So nowadays, it takes a lot more than a can of green paint to turn a house "green." I used to think green architecture meant "hobbit house" like the low-impact woodland home on this link: http://www.simondale.net/house/ Check the website out, it's a charming story. Mom camped out with the toddlers, while dad and grandad built the family homestead. I remember when I was a kid, my friends and I would build "houses" out of fallen branches we found; this seems like the durable adult version of that. And the house seems really beautiful and sturdy; and it looks organic, like it grew naturally out of the hillside.Another spin on green architecture is this guy in Texas who makes recycled houses out of thrown-away materials! http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20090907/news/909069957?Title=Home-recycled-home. He makes roofs out of old license plates, windows out of old see-through platters. His
original intention was to provide low-cost housing for the poor. But his homes are so wacky and wonderful that yuppies will pay high prices to live in them-- a little unforeseen consequence there. So if I want a "green" home, do I dig it out of the hillside? Do I build it out of recycled materials? Or...... do I rent a room in a Bob Fox skyscraper in Manhattan?
For those of you that think skyscrapers are the antithesis of green, think again. Bob Fox is a renowned green architect who designs corporate headquarters in New York. He uses the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System to ensure his skyscrapers are as eco-friendly as possible. "A LEED rating is basically the 'nutrition facts' for a building,' " Bob Fox explained in a talk he gave to Bard students last Thursday.
Most of his presentation focused on the Bank of America skyscraper he is building just now. The building has a high-tech air-conditioning system designed to save energy. If I haven't gotten my story garbled, it uses electricity during non-peak hours to make GIANT ICE CUBES in its core. Then the ice melts and flows through the "cooling" towers, giving people energy-efficient air-conditioning. It also has its own energy-saving cogeneration plant. The cement in the building has garbage mixed into it, which oddly enough makes the cement stronger (now I call that recycling.) They're going to plant a lovely roof-garden and have a tree/park area around the border of the building.
He really thought through every detail, right down to the waterless urinals with the biodegradable chem cartridges to eliminate odor. But there are other things you wouldn't expect, like the historic theater which has been restored and made part of the building. I've noticed that "preservation of cultural heritage" gets lumped in with environmentalism a lot of the time. Whether that connection is logical or not, its a fun twist to have a bank with theater performances on the first floor.
Also to get his LEED points he had to ensure the employees would be getting a lot of sunshine. Apparently they did a study once which showed kids who took tests in sunny rooms got 16% higher scores than kids in windowless rooms. So a big selling point for the building is the "higher productivity" that will apparently result from the sunny rooms, big windows, and fresh air. (Their advanced ventilation system filters out the majority of the pollutants from the street.)
"Forty million dollars is what it costs to put in these eco-friendly features," said Bob Fox. "But a 10% productivity increase means a 100 million dollar savings for the company in just the space of one year." Bob Fox is confident that people working in his pleasant buildings will be at least 10% more productive. "People say it feels better, working there," said Bob Fox. People even have knobs to personalize the temperature of their cubicles. My definition of "green" is broadening all the time-- apparently to be a green office space, you need to have a HAPPY work environment.
And even if the productivity increase doesn't come through, the building is still saving the company $3 million each year in its energy bills. Buildings are responsible for 43% of our carbon emissions, while transportation accoutns for 32% and industry creates a mere 25%. So why do we always pick on industry? It looks like green architecture might be the most important frontier of the War on Global Warming. Bob Fox mentioned some interesting global warming stats I hadn't heard before, such as the likelihood of 20% of Bangladesh disappearing under the water.
Take a guess at what you think the MOST important eco-friendly feature of the building is. The water system? The electric system? The roof garden? No! What matters most is the building's LOCATION-- smack-dab in the middle of one of the world's best public transportation systems. Most people, when they think "Green" probably imagine a little hut surrounded by friendly clusters of goats and pigs. But if you're pounding thirty miles of highway in your car to get to that hut, it isn't green at all. Richard Register wrote a book called "EcoCities," saying the best thing we could do for the environment is start living in really tall buildings close together. That way, the elevator replaces the car as the primary mode of transportation.
Admittedly, this Richard Register fellow is a little eccentric. He thinks we need to wage a "War on Cars." He put an old car in his front yard, removed the tires, chopped off the roof, filled it with soil and planted a vegetable garden in it. Then he put a license plate on it which said, "OBSOLETE." Then he put up a sign next to the vegetable car, explaining it was a monument for the first person to ever die in an automobile accident. Or to put it in his (slightly more loaded) language, "A monument to the opening battle of the Car Wars."
I know you're snickering at poor Richard right now, but when you think about it, the automobile casualties in a year probably equal if not exceed the people killed in 9/11. So why are we waging a "War on Terror," rather than building up public transportation infrastructure? That would save more lives. Even if we go with buses rather than trains or trolleys, that still means fewer vehicles on the road or more trained drivers.
Also to get his LEED points he had to ensure the employees would be getting a lot of sunshine. Apparently they did a study once which showed kids who took tests in sunny rooms got 16% higher scores than kids in windowless rooms. So a big selling point for the building is the "higher productivity" that will apparently result from the sunny rooms, big windows, and fresh air. (Their advanced ventilation system filters out the majority of the pollutants from the street.)
"Forty million dollars is what it costs to put in these eco-friendly features," said Bob Fox. "But a 10% productivity increase means a 100 million dollar savings for the company in just the space of one year." Bob Fox is confident that people working in his pleasant buildings will be at least 10% more productive. "People say it feels better, working there," said Bob Fox. People even have knobs to personalize the temperature of their cubicles. My definition of "green" is broadening all the time-- apparently to be a green office space, you need to have a HAPPY work environment.
And even if the productivity increase doesn't come through, the building is still saving the company $3 million each year in its energy bills. Buildings are responsible for 43% of our carbon emissions, while transportation accoutns for 32% and industry creates a mere 25%. So why do we always pick on industry? It looks like green architecture might be the most important frontier of the War on Global Warming. Bob Fox mentioned some interesting global warming stats I hadn't heard before, such as the likelihood of 20% of Bangladesh disappearing under the water.
Take a guess at what you think the MOST important eco-friendly feature of the building is. The water system? The electric system? The roof garden? No! What matters most is the building's LOCATION-- smack-dab in the middle of one of the world's best public transportation systems. Most people, when they think "Green" probably imagine a little hut surrounded by friendly clusters of goats and pigs. But if you're pounding thirty miles of highway in your car to get to that hut, it isn't green at all. Richard Register wrote a book called "EcoCities," saying the best thing we could do for the environment is start living in really tall buildings close together. That way, the elevator replaces the car as the primary mode of transportation.
Admittedly, this Richard Register fellow is a little eccentric. He thinks we need to wage a "War on Cars." He put an old car in his front yard, removed the tires, chopped off the roof, filled it with soil and planted a vegetable garden in it. Then he put a license plate on it which said, "OBSOLETE." Then he put up a sign next to the vegetable car, explaining it was a monument for the first person to ever die in an automobile accident. Or to put it in his (slightly more loaded) language, "A monument to the opening battle of the Car Wars."
I know you're snickering at poor Richard right now, but when you think about it, the automobile casualties in a year probably equal if not exceed the people killed in 9/11. So why are we waging a "War on Terror," rather than building up public transportation infrastructure? That would save more lives. Even if we go with buses rather than trains or trolleys, that still means fewer vehicles on the road or more trained drivers.
(Example of a "vegetable car")
Of course, maybe the most effective way to avoid cars is to design our lives so that everything we need is within walking distance. That is why Bob Fox is also a fan of "mixed-use" buildings. This means working, shopping, and living space all in the same building. If these different elements of life are all in the same area, that means less commuting. Not only that, but the building can be very energy-efficient, because the amount of electricity it uses stays more or less constant during the 24 hour cycle.
Some of the more flashy "eco-features" Bob Fox decided not to include. They thought about putting a windmill on top of the building, but they got dubious when they measured wind-speeds. Even that far up in the air of Manhattan, there's still not enough wind blowing to make the wind-mill cost effective. The same with solar cells. Even though they sound cool, they didn't make financial sense for this particular skyscraper.
Another nifty feature that got vetoed was the "bio-digester," an unbelievably cool gadget. You throw in your food scraps, and the suite of bugs and bacteria living in the biodigestor convert them into high-quality compost. Not only that, but the bugs produce methane in the process of digesting the food scraps. This methane is then used to make electricity! Now isn't that awesome! (When I heard that, I gaped and thought, 'I can power my TV off of bug farts?') Bob Fox wanted to put one of these in his building, but it was too big and there wasn't room. Now Laurie is wondering if we could have a bio-digestor at Bard; we certainly have enough food scraps from Kline. It sounds so wild, but apparently it works.
Another part of eco-friendly design is looking where construction wastes go. Their study on construction wastes revealed that most of it was wood. This was confusing because they were building steel and glass buildings! So where's the wood coming from? Turns out they use wooden palettes to wheel the construction materials onto the site. So they forced the construction workers to reuse the wooden palettes instead of tossing them out. At first the firm was unhappy at being forced to change their ways, but they brightened up when they realized the reuse was saving them money.
At this point in the story Bob Fox turns around, fixing us all in an intense stare. "NOTHING MAKES SOMEBODY GREENER THAN SAVING MONEY." Which is so true-- recycling, reuse, conservation, looking for ways to eliminate waste, are all cost-saving measures. This is why the rhetoric of the "expense" of saving the environment makes increasingly less and less sense.
Another project Bob Fox's firm worked on was remodeling the 33rd floor of the Empire State building. The firm asked him to create a space with the best LEED rating that would be possible in Empire State. They made bigger windows, increased the ceiling height, and added an efficient underfloor heating/cooling systems. They also put in reflectors so natural daylight could brighten more of the building. However the possibilities were more limited because they had to cope with what was already there. It is tough sometimes for the green architects to remodel these old buidlings.
Mr. Fox's sales pitch was very smooth. By the end of his talk I was wishing wistfully that I was a multimillionaire CEO so I could afford one of his products. :-P Ha ha. Firms like his are really on the cutting edge; membership in green architecture associations has been increasing exponentially lately, and "green" buildings have higher value in the real estate market. Bob Fox's work also fits into something called PlaNY--- the "Greater, Greener buildings for New York" plan. This PlanNYC is part of New York City Mayor Bloomberg's promise to bring CO2 emissions down 30% by 2030. Already 100,000 trees have been planted for PlanNYC-- so even though the plan is far from completed, its far from a pipe dream either. Eventually the plan will plant a million trees.
Challenge: Look around your home or dwelling space and find a way to make it more "green." Anything from putting a potted plant in the window, to installing insulation, to designating a special recycling area for your plastic bottles. A potted plant doesn't need to cost more than 350 cents.
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