Remember when grandma insisted that you turn the lights off when you left a room? And you thought she was dotty? She was just being green, old school green. In 1939, the price of electricity consumed nearly ten percent of the average annual wage. Today we spend less than one percent of our pay on [...]
The era of the incandescent light bulb, initially patented in 1879 by Thomas A. Edison, is under assault through a combination of market forces and legislative fiat – primarily because it has been an energy hog. In 2007 the federal government mandated that the bulbs become more efficient beginning next year – although there are [...]
Kroon Hall was not the star of “Changing Planet,” a town hall meeting moderated by Tom Brokaw, but it was the venue – and clearly chosen for its symbolic value. The LEED Platinum home to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies was designed to use 58 less energy than a comparable, conventional building [...]
February 22, 2011 – 8:59 am
Those of us not raised by wolves know the fairy tale about the Three Little Pigs: one built a house out of straw (cheap and superficially sustainable with local, organic, and recyclable material); the second out of sticks (ditto); and the third out of bricks – a more energy intensive, durable and expensive material, but [...]
January 19, 2011 – 1:49 pm
I would like to be able to state that I became an architect to save the planet from wasteful, polluting buildings – the built world accounts for some 40 percent of the greenhouse gases we produce – but the truth is my fondest desire was to become a thespian. As the theater is an iffy [...]
August 6, 2010 – 11:51 am
Have you noticed that almost everything is now sold as “green” and sustainable? Recently I passed by a national chain outlet in Washington, D.C. sporting a large sign: “The Only Retail Store to be Completely Carbon Neutral.” I questioned the claim when I felt the air-conditioning air pouring out of the open door, and observed [...]
Yale University has produced an engaging and informative video about Kroon Hall, examining how the new home for the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies was planned, designed and built to LEED Platinum standards (and beyond). Opened last year, Kroon Hall has drawn rave reviews from the general and architectural media – and, more [...]
February 24, 2010 – 5:24 pm
Late this week here in the Land of Steady Precipitation has been dreary to the Nth power, unless, of course, you are calculating the kilo wattage that the winter freshet is producing at our corporate dam site out back, as “rain man” Bill Rutan is wont to do on his PC. The word that our [...]
December 9, 2009 – 11:56 am
With a grant in hand from the Home Office, intern architect Eric Lubeck headed not for Rome, Prague, or Paris in search of architecture, but to Canelo, Arizona. The town’s succinct Wikipedia entry (one sentence) describes it as a “ghost town.” Erik reports that there are, in fact, flesh and blood residents of Canelo, not [...]
November 20, 2009 – 3:56 pm
Growing up around sailboats, I have always been intrigued with wind as a source of power. Learning that you can sail relatively close to the direction from which the wind is blowing meant to me that there was more involved than simply letting sailcloth capture the breeze to push the boat downwind. I was thrilled [...]
