Most people that have conducted maintenance on a home or apartment in the last two decades have probably bumped into asbestos. Asbestos is a fibrous material whose strength and resistance to fire and decay made it a popular choice for numerous products in the first half of the 20th century including floor tile, adhesives and building insulation. Continue Reading…
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We often use the utilitarian, rational deployment of street grids as a boon to our best cities. American cities like New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. stand as the result of a preplanned order deployed to guide expansion over time. In many ways it has worked. Partitioning up the city has helped to shape a straightforward process for development, creating defined districts for zoning along with a web for transportation. But as the way we interact with the city evolves, including the buildings within it, the grid lags behind, representing the same functions that it did centuries ago. These massive infrastructural frameworks have grown to the point of being outmoded, trailing the urban evolution around and within them. We are at a point for a reassessment for how best to use this wealth of connective tissue that provides access to and from our homes, our jobs and our leisure both inside and outside of the city. Continue Reading…
In its basic definition, efficiency relates to a given amount of energy or effort it takes to accomplish a certain task relative to the least possible amount. It is true that a more efficient system/solution/product will use less energy than a less efficient counterpart, but in order to gauge its place within the topic of sustainability we have to ground the term and its use in realistic conditions. What we end up with is that “efficiency” is a much more incomplete thought that most people treat it. As an idea, it is a component of a direction more than a solution. Continue Reading…
In his inauguration speech, President Obama dedicated some time to addressing the environmental contingent that was left out of the gamut of the election. In all of the months of campaigning and formal presidential debates, the topic of sustainability was a no-show, with both candidates staying away from a subject that could probably do little to help either of them when it came to the polls. While it was nice to see that the environment is still on the President’s radar screen, the pressures on the country’s budget and other issues currently claiming the main stage could still breed a healthy amount of skepticism for how much environmental legislation we will see in the President’s second term. 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…
The signing of the federal budget for 2012 marked the latest effort by Republicans to forestall the coming legislation that will begin the phase out of the traditional incandescent bulb. The time and energy spent on debating a law that was signed into being 4 years ago under a Republican President exemplifies the misdirected focus of our elected officials not to mention their blatant disregard (or ignorance) of efficiency’s importance. Thankfully, their tribulations are unlikely to have any material effect on the movement that the forces of American capitalism have been welling behind for years now. Continue Reading…
Few would dispute the need for due attention given to our antiquated energy infrastructure. Whether it be generation, transmission or coordinating both with end use, our current efforts are decidedly piecemeal and moving at a pace far slower than what is necessary for not only a more efficient, but a much cleaner grid. While government subsidy programs have helped renewable energy markets achieve impressive year over year growth rates, our combined renewable portfolio still only accounts for around 12.7% of all of the electricity our country uses. We need a new national model that helps wane us off of (and eventually close) fossil fuel power sources while simultaneously spurring a more substantial construction and research of renewable energy options. Continue Reading…
The drive to stem the use of coal for power production in the U.S. has gained considerable traction over the past decade. According to some sources, coal power holds the title of the single largest source of air pollution in the country while its supply chain contaminates every resource that it touches. Removing coal from our energy portfolio is one of the greatest sustainability milestones that Americans could hope to achieve, but the goal might benefit from a simple tactic that brings the core issues closer, or rather into, the homes of consumers. To deter the use of coal power we may need to reach for a blunter instrument.
For most Americans, the concept of “power” is little more than a number that comes in the mail. The distance between the act of power production and the resulting charge on an electrical bill is a key ingredient to how energy companies keep the disturbing realities of our grid outside the focus of their own consumers. Closing that gap could be as easy as bringing that information front and center with warning labels that remind the consumer exactly what their dollars are buying. Slapped on the front of envelopes or next to the amount due, the reoccurring reminder could help educate people of the repercussions of their energy use and either promote increased efficiency or the choice to make the easy switch to paying for greener power. Continue Reading…
Most of the opportunities that garden variety Americans have to make a sustainable change in their life are small in the grand scheme of the country as a whole, let alone the world and its biosphere. As an architect, designing a LEED Platinum building, or fifty of them for that matter, is still a drop in the bucket for level of change that we need to the built environment of this country. Each individual person or building is a long way from getting everyone on board, but the goal doesn’t have to be 100% participation. The few that extend themselves to push the envelope now build the image of interest that allows for larger standards to change with sweeping effects over broader areas. Continue Reading…
Most of the time, when we think of things being built the majority of hours it takes to complete a project revolves around construction. It is rare that an architect will spend more hours drawing a project than a contractor will take to build it. For residential solar installations, the growth in demand is being met by a regulatory system not fully prepared for the expanding market. As a result, a large portion of the cost for new PVs pays for people sitting at a desk rather than throwing up panels.