Density plays a key role in the creation of a walkable, pedestrian-oriented, sustainable community. Though there are examples of denser development patterns that are not walkable, it is hard to create walkability without hitting a certain threshold of units per acre, so bolstering the streetscape with new buildings can be important for the sustainable aspirations of a young municipality. However, for cities like New York, density is not a recent phenomenon. The city has been building since its inception, which has lead to density not only being achieved from new construction, but in large part due to the wealth of existing buildings that have been around for a while. Given the vast amount of resources frozen in our existing building stock, our older urban landscapes need to look through more lenses of sustainability than only the merits of new development. Continue Reading…
Archives For renovation
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…
Despite the devoted attachment that the majority of Americans have to historic, residential archetypes, the evolution of building materials and practices continue to make it more difficult to maintain our older building stock in an authentic way. Though the ideological split amongst designers for whether new buildings should be crafted in a contemporary or historic image, the industry’s feelings about preserving older buildings that already exist is less contentious. As work performed on these period homes becomes more expensive, so too does it discourage maintenance and upgrades integral to keeping these homes from bleeding energy.