When it comes to sustainability and NIMBY sentiment, the preservationist mindset can brew its own unique vintage of opposition to environmental goals for building stock. The same boilerplate assumptions of solar panels and wind turbines that draw fire from locals can quickly be amplified when the project in question is the alteration of buildings that have been around for over a century. Even within the architectural community the topic of how to treat our historic building fabric is consistently a topic prompting controversy and healthy debate. While there is a great deal of cultural heritage locked into the innards of old buildings, the danger of “freezing” these structures in time is that we also end up maintaining their striking inefficiencies. As an aging country, we need ways to provide an evolutionary track for the older buildings that are often most notorious laggards in efficiency. Continue Reading…
Archives For November 2012
As parts of the Northeast leave behind days waiting for power and water, Hurricane Sandy’s late October run prompts the question of what we can do to make our urban areas more resilient to minimize the time that we need to keep residents without the bare essentials. There have been a number of articles (here and here) recently written about the comparison between “resiliency” and “sustainability” in an attempt to make a case for which we should ingrain into our cities. Facing the two terms against one another struck me as odd because though we can strive to satisfy one and not the other, there is a great deal of overlap between the two. Sustainable design and construction is often proposed on the merits of environmental stewardship, a healthier indoor environment and opportunities for monetary savings from increased efficiency, but its underlying goal also advocates quality, ensuring that we make buildings that will last over time. In many cases greener buildings can provide a better means of weathering the aftermath of the storm, leaving us better prepared for the inherent variability of nature. Continue Reading…