——–

—Eric Corey Freed is an architect and author of four books, including Green$ense for the Home.

Originally posted: here

An open letter to the President, the 535 members of Congress and thousands of local politicians across the country

Dear Legislators:

Tell us the truth. We can handle it.

I’m willing to overlook your past ridiculous stunts like the Birther Bill or claims of Death Panels. After all, that’s just the game of politics. I would like to believe you don’t really believe some of these things you say. Politics is, after all, a form of theater, and in the world of a 24-hour news cycle, we need an endless supply of theater.

But lately there have been a series of sorely missed opportunities in regard to our survival. And your actions just don’t add up. So this leads me to think there must be something else at work, something you’re not telling us, and so I am asking for the truth. Honestly, we Americans can take it.

For example, take a look at the UN Climate Change Conference that took place this past December in Copenhagen, Denmark. When it was first announced the U.S. was going to participate, some of us optimistically referred to it as HOPEenhagen. This was a real chance at a global, comprehensive policy toward controlling climate change. But the lack of an adopted accord by the conference quickly had many referring to it instead as NOPEnhagen.

Or the continued drive for more natural gas at the expense of our health and safety. Gas companies control the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by pushing out the tired, old (and proven untrue) threat that regulations stifle competition and will eliminate jobs—so you better not hold us to any. Eighteen members of the Colorado State Legislature sent a letter (PDF) to the EPA demanding they ignore their own two-year study and stop regulating the hazardous drilling practice of “fracking.” I suggest you watch a new documentary entitled, Gasland, currently on HBO. One of the more vivid scenes in the film shows tap water lighting on fire due to poorly regulated nearby drilling. How do you think your constituents will feel about reelecting you if this happened to them?

Or the way Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) publicly apologized to BP (you know the company that dumped 5 millions barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico?).

This came as no surprise. Barton is the ranking member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee and one of the chief authors of the Cheney Oil Act that gave BP the exemptions to drill Deepwater Horizon without the required impact reports. Barton himself has received $14.4 million from oil and gas companies over his career. That’s why his committee is referred to as the “Honey Pot” on Capitol Hill, receiving $42 million in the 2010 Election Cycle alone.

Barton’s apology was echoing the real loyalties and feelings of Congress. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) labeled it a “shakedown” and a “redistribution-of-wealth fund,” with 100+ other House members just the day before.

Unfortunately, there is always a loser in these games you are playing. We cannot wait any longer for a substantive bill combating climate change.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), our planet has just finished the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months and the April, May and June on record.

In response to this horrific news, the U.S. Senate decided… to do nothing. Seriously. They preserved 30 years of bipartisan inaction on what the Defense Department referred to as the “greatest threat facing our country.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) decided not to even bother to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions. Both Democrats and Republicans continue to play these games while the American people are headed off a cliff. Some of you even invented a fun, new derogatory term to describe anyone who dare want to do something about climate change: “carbon taxer.”

Last month, the NOAA called climate change “unmistakable.” The IPCC issued their judgement back in 2007, calling climate change “undeniable” and “unequivocal.”

Even some of the politicians themselves are getting sick of the partisan games, as seen last week with a passionate Anthony Weiner (D-NY) venting his frustration over a partisan vote on a bill that would provide healthcare to 9/11 workers. “If there was ever a bill that I thought would be above partisan politics,” he said, “that was it.”

The explosion and subsequent oil spill aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig should be a wake up call. The thousands of miles of decimated shoreline and millions of destroyed families should shake you into action. Historically, disasters have always driven sweeping legislation.

The BP oil spill should have done for Climate Legislation what the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill did for the EPA; what the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire in Cleveland did for the Clean Water Act and what the 1979 Ixstock Gulf Oil Spill did for drilling regulations. This is a critical turning point and we are missing it.

President Obama’s address from the Oval Office on June 15th was another missed opportunity. He did not once mention the words “carbon,” “emissions” or “greenhouse.” This was his first speech from the Oval Office and he failed to provide one tangible idea on how to solve this problem. George Will called the speech “magnificently awful.” This is more confounding given the progress his administration has made in having the EPA regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act.

(Side note: For an incredible version of what Obama’s speech should have and could have been, watch Rachel Maddow’s take on it here.)

You may think that by doing nothing, you are playing it safe, but your inaction is having consequences. Private sector companies are stalled in their decisions by an uncertain future for the price of carbon. As Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund,
recently wrote, “U.S. utility companies today are sitting on billions of dollars in job-creating capital—but they will not invest in new energy projects until they have certainty on what their future carbon obligations will be…” Jobs, investments and private stimulus are waiting for you to do something.

This is why my fellow environmentalists are taking matters into their own hands. This is why the West Coast Green Conference, one of the largest green building conferences in the country, has changed its theme this year to “Innovation & Convergence.” Thousands of the most respected leaders in sustainability, planning, public policy and design will meet for three days in San Francisco to share ideas and determine the next course of action.

So, please, Legislators, please explain these crazy actions of yours. I am hoping you have a good reason. I am hoping it is more than mere ego and hubris and that you wouldn’t dare play a game of chicken with our future in the balance. Take advantage of this Gulf Oil Spill by leveraging it into some tangible and effective policies. We can’t wait any longer.

It’s ironic that the first half of 2010, the same year we removed all hope of having a true climate change bill, turned out to be the hottest year on record. I propose we turn off the air conditioning in the Capitol Building until you emerge with some real legislation.

Sincerely Yours,

Eric Corey Freed
Author, “Green$ense for the Home: Rating the Real Payoff from 50 Green Home Projects”

——————————-

MORE INFORMATION:

Fracking:
In The New York Times
In the Huffington Post

Gasland Documentary:
The website: http://gaslandthemovie.com/
Coverage in the Huffington Post

West Coast Green Conference
September 30 – October 1, 2010
www.westcoastgreen.com

Originally posted at: KBB Collective

How our dependence on oil has negatively affected our built environment

As the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig nears its three-month anniversary (on July 20th), the public is still waiting to see how the story will end. More importantly, the world is waiting to see how the worst environmental catastrophe in history is going to change America’s self-admitted addiction to oil.

SOURCE: NASA

The date July 20th shares the day with another anniversary. Just 41 years earlier, Man first set foot on the Moon in an impressive display of how technology can propel humanity to reach our highest achievements. The exploded rig, located just 41 miles off the coast, reminds us how technology can demonstrate the limits of humanity.

In light of the facts that have emerged over the last few months, it’s almost surprising an accident of this scale hadn’t occurred sooner. You’ve no doubt heard about the corrupt regulators at the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the horrific and shocking safety track record of BP, and the cost-cutting risks taken in the construction of the well itself.

The disaster at the Deepwater Horizon that left 11 men dead and continues to pour millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico is the final act in the story of our adolescence. This could be the ultimate sign that our way of life has to change if we are to survive. If any good can come out of the irreparable damage done to the water, the Gulf Coast economy, or the wildlife itself, we must change our relationship with oil.

SOURCE: Things Are Fine

In January 1969, a similar blowout occurred on a Union Oil platform six miles off the coast of Santa Barbara. For 11 days, oil leaked into the sea, affecting some 800 square miles of ocean and 35 miles of precious coastline. Prompted to action, then President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, which in turn led to the first Earth Day in 1970. In addition, Nixon issued a moratorium on offshore drilling in California. At the time, Nixon said, “It is sad that it was necessary that Santa Barbara should be the example that had to bring it to the attention of the American people…The Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.”

How did we get to a place like this? It could be the control corporations have over our policymakers. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, oil & gas companies have donated $238.7 million to candidates of both parties since 1990 (though 75% of that goes to Republicans). During this same period, the Bush-Cheney Energy Policy Act of 2005 ushered in an unprecedented era of deregulation and sheer disregard for the environment. Deepwater Horizon is a testament to what happens when corporate malfeasance meets regulatory failure.

The drive for cheaper and larger amounts of oil have led to some questionable decisions. These factors have added up to have an adverse effect on our built environment for the past century.




SOURCE: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Our national energy system is divided into two camps: combustion (oil and gas) or electricity. The chart above shows how oil is used in this country, with the majority going to transportation (52% for cars, trucks and planes). The rest is broken into heating (30% from various sources) and materials (15% for plastics & 3% for asphalt). You’ll notice that virtually no oil is used to produce electricity, but oil is a necessary evil to maintain our current lifestyle.

If nearly a third of our oil is used to heat our buildings, we can easily cut that figure in half by retrofitting them to be more energy-efficient. If you’re interested, there are a number of wonderful sources for information, such as Green$ense for the Home, GreenHomeGuide and EERE. We can’t afford not to do this. But for this discussion, let’s focus on transportation.

For most of my career as an architect, educator and lecturer, I avoided talking about cars. I felt it wasn’t my place to talk about transportation. I feared some heckler in the audience might yell out, “Stick to buildings, Architect!” So I eschewed any true, in-depth discussions about cars, trucks or transportation. But over the last decade of lecturing around the world, I found the topic of cars creeping back in.

The design of our cities and suburbs is dictated by the automobile. From the width of the street, location of driveways, distance between buildings and the drop-off location for the front door, the automobile has irrevocably changed our cities from human scale to vehicle scale. Often the entire structure of the building is based on the spacing of the column locations in the parking garage, spaced to allow enough space to fit three parked cars. People are corralled onto narrow sidewalks to make room for the car. Elevated freeways slice through neighborhoods, disconnecting the pedestrians from the other side.

For most cities, there is no alternative to the car. It is a requirement of daily life. Unless you live in a place like New York or San Francisco, it is nearly impossible to survive without one. Last year, National Geographic‘s “Consumer Greendex” found that Americans had the lowest percentage of people who use public transit on a daily basis and the highest percentage of people who never take it. A third of all of the public transit users in the entire U.S. are in New York City, which explains why more than half of the households don’t need to own a car. But other cities weren’t so lucky.

Public transit was not always seen as the last resort to getting around. Back in the 1920s, nearly every city had a convenient and cheap trolley system. At the time, most of these were privately owned companies that generated their own electricity. Soon the trolly companies became small, local utility providers, until the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 forced them to sell off their less lucrative trolley businesses.

In order to expand their burgeoning car business, General Motors (GM), Firestone Tire, Phillips Petroleum and Standard Oil banded together to form a company to buy up these trolley companies. Their new entity, National City Lines, purchased the streetcar systems in 45 major cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, St. Louis and Los Angeles. Between 1936 and 1950, they systematically dismantled the trolley lines to increase the demand for the automobile. They removed the tracks to make room for cars and ensure no new systems could return easily. Known as the “Great Streetcar Scandal,” it hobbled our public transit systems. In the 1920s, only one in 10 Americans owned a car. By the end of their efforts in 1955, that figure jumped to eight in 10.

Pro-car lobbyists worked side-by-side with lawmakers to draft legislation to further change our cities. In 1953, GM President Charles Wilson was appointed Secretary of Defense under President Eisenhower and created the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. The cost was sold to the American people for reasons of National Defense. The new roads would be designed to carry our tanks to fend off an invasion by the Russians. The systematic dependency on the car was now complete.

Since the 1950s, practically every planning decision has been centered around access by private cars. The unintended consequences of this network of roads was never really considered. Faster roads enabled people to move from the cities and into the newly created suburbs. Having less city residents put more strain on the remaining public transit systems and city businesses became to close. With more driving came more air pollution, and the vicious cycle of our oil dependency was created.

Throughout all of this, we have been told that driving is less costly that public transportation. Planners argue the cost of creating new roads and parking spaces as “investments in our infrastructure.” But public transit is perceived as being “subsidized.” You’ll hear people say that public transit “loses money” while roads are “free.” But the true cost is anything but free.

The annual cost to maintain our network of 26 million roads is over $131 billion dollars a year. That translates to about $1100 per household and enough to buy everyone a really nice bike to use instead. While the trolley and rail companies had to pay to install and maintain their tracks, the car and oil companies managed to get the taxpayers to cover the costs and maintenance of their roads. Roads are not free, and we cannot afford to keep viewing them as such.

SOURCE: Hats in the Garment District by Margaret Bourke-White, Time Life

Local planning codes will require a certain number of parking spaces to build a new building. What if they instead required the business to be within walking distance of public transit?

Some companies provide free parking in their office buildings as a perk to their employees. What if they instead used the cost to build the parking structure to subsidize bikes or bus passes for every employee?

Most cities provide cheap parking along sidewalks at meters. What if they instead allowed hybrid and electric vehicles to park for free and charged more for gas guzzling SUVs?

Our addiction to oil is more than the gasoline we put into our car. It permeates into countless design decisions that prevent us from building truly sustainable cities.

If you wish to help correct the Oil Spill in the Gulf Coast, please make a donation to Healthy Gulf.

—Eric Corey Freed is an architect and author of four books, including Green$ense for the Home.

Making every drop count
Water efficiency is more important now than ever before

I spoke last week at the PCBC Conference in San Francisco about water efficiency. Although buildings only account for about 15 percent of water use (in California, as per the USGS), conserving water in our buildings is becoming increasingly important. Global-warming-fueled droughts, changing weather and water pollution are pushing our finite water supply to its limit.

It’s important for architects and designers to take responsibility for this water use. Water-efficient faucets, toilets and showerheads should be standard practice (and are standard in states like California, by code).

This illustration (pictured above) best demonstrates how fragile our water supply really is. The blue marble (shown) represents all of the water on Earth. After all, we don’t make water. There is no new water. All of the water on the planet is all of the water we’ve ever had on the planet. The water in your glass may have been sipped by Thomas Jefferson, or in your case, peed out by a dinosaur!

Water is one of the most abundant resources on Earth, yet also one of the most scarce. Although water covers 70 percent of the planet, we cannot drink most of it. A whopping 97 percent of the water on Earth is in the ocean and undrinkable, and another 2 percent sits frozen in the polar icecaps (though not for long with global warming), leaving the remaining one percent for us to drink. Unfortunately, 70 percent of that remaining water is polluted. We are running out of fresh drinking water at an alarming rate.

Currently, some 20 percent of the world’s population (over a billion people) lack access to fresh water. Someone in the world dies of thirst every 8 seconds. A child dies of thirst every 15 seconds. Conserving water is more important now than ever before.

In the United States, we consume more water per person than any other country. The average American uses more water per day than someone in Brazil, Germany, China, Honduras and the United Kingdom combined. More so than anywhere else, conserving water here in the U.S. is not only important, but also necessary as we are consuming more than our share of clean water.

It requires an enormous amount of energy. Some 50 billion kW of energy are used each year to pump, process, clean, filter and transport all of this water. This equates to about a half pound of carbon dioxide for every gallon of water we consume. We can’t solve the energy crisis or climate crisis without addressing our relationship with water.

Our homes consume an incredible amount of fresh drinking water, and most of it is used in places it does not need to be so drinkable. You could easily cut household water use by 30 percent through water-efficient fixtures. I wanted to share some of my recent finds that have me excited about water savings:

More than a third of all of the water used inside your home is being flushed down the toilet, literally. We don’t need to flush with clean drinking water. We can use some of the soapy water (called graywater) that gets dumped by your laundry and shower. A dual-flush toilet (pictured) lets you choose a half or full flush, depending on your needs.

Then of course, we don’t need to use water at all. A waterless urinal (pictured) doesn’t need flushing and saves thousands of gallons of water a year, paying for itself in about three years. The Kohler urinal is a work of art.

Showers add up to nearly 20% of all indoor water usage and are the largest users of hot water. By simply installing an ultra low-flow showerhead, you can save up to 4,000 gallons of water annually, and for every gallon of hot water you can save, that’s gas or electricity you don’t need to use to heat it. You can beat the federally required 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm) with models that use 1.75 gpm.

Foot pedal controls are a nice design feature that also happen to save an incredible amount of water. While your hands are full with food or dishes, you simply tap the controls to release water only when needed.

Although dishwashers use only 2 percent of the water in your home, they do use nearly 20 percent of the energy. The new Bosch dishwasher is water- and energy-efficient in an incredibly attractive design.

Of course, there are a dozen simple things you can specify to cut water use and not sacrifice design quality. For the complete list of suggestions, you can download my slides from the lecture here.

—Eric Corey Freed is an architect and author of four books, including Green$ense for the Home.