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…
Archives For environment
Certain aspects of integrating sustainability into large scale building projects can be challenging, but building an affordable housing project can be a constant fight against the budget even without exploring ways to make it a healthier, more efficient space. Recently completed in the Bronx, Via Verde has risen to stand as a model for affordable housing construction, effectively breaking the barrier of plausibility for including green building components in a low-cost project. 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…
In our short-term, quick-fix, credit-swiping culture we have no shortage of proposed non-solutions that search for short cuts to stem the possibility of irrevocable damage caused by climate change. Noteworthy participants are the well-known faces of clean coal, carbon sequestration or launching waste into space. But when it comes to handing out the gold star for the top of the class, geoengineering stands head and shoulders above the rest as a scientific Hail Mary Pass with an endless sea of unknown consequences. After a dubious amount of review from a number of different sources, geoengineering and all funding towards its research should be pulled off the table with focus returned to things that can actually work without multitudes of latent risk. Continue Reading…
Urban farming continues to ride the wave of sustainability with efforts sprouting up across the country that find very real and fruitful results. The rush of interest has maintained conversations of massive towers buried in the center of urban cores to produce local, sustainable crops for city dwellers. However, the conceptual mecca of farming in the city, vertical farms, still remains mired in the theoretical world due largely to the unwillingness of any funding sources to make the first cut on a bleeding edge development pattern. On their own, large vertical farms in the cityscape bring costs that may be insurmountable for a largely unproven model, but if the system was paired with high-end residential and positioned as an amenity then new crops could get the prime exposure they need to test their strength where it its needed most. Continue Reading…
The integration of natural flora and fauna into the cities has been a challenge for architects and planners since the beginning of buildings. The task becomes even more difficult when the urban spaces in question are part of our country’s neglected, post-industrial landscape. The winning entry to the recent Gowanus Lowline Competition explores the process of mending broken pieces of aged, urban fabric while dealing with not only the vacancies created by absent industry, but sites riddled with the environmental scars of a previous era.
The scheme probes at the possibility of new urban spaces, utilizing both natural systems of remediation and the active density of a modern city. Wetlands and cityscape: two realities commonly assumed to be so diametrically opposed that their overlap is all but implausible. The former harnesses natural processes to provide an ecology with no net waste or squandered resources and supports a myriad of species in close proximity. The latter is the function of fabricated infrastructural systems that levy an indisputable tax on natural resources as it bleeds energy to support a single species in close proximity. The prospective benefits of synthesizing the accolades of both environments are far-reaching, but given their respective needs of space and circulation the question becomes, how can these ecologies co-exist without one decimating the function of the other? 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.
In 1972, one of the most ambitious government-funded, low income housing projects in history broke ground in Harlem on the upper East side of Manhattan. Spanning an entire city block, the Taino Towers complex boasted four-story base with various integrated amenities supporting four 35-story towers of concrete and glass to stand over the surrounding neighborhood. The project was known as a “pilot block”, meant to serve as a new urban model for the integration of low-income housing into large cities like New York. However, there also exists a little-known master plan for future phases of low-income development in Harlem that were drafted as a model for sustainable urban growth. Continue Reading…