Building & Design Blog

The sooner "sustainability" includes a practical connotation, rather than just "not using fossil fuel" the better.

Lifetime energy costs, CO2 emissions and so on would be useful measures to determine whether something really is an advantage. For all its production CO2 emissions, concrete really is the best construction material in certain applications. In others, it's the worst choice.

Never mind "total cost of construction", I'm far more interested in "Total Cost of Ownership"

Oh, sustainable. The next buzzword to hate.

Isn't it more sustainable to use something that already exists, than to make new stuff?

how green is more?

I have a thought that for practicing design professionals, it is actually VERY OK and totally appropriate for the concept of "Sustainable Design" to remain "vague", to remain in the realm of "ideology", i.e. a "ground of being", literally a place to stand and return to frequently while making the multitude (literally thousands) of design decisions involved in bringing a project to life. But, the real world of bricks & mortar, speed, profitability for industry and construction firms, plus your own profitability pleads for, or demands a "formula". The more decisions you can make without really thinking about them, the better. And the very instant that you start to turn "sustainability" into a FORMULA, as in "I will use this product, this company's building system, that architect's good idea from last year, you start to destroy or bypass your own capacity for innovation, in the name of profit, expediency, or just avoiding the process of "thinking" about the design decisions you are making, moment to moment. Many of them are totally unconscious. In short, "formulizing" (Mr. Spellcheck, I made up the word) is a form of intellectual laziness, an unwillingness to approach a new project with a very open mind, with a willingness to go back to the very beginning and question ALL your basic assumptions (and those of other people) for validity in relationship to THIS PARTICULAR project. Sometimes questioning the client's basic assumptions, in a very diplomatic way, bears fruit. The client is even MORE likely to want a formula than you are, because their brains don't work the way yours does, or should work. They want what the Jones'es have, except bigger, as if that was better. Asking them some great questions can sometimes turn what looks like a pre-destined design program on its head, and you end up doing something truly innovative and interesting. It might not be as profitable per hour, but society might benefit, and so might you in the longer view. On the topic of formulizing, I have noticed over the years that virtually 95% of the public conversation about "green" and "sustainable" is PRODUCT driven, with too many designers and architects sitting on their brains, reacting to and giving lip service to, rather than LEADING that conversation, which would seem to be an appropriate role for them in society, given their training, and supposedly, their commitment. The bad news is, for the most part, you absolutely suck at it. You use lofty poetic terms or obscure jargon to discuss it and leave your audience asking "What the hell did that mean?" Not very useful... I am reminded of a recent project I saw in which an architect designed a home of over 6,000 sq. feet to accommodate the needs of two people. "But we used really good insulation and duo-pane glazing.", like that makes it "green"??? What about the 36,000 cubic feet of utterly wasted space that they are either heating or cooling eight months of the year? You're the professional. Could you have possibly used your special training and a sustainability ground of being to make the single biggest impact that you have the power to make? Could you have led the conversation away from "big" to "excellent"? With regard to the built environment, could you contribute to altering the national psyche and ego-driven conversation to that of "Mine's SMALLER than yours"? And more efficient? And more nicely detailed using the money we didn't waste on enclosing wasted space? All you have to do is drive through Scottsdale, AZ to see that THAT conversation has not been happening, hardly at all, for the last 20 years. As a couple of final examples of the mistake of NOT questioning basic assumptions, I give you..the flush toilet. Whose brilliant idea was it to use potable water to deal with human waste by transporting it thru really expensive piping to a site 20 miles away in order to sanitize/dispose of it? And we all bought into the concept for the next 60 odd years, before the new big idea emerged: Maybe we could use less water in the toilet tank, and then later, maybe we could use gray water. Wow... BUT, what if somebody had questioned the sanity of the original concept early on? Maybe using potable water and an expensive transportation infrastructure system for poo ain't such a brilliant idea? What if we had designed a better toilet to start with, perhaps using composting techniques or a combination of evaporation/incineration, saving untold BILLIONS of tax dollars and gazillions of gallons of fresh water over that time period? What a concept... Here's another, since the harnessing of nuclear power 70 years ago, this is what we used it for: killing people and boiling water. That's it. This is American ingenuity at work? Oy.... And the ONLY reason we are STILL using extremely dangerous uranium based domestic reactors to boil water to generate electricity instead of thorium fueling, is because the military, who were evidently footing the bill, and obviously more interested in obtaining enough fissionable material to kill everyone on the planet 14 times over, than in generating safe domestic power, were running the show. We never even looked for a moment at the two wildly different end uses separately. And there was nobody around saying "Wait a minute! Let's back up a few steps and re-think this from the beginning, specifically with regard to domestic power generation." And the result is: 99.9% of our population has never hear the word "thorium", that thorium is apparently cheaper, safer and better in every conceivable way for domestic use, AND we are left with literally hundreds of nuclear meltdowns just waiting for a nasty combination of profit-driven corner-cutting and unpredictable circumstances to occur at the same time... Get used to the idea. In the next ten years we are going to experience our very own Fukashima. Given the earth's rotation I'm just praying for an northern East Coast meltdown, cause I rather like where I live. Here's a consumer product idea for ya. How about a miniature thorium-powered toilet that also heats, cools and powers your home? Take ya right off that monopolistic power grid. You can go potty and make a political and environmental statement all at the same time. Now, there's a thought...

WHERE ARE MY PARAGRAPH SEPARATIONS!!!

you must be on an apple

for line breaks

[ p ]

with out the spaces

Thanks, Garthh. You got it. Working on an Apple. Looked all over this page twice and couldn't find the fix. Maybe the next one won't look so much like the ramblings of a mad man, but then again....