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 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.

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.

Originally posted at: http://kbbcollective.com/the-case-for-non-toxic-buildings.html

The case for non-toxic buildings
Why we should stop using known cancer-causing chemicals now

I find it difficult to write about anything except the Gulf Oil Spill. In fact, I started writing about it only to find there was nothing hopeful to say. Obviously, the story is still unfolding, but it is clear this will be the worst environmental disaster in history. If any good comes from it, it will be a radical rethinking of how we view our relationship to oil, drilling and energy. And I am still not sure why the people who spilled the oil are in charge of the cleanup.

I do know that oil “spill” is too timid a word for such a disaster. I am currently leaning toward calling it an oil “transfusion.” For some wonderful coverage on the oil spill, I strongly encourage you to look at this incredible infographic on the spill.

PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace

In addition, the Big Picture has an incredible archive of images from the spill.

This site allows you to compare the size of the oil spill to your city or state. You’ll notice how the spill is larger than the entire state of Connecticut.

While I will reserve my words about the spill for a few more weeks and once the full impact is known, it has gotten me thinking more and more about our toxicity on our environment. After all, the Earth itself is a self-contained system. We don’t make new water, new mass or new energy. Everything here on Earth has always been here. Speaking from a Physics standpoint, all we do is transform things from one state to another. Matter into energy, energy into matter.

The systems of Nature have evolved to a perfect balance. We call this balance “environmental equilibrium.” From this balance we get the services that Nature provides: filtering our air, cleaning our water and absorbing our waste. Unfortunately, mankind’s impact on the planet has overwhelmed these systems. The planet simply cannot keep up. If we “toxify” the planet, we have no other alternatives.

I used to think that Cigarette Manufacturers were evil. After all, they were selling things they knew to be dangerous and full of cancer-causing chemicals. For years, they denied it, dragged their feet and funded lobbyists to stall legislation.

But are architects, designers or builders any better?

We specify products that require you to wear gloves and a mask during installation. We line the floors, walls and ceilings with products we know contain nasty chemicals. In fact, the entire painting industry knows its products are bad for us. Paints contain chemicals called “Volatile Organic Compounds” or VOCs. Why do you think that every major paint manufacturer is now offering at least a “low-VOC” version of the product?

Where are the gloves and masks for the people who stay behind and have to live and work in these buildings? When I ask manufacturers about this, they defend their products. Unlike cigarettes, you cannot point to the formaldehyde in that one piece of furniture and say that was the cause of your cancer. But the collective exposure to thousands of chemicals in your home and office all contribute to your cancer risk. Although the death rate for cancer has dropped, thanks to early detection and treatment, the incidences of cancer continue to climb.

We spend 80-90 percent of our time indoors. We spend another five percent in our cars, and apparently, we hate going outside and hate fresh air. Asthma rates have tripled in adults since 1980. In children, whose developing lungs are not as strong, asthma has gone from the seventh leading chronic illness, to number one in less than 20 years. The poor quality of the indoor air is largely responsible for this staggering increase.

The quality of the indoor air in your home is likely to contain more than 10 times the number of toxic pollutants as the air outdoors. During a painting project, that number can increase to 1,000 times that of outdoor levels. By switching to healthy finishes containing low or zero VOCs, you can greatly improve indoor air quality and remove some major health risks for you and your family.

If you’re wondering where to start, target the two biggest sources of poor indoor air quality: VOCs and formaldehyde.

By choosing healthier finishes, unneeded chemicals and toxins are prevented from entering our air, land and water. Making the simple change to a healthy paint will reduce some of the 69 million gallons of harmful chemical paints that end up in our nation’s landfills each year.

People with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) or a severe sensitivity to chemicals will want to avoid placing formaldehyde in their home. Formaldehyde is used as a glue in most wood products. MCS sufferers will likely develop dizziness, headaches and sneezing from formaldehyde exposure.

The California Air Resources Board has reported that one in 10,000 Californians will develop cancer from exposure to formaldehyde. Since it is a “sensitizer,” exposure to formaldehyde can actually make you more sensitive to other chemicals. When buying any new wood cabinets or furniture, demand formaldehyde-free products. By not bringing new formaldehyde into your home, you’ll reduce the grave risks for you and your family.

Why specify toxic materials at all? Simply because they’re cheap? Doing so makes us as guilty as those cigarette manufacturers.

I was interviewed in the New York Times to discuss my top things everyone should do to green their home. Rather than talk about adding solar panels, I thought it best to choose things everyone (including renters) can do to save money and our environment at the same time.

Five Beginners’ Steps to a Greener Home:
FULL STORY HERE

www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/garden/12greenhome.html

I am thrilled to announce Green Your Home for Dummies.

It is not an entirely new book, but a compilation of 7 green books in the For Dummies series. It contains several chapters of my bestselling book, “Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies”, and select chapters from:
* Green Living For Dummies
* Energy Efficiency For Dummies
* Green Cleaning For Dummies
* Sustainable Landscaping For Dummies
* Organic Gardening For Dummies
* Buying and Selling Green Homes For Dummies

It will be available in January 2009, but you can pre-order it now.

For those of you who haven’t heard of West Coast Green, it is the largest residential green building conference in the country and is held the last week of September. This years conference will be September 26, 27 & 28th in San Jose, California.

I have been on the Advisory Board of the conference since it’s inception, and watched it grow in size and scope each year. Each year brought new things to the conference as well.

For this years conference, one of the new features is the video section of the website, where you can watch recorded talks by this years speakers.

You must watch the talk by Van Jones, who brought the crowd of thousands to their feet with his take on green collar jobs.

Of the 40+ conferences I speak at each year, West Coast Green is by far my favorite. I urge you to attend the conference. Some discount passes are still available, so feel free to contact me directly if you’re going to attend.

The New York Times reports on the naturally occurring phenomenon of radiation in quarried stone. But sometimes the result is more than you might expect from your granite countertop.

A routine home inspection revealed elevated levels of radon in Lynn Sugarman’s home. So she called a radon technician to find the source.

“He went from room to room,” said Dr. Sugarman. But he stopped in his tracks in the kitchen. His Geiger counter indicated that the granite countertop was emitting radiation at levels 10 times higher than those he had measured elsewhere in the house…

and this frightening image:

“It’s not that all granite is dangerous,” said the lab tech who took the radiation measurements. “But I’ve seen a few that might heat up your Cheerios a little.”

But perhaps the most distasteful part, is the all-too-predictable reaction from the corporate shills:

Allegations that granite countertops may emit dangerous levels of radon and radiation have been raised periodically over the past decade… but the Marble Institute of America has said such claims are “ludicrous”.

Just once I’d love to see a trade organization actually take the side of truth over financial self-interest.

FULL STORY

MSNBC has this video showing Michelle Kaufman’s latest prefab masterpiece at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

The best part of the video occurs in the middle with a time lapse shot showing the prefabricated modules being assembled. The entire house was installed in a week.

More on Michelle’s Blog
Even more on Treehugger
Press Release
Museum of Science and Industry

Luke at HowYouEco recently interviewed me with his patented list of 3 quick questions. Check out the site. It is beautifully done and provides some great information.