Need I say more?
Posts archived in Buildings and Food
Boston, where the winters are cold and the summers are humid is a frankly unforgiving climate for passive design. But that hasn’t stopped design/build firm Placetailor from applying the same rigor to zoning, insulating, sealing and retrofitting this 1850s Boston home as is typical in Germany, where the original PassivHaus emerged.
Among the characteristics of this home that make it so energy efficient are concrete floors to provide thermal mass, extensive solar glazing on the south side, super-insulated 12″ panels comprising the exterior walls, heat recovery ventilators to re-use the heat that would otherwise be wasted in exhausting the interior air. To put it in simple terms though, the architects simply paid attention to reducing summer heat gains, reducing winter heat losses (through the lungs and skin) and designing to allow the sun into the building in the cold winter months to offset any energy needed to heat the home. All in all, the cost attributed to making these decisions while at the drawing board is greatly less than when trying to retrofit a conventional building, and the turn-around on the investment for higher-efficiency appliances/building materials is relatively quick. As such, the PassivHaus standard tends to result in a significant 90% reduction in energy use for heating and cooling the building.
Without fail, when designs are held to the rigorous standard of the PassivHaus Institute, the result is an incredibly efficient building. The only downside to such a building standard is that it imposes severe constraints on the architect because of the need for super-insulated wall construction, typically only accomplished by use of SIPs (structurally-insulated panels) or cross-laminated timber that tends to be more than 12″ thick. These are minor things though, when you consider the end result and compare it to the typical American home. Such building methods are typical in Europe though, and the materials to do so are more readily available and therefore cheaper, so this building type has become more of a standard than an exception.
Realities such as this one make me question exactly what values of Americans led to the preponderance of McMansions while all across Europe homes were becoming more efficient and livable and they continue to have a viable housing stock. In America there is no such thing as a starter house anymore. The majority of new development are either suburban single family home developments where each home is confusing, illogical, wasteful, expensive and unwelcoming or urban multi-family housing developments that disregard the need for community, limit the choices of the occupant and whose goal is maximum density for maximum profit; none of these can be considered starter homes. By starter homes, I am referring to something on par with those Sears-built homes of the early 1900s or those found in Levittown, NJ around the same time – homes that are affordable, expandable to fit the user’s needs (think of a young family with children), and create a sense of community which places an otherwise missing value on the preservation of these buildings. “Affordable” homes nowadays are either shitty and rundown, in bad neighborhoods, or just plain old non-existent.
That is why the PassivHaus actually offers a viable alternative that would satisfy a need present in our country for decades. The PassivHaus standard emphasizes compact footprints and efficient building systems, which have the potential to, when applied to larger developments, result in higher densities and cheaper housing stock. This is a bit of conjecture on my part, but nothing close can be said of our current modes of development so I feel appropriately confident in making these claims.
It isn’t every Winter that two incredibly powerful earthquakes shatter major cities in the Western hemisphere, and my bet is that this makes people take special notice to just how much they take for granted in the world we live. I’m not talking about any grand spiritual notions of fleeting time on earth or the temporal notion of reality.
I’m talking about buildings that don’t fall down when they aren’t supposed to.
Living on the West coast and growing up in the Midwest, natural disasters have held a sort of omnipresent though not dominating place in my consciousness. When a tornado struck in Missouri or Iowa or Illinois, it was always the shoddy, hap-hazardly constructed trailer parks that were shown leveled on the evening news. Rarely were densely populated areas decimated nor were the affluent suburbs reduced to the tattered remains of a landfill. In my apartment now, with its sinking corners, cracked windows, and wobbly floorboards, I know where exactly to take refuge when and if a earthquake hits (in the level, sturdy 6 ft long hallway that connects the bathroom, bedrooms and kitchen).
But I’m also not terribly worried about the house or apartment complex next door collapsing into mine. I’m also not worried about the building that I go to school in falling in on me in such a scenario. But maybe I should be.
In recently publicized and proactive campaign by West-coast states, public buildings and public schools are being allocated the funds they need to complete much-needed, overdue seismic retrofits. From a recent AP story by Alicia Chang:
Oregon has 1,300 schools and public safety buildings that are at high risk of collapse during a major quake. The state recently doled out $15 million to two dozen schools and emergency facilities to start the retrofit process. State law requires that all poorly built public safety building be upgraded by 2022 and public schools by 2032…
…Chile and the Pacific Northwest are part of several seismic hotspots around the globe where plates of the Earth’s crust grind and dive. These so called subduction zones give rise to mountain ranges, ocean trenches and volcanic arcs, but also spawn the largest quakes. The magnitude 8.8 Chile quake occurred in an offshore region that was under increased stress caused by a 1960 magnitude 9.5 quake – the largest recorded in history, according to geologist Jian Lin of the Woods Hols Oceanographic Institution. The temblor destroyed or badly damaged 500,000 homes and killed more than 700 people.
Similar tectonic forces are at play off the Pacific Northwest, where the Juan de Fuca plate is diving beneath North America. At some point, centuries of pent-up stress in the Cascadia subduction zone will cause the plates to slip. Scientists cannot predict when a quake will occur, only that one will…
…The Pacific Northwest “has a long geological history of doing exactly what happened in Chile,” said Brian Atwater, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington. “It’s not a matter of if but when the next one will happen.”
As an student of architecture, I know for damn sure that new buildings (particularly public ones) employ a whole host of incredibly innovative solutions to withstanding seismic loads. But they do this because the law dictates they must. Such restrictions on the freedoms of builders to cut corners are entirely necessary and forever the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile will stand as evidence of that necessity. It will be only a matter of time until every facet of our built environment will necessarily live up to that standard (including our travel infrastructure and the rest of our built environment that the state does not own). But this will not happen unless it is the government (state and federal) who are directly enforcing and support such policies. Haiti has no building codes. The central government exerted zero concern for the well-being of their citizens within their own homes, and such disaffection from the concern for their citizen’s well-being is the primary reason why a natural disaster displaced millions of people from a densely populated urban area in the year 2010. Chile, while being hit by an even more powerful earthquake, bore lesser consequences on the human scale because of the minimum standards adopted by their government; such a tragic contrast must be learned from and cannot be ignored in considering the path forward toward rebuilding and redeveloping.
I’m very heartened that the state of Oregon, even with its budget shortfalls and revenue losses, can place priorities on necessary actions to be taken by the state. This is particularly so, when that action is the ensuring that our cities, schools and workplace will not fall out from beneath our feet one day.
As an indication of exactly where our government most wisely chooses to insert itself, the Obama administration announced this month 130$ million that will be made available to further research and implementation of energy-efficient retrofit technologies.
I recently worked on a design project through the University of Oregon School of Architecture & Allied Arts in collaboration with the Portland Public School district that sought to come up with energy-efficient design retrofits for existing elementary and middle schools based on school typology (courtyard, cluster, double-loaded corridor, finger, sprawling, etc.). The project was an offshoot of the 21st century schools initiative that was created as a product of the funding for new school construction and existing school repairs included in the Recovery & Reinvestment Act, and was based on the premise that our 30 billion+sq.ft of existing classrooms are in worse average condition and older than our nation’s prisons – and these are the places where we expect our children to learn!
The project was received warmly by the Portland Public School district, as our studio produced roughly 12 different retrofit designs for 4 different Portland schools (free of charge to the school district). In recent years, each of these schools had either added grade levels or was projected to continue to increase student population, which in turn created the need for these schools to be retro-fit and expanded. The design that I am currently still working on would provide nearly 20,000 sq. ft. of naturally ventilated, daylight filled, passively heated and cooled learning space as well as a new library and a nearly 15,000 sq. ft. learning courtyard. While seeking to accomplish the same sustainable design standard in the existing 70,000 sq. ft school by focusing on retrofits that make the most out of simple changes to the roof structure (which is at the end of its life-cycle in this 70 year old school).
All the potential that our studio realized exists in these schools may be little more than lines on a page though. The school district is currently unable to make use of our thousands of hours of combined work because they have no money available for repairs beyond when plaster is falling off the walls or when a pipe bursts. This is compounded by, or potentially predicated by, the fact that the school district has not built a new school since the 80s and does not employ a design staff. Only a few veterans of the district have ever participated in or experience the construction of a new school or major renovation of an existing school. The obvious implications of this fact is that any design work, whether new school or renovation, will be done at a higher cost to the school district than with an in-house design staff.
I can hardly that imagine Portland Public Schools is the only district with this predicament. This issue becomes magnified when the public discourse surrounding our education system has more frequently been dominated by calls for voucher programs and charter school, and as the notion of abandoning the public school system is continually popular with American conservatives of late. The longer we wait to actually improve our existing schools, the easier it becomes to look at the system as failed, the easier the argument is to make for the wholesale abandoning of public schools.
That is not a course that I am comfortable with our country taking, the radical abandonment of public education, because it plainly neglects the role that such a free, public school system has played in our country’s rise toward the present. Back to objectivity though – here is a conservative education policy scholar and think-tanker that agrees on the utterly radical-nature of abandoning our public schools.
A study involving Walmart and obesity rates in American communities is making the ‘nternet rounds this week, but I’m skeptical of what some have written.
Radley Balko at the Daily Beast writes that “there was a small but statistically significant reduction in obesity rates in communities with a Wal-Mart, perhaps because the store also sells fresh produce of good quality at a good price…the overall “Wal-Mart effect” on health was positive,” and points to a study conducted by Art Carden of Rhodes College and Charles Courtemanche of the University of North Carolina to substantiate that claim.
What doesn’t add up though, is that the study cited by Balko actually states as its central conclusion that indeed “we find evidence that [Walmart] Supercenters increase both BMI and obesity, with effects that are largest for women, low-income married individuals, and those living in the least populous counties,” (emphasis added). Add to that assertion another made by Balko stating “Carden and Courtemanche found an increase in alcohol purchases in communities with Wal-Mart Superstores, and increases in smoking in communities with a Sam’s Club. They also found that the presence of a Wal-Mart in the community correlates with less exercise,” and I would tend to think that Wal-mart dropped the ball on the un-healthy side of the road.
That is, at least they have as a matter of record, though these facts likely do not represent the Wal-mart of today as well as they represent our collective notions of Wal-mart. An intriguing and surprising article from the Atlantic points to how Wal-mart has basically rebranded themselves in terms of the produce they sell and their sourcing model for said produce.
“In the grocery section of the Raynham supercenter, 45 minutes south of Boston, I had trouble believing I was in a Walmart. The very reasonable-looking produce, most of it loose and nicely organized, was in black plastic bins (as in British supermarkets, where the look is common; the idea is to make the colors pop). The first thing I saw, McIntosh apples, came from the same local orchard whose apples I’d just seen in the same bags at Whole Foods. The bunched beets were from Muranaka Farm, whose beets I often buy at other markets—but these looked much fresher.”
And while Wal-mart’s recognition of their need to adapt is a promising sign for the future of American agriculture and the American communities already served by the retail giant, the conversation over the big-box store clearly does not end here. We’ll continue to explore more conversations regarding these stores, and others like them, that have forever altered the way Americans participate in their local economies and the way Americans relate to their communities.
As I was walking home today, I was beginning to step across a street when I heard someone playing the violin. It caught my attention even amongst the cop’s siren and a loud lunch-rush jamming the parking lot.
I was leaving my house later that day and was greeted, when stepping outside of the door, by the same violinist I had heard trolling the streets earlier. She was across the street, carrying on without regard for her audience. I was struck by the way this simple gesture completely changed the character of the street and the neighborhood around the lone violinist. It was a melody that fit perfectly into the breezy, cloudy, Oregon atmosphere of February, reminding me of the blooming crocus I’ve noticed along the sidewalk each morning. The wonderful thing about this whole scene was the backdrop. There was a 15′ tall, 100′ long gray wall punctuated with street trees, and she walked along a sidewalk that undulated with the bulk of the tree roots pushing up beneath it.
We’re all conditioned to think so linearly about improving urban environments : there are lots of buildings in cities, so the solution must be in the form of a building (or in the form of no building), we think. But that mentality will just lead to a state of constant building and development, rebuilding and redevelopment, when in fact a more simple alternative may exist.
Our built environment is calling for musical accompaniment.
One caveat though: in my mind, accompaniment means live music (no loudspeakers, thank you).
Spray-on, ultra thin, inert, non-toxic, liquid glass. Read more here.
While the article from the Independent points to manufacturing, health care and agriculture as beneficiaries of this new technology, the thing that comes to my mind first is solar panels and other architectural elements designed to make efficient use of the sun. The constant problem with PV panels (photovoltaic cells) is that they accumulate dust over time and their efficiency drops significantly. This would apparently solve that dilemma in one spray-on application, keeping the surface clean of dirt, dust and other environmental pollutants. As well, the spray-on coating would help improve efficiency and upkeep of passive solar systems like trombe walls and double skin envelopes, which are plagued by years of dust and dirt in very hard to reach places. As well, those windows may not need to be cleaned so vigorously ever again!
Big payoff though:
The liquid glass is composed of almost pure silicon dioxide, the chemical constituent of quartz or silica, the most abundant mineral in the Earth’s crust. It is quite inert and has no known harmful impact on the environment, unlike many of the domestic and industrial cleaning products its use could help to reduce.
Not to mention how hard this advance would kick the volatile chemical producers at Clorox in the nuts!
Photos: Iwan Baan
From the NY Times all-important Arts section, a profile of architecture photographer Iwan Baan.
“Mr. Baan’s conjuring of real life may be ideally suited to a time when architects like Mr. Koolhaas are creating buildings meant to absorb and reflect the messiness of 21st-century cities.”
Anything worthwhile in architecture today is context-rich. These photos represent something essential about the space captured, something more true to how architecture exists outside of high design magazines.
“For decades magazine editors, developers and architects themselves favored a static style of photography that framed buildings as pristine objects. Mr. Baan’s work, while still showing architecture in flattering lights and from carefully chosen angles, does away with the old feeling of chilly perfection. In its place he offers untidiness, of the kind that comes from real people moving though buildings and real cities massing around them.”
People still seem to recoil at the mention of modern architecture, in all its form-first, ego driven glory. The way modern architecture is represented in photography typically speaks volumes to a certain character of the resulting space. Compare these two photos of supposedly worthwhile spaces and decide which one you’d like to spend an hour in :
Photo: Christopher Sturman, Dwell Nov 09 Photo: Iwan Baan
News To (Me)dia
…and everything in between
Stay on point :
