Regardless of your opinions of former President Bill Clinton, the guest list of the Clinton Global Initiative is nothing to sneer at. Those in attendance comprise a who’s-who at the international level from foreign dignitaries to business bellwethers. Yet despite being surrounded by some of the greatest minds in economics and political governance, President Clinton kicked off this year’s CGI gathering of his by tapping the design population for finding solutions to world problems. Continue Reading…
As many teachers would likely confess, the success of conveying and imparting knowledge is not just the quality of the information. It’s not only a question of the underlying message, but how effectively a language can be utilized to connect with who is listening–or in some cases, to get them to listen at all. The spoken and written word can be useful media to try and bridge the information gap when it comes to sustainability, but art can speak volumes in a language all of its own on any topic including ecological stewardship. I recently had the good fortune of meeting Ellie Irons, a Brooklyn artist that uses her work to discuss the importance of ecologies and their interconnected components. Continue Reading…
Despite the fact that everyone knows where it is on a map, Greenland has spent much of modern history as an unimposing world destination dotted with sparse habitation amidst hundreds of thousands of square miles of ice. Mining, fishing and hunting have comprised most of the large island’s small economy for centuries. Only recently has the image of Greenland’s future started to change as hopes of increased natural resource extraction made possible by a warming climate lend the possibility of a new importance in the global marketplace. Will a rush of business ultimately create a flourishing ice kingdom to the Northern Hemisphere or merely another example of corporate tenacity shoehorning industry into an environment that is among the planet’s least hospitable for human civilization? Continue Reading…
As unfortunate and costly as the rash of American droughts is proving to be, the small silver lining is that more Americans are pairing these adverse effects with the possibility of a warming climate. While greater acceptance of climate change is a progressive step, it is not necessarily indicative of the following, and arguably more important, step of decisive and constructive actions that amount to meaningful change in stemming actions that contribute to a hotter planet. As we pace through an increasingly warm decade, the question remains of how much do we have to turn up the heat before we try and take ourselves out of the oven. Continue Reading…
Plant Chicago, NFP/Rachel Swenie
Here in the U.S. we have no shortage of unused industrial space. In cities across the country there are blocks of old warehouses laying dormant and forgotten. While some find second lives being renovated into hip residential lofts, many of these buildings have a hard time being fashioned with new uses. The manufacturing industry has not exactly rebounded in America and conversion into retail space can be complicated for buildings too far away from active streetscapes. For most of these icons of a former era, the easiest option is vacancy which levels double the weight on a commodity filled with latent energy that was once so useful. Not only are empty buildings a waste, but foregoing maintenance for long enough eventually degrades the components of the building to the point where it truly is unusable.
In Chicago’s West side, a group of entrepreneurs saw one such building as an opportunity and fashioned a multi-faceted program mix to utilize old warehouse space and create a complex that will be energy-neutral, waste negative and resource positive. Dubbed “The Plant” the facility that is currently in the construction/renovation stage includes multiple parts revolving around food production that create an interconnected system of reflexive benefit (what some could call an Industrial Ecology). According to the owners, when the facility is complete it should be producing food, fish, beer and tea all as part of an on-site ecological system. Continue Reading…
New York’s Mayor Bloomberg has raised some commotion with his newly released design competition to endorse his proposal of “micro units,” describing apartments that are 275 to 300 square feet. There are few rentable spaces that someone in the Big Apple will not shell out some cash for. I have even spotted tent space in a backyard for rent on Craig’s List. So given that the question is not whether or not people will fill these units (they will), it leaves whether or not the addition of hyper-small living accommodations are a positive addition to a more sustainable city or a step over the line in a way to just squeeze more rent out of buildings on New York real estate. Continue Reading…
Not a civilization to be thwarted by things like gravity, we have yet to be satisfied with the presentation of our ability to build farther and farther above the ground. Renzo Piano’s recently completed “Shard” now casts its long shadow over London as the tallest building in the European Union. Similarly, China recently announced plans to construct the tallest building in the world that will house an estimated 100,000 people. At one time, the cultural backdrop of new technologies brought a degree of pride for having the zenith of a new tower loom so far above the streetscape, but in a society where skyscrapers have been around for a while building new super skyscrapers begs the question of why we are building things so tall. At a certain point, tall is tall. Some of these new developments are operating at heights that have greatly surpassed the efficiencies of density and require much more energy to construct per square foot than smaller towers. Continue Reading…
With some exceptions, the learned, hard-working professionals of any industry usually wish that the American populace knew more about what they do and why they do it. Artists long for a time when a greater portion of the population to be schooled enough in art to join the larger discourse. Farmers and factory workers would take pride in more people having a first hand knowledge of what their daily routines require in order to arrive at the fruits of their labor that we all use. And architects, consistently claiming that few people understand what it is they actually do, struggle to communicate effectively with the vast majority of Americans.
Metrics provide a means of packaging and conveying professional, industry-specific knowledge to a non-professional public. I recently reflected on sustainability’s need for reassessing its means of communication and finding new ways to reach a broader audience in a positive way. Part of that transition can include further development of more sustainable metrics that condense large quantities of complicated information and inform a larger portion of our daily decisions. Continue Reading…
Despite the societal progress that some measures of sustainability have made over the past decade, to a certain piece of the populace the message still falls on deaf ears–perhaps now more than ever. Not long ago a poll by the Washington Post revealed that a rising group of sympathetic perspectives was countered by the core resistance being even more entrenched. The voice of the advocates, having long since drifted into desperation, has tried the approaches of educating, illuminating, protesting, pleading, scolding and denouncing. At this point, the tactic is in need of its next stage of evolution. In order to pierce through generations of cultural norms and social constructs, the migration towards sustainability needs to be discussed in a different dialect that focuses less on blame and more on solutions. Continue Reading…
I make no secret about my love for recycling. When it comes to the measures necessary to achieve a more sustainable society, the recycling industry represents not only one of the greatest opportunities for positive change but also one of the most feasible to implement. Despite this, even in our cities, we lag far behind the opportunities that are possible, resulting in vastly more waste than is necessary. Having the access to a recycling program is still a factor, but moreover the populace may need an updated and more detailed refresher course on why recycling is so important. Continue Reading…