Archives For environment

1

Balancing Evolving Systems With Consideration

In our culture we have a tendency to look for new technologies that can make it easier for us to do things the same. The topic of sustainability and mitigating our effect on the environment suffers from this more than most despite the fact that the real opportunities for sustainable progress will come not from gadgets and gizmos, but a behavioral shift. Technological advancement can help us gain a bit of ground and buy us some time, but no matter how hard some innovation strives to keep the status quo intact, the realm of unexpected repercussions can be unavoidable. Our reflex needs to shift from assuming we can operate without change to one of automatic reassessment.

Over the course of modern American history we have continuously improved our ability to separate our homes from the natural environment. The exterior envelopes of our buildings can now be tighter and more efficient than ever, bringing opportunities to reduce the amount of energy and resources needed to heat, cool and clean the places we live and work. This evolution is positive in many ways, but the culture of how we build space doesn’t necessarily evolve as fast as the walls around it. Having a super tight–even airtight–envelope can bring some drawbacks if our building practices don’t evolve to respond to a new set of functional realities. Continue Reading…

Cultural 
9

Sobering Fact: Wrapping Paper Could Cover Over 5000 Football Fields

Gift Wrapping RollsThe holidays may be gone, but those bulging bags of trash are probably still waiting to be taken off of your hands. There may be a swell of food scraps in there from a holiday feast, but a lot of that bulk is the discarded skins of surprise that recently held our presents-to-be. While standing as a time-honored tradition, wrapping presents also marks a spike in the waste that we create throughout the year. According to the Wall Street Journal, gift wrapping sales in the U.S. totaled $9.36 billion in 2010 (more than the combined GDP of Africa’s 9 poorest countries). One of the problems with traditional wrapping paper is that its dying and lamination make recycling difficult. And an increase in viagra consumption during the holidays. This means that most of that paper does not end up in a plastic bin targeted for reuse, but in trash bags headed for a landfill and we produce 4 million pounds of it. Continue Reading…

Sobering Facts 
6

The Duel of Sustainability and Preservation

New York StoopsWhen 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…

Architectural 
1

Green Buildings As Resilient Buildings

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…

Architectural 
2

The Art of Ecology

Bird Migration ArtAs 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…

Cultural 
8

Is Greenland the Next Dubai?

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…

Architectural 
6

Chicago Warehouse Becomes Net-Zero Urban Farm

Industrial Urban Farm

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…

Architectural 
5

Need For Clarity on Recycling

recycling paper cardboardI 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…

Cultural 
3

Lack of Science Knowledge Not to Blame for Environmental Skeptics After All

Advocates for pressing new measures on sustainability in order to curb the potential threat of climate change have often claimed that their opposition was mired in a lack of understanding of the science behind global warming. The thought was that a lack of science literacy could explain the steadfast divide in the United States between believers and deniers. According to a recently published study by Yale Research, however, the “You just don’t get it!” argument doesn’t pan out. The research reveals that allegiance to cultural identity carries more weight than the science-based lobby of climatologists, suggesting that progress in sustainability will need a message that resonates with cultural groups in different ways.

Cultural 
0

Homes Struggle With Lighting Efficiency

Too Much House LightingWhen it comes to homes, lighting has become a luxury of the modern age. Architects have steadily grown to gorge themselves on light fixtures. Without a doubt, nice lighting can certainly look cool, but it is easy to go overboard. Light a circulation path here, throw in some accents there, before we know it we end up with over 62 lights in the average house. For residential buildings, exterior lighting ranks up there in convenience of questionable necessity like automatic blackout shades or heated towel racks. Beyond just the materials and energy used to make and install lighting, its presence carries a lasting toll on energy use. Continue Reading…

Architectural