Our career fair was Friday.

Before I tell you about it, let’s do some simple math.

There are about 500 of us.

(plus)

A few recent graduates

(plus)

MIT’s graduate architecture program. [First years = about 24 people]

(minus)

the 16 firms that came to the career fair

(equals)

not a whole lot for hope for anybody.

I went in the morning, dressed up, made up, resumes and design sheets in hand, and I waited in line with everybody else.

While waiting in line, I met some students from MIT. Their program isn’t large enough for their own career fair. I found out that we have the same projects.

“Do our critics and your critics have secret meetings together?” I asked.

“They’re married to each other,” the MIT student replied. Two of our critics are maried to two of their critics.

Huh.

So I waited for a total of two hours and got to speak to a total of four firms.

A lot of firms, I heard from other people, weren’t even sure if they were even hiring.

One recruiter (and I’ll let him remain anonymous) told me that he used to foresee their workload by three to four months, but with the economy the way it is, he can only see three to four weeks in advance.

Which put me, who was only looking for a summer internship and not a “real” job, in a better spot, he said.

Then he confided, “There are easier ways to make more money. If you can be successful in architecture, you can be successful in anything.”

We have a Career Fair here at the GSD tomorrow.

There will be 16 firms.

There are 500 of us.

For more reasons to freak out, check out this depressing slide show profiling unemployed architects.

(And good luck with your grad school applications!)

Blaine Brownell of Discover Magazine wrote this little piece of eye candy I thought you’dlike to see –

Sustainable Architecture Takes Cues From the Original Green: Nature

Want to cool a building? Steal a trick from the forest canopy and use leaves for shade, as Osaka University did with its Frontier Research Center(pictured above). Builders, architects, and designers seeking better ways to go green are increasingly turning to nature—the original green—for solutions that have proven track records in the real world.

Engineering inspired by nature can be “functionally indistinguishable from the elegant designs we see in the natural world,” says Janine Benyus, a leading proponent of nature-based design and founder of the >Biomimicry Institute. Benyus says the strategy has already yielded a wide range of new products that may replicate nature’s successes: ceramics with the strength and toughness of abalone shells, self-assembling computer chips that form by processes similar to the way that tooth enamel grows, adhesives that >mimic the glue that mussels use to anchor themselves in place, and self-cleaning plastics based on the structure of a lotus leaf.

Some biomimicry efforts are tackling large-scale challenges such as supplying energy to an entire building. The Kyoto-based company Kyosemi has developed a power-harvesting solar cell that imitates the way that trees collect sunlight from various angles with their leaves. Called Sphelar, the product comprises little spherical cells that can be incorporated into a building’s windows. Unlike standard photovoltaic panels, Sphelar can absorb light from many directions, providing more consistent power generation as the sun moves across the sky.

Source

In the last post, I pointed the way to the NAIOP study. It’s been making waves here at the GSD. Making more waves is the backlash.

So here’s the rebuttal for you –

A Hog in a Tuxedo is Still a Hog:
The NAIOP Disinformation Study

By Edward Mazria

I was wondering when it would happen, a Building Sector disinformation campaign launched by vested interests. Well, it’s happened. The campaign hit The New York Times on Saturday, and it comes from NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association. It appears just as the country has come to grips with the fact that buildings are responsible for over 50% (50.1% to be exact*) of all the energy consumed in the US. It comes at a time when Americans are trying to reshape their energy policy and wean themselves from dependence on foreign oil, dwindling natural gas reserves and dirty conventional coal.

This disinformation campaign is obviously meant to stall, confuse and distort. The first salvo, a spurious study and press release, was issued two days before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on improving building energy code standards.

It is clear from a simple analysis of the study that NAIOP commissioned a building energy efficiency analysis to support predetermined results. They contracted with ConSol, an energy-modeling firm, and asked them to analyze five (yes, only five) efficiency measures for an imaginary, square-shaped, four-story office building with completely sealed windows and an equal amount of un-shaded glass on all four sides of the building. In other words, analyze an energy Hog.

They conducted the analysis for different cities and climates - Newport Beach, Chicago and Baltimore - without changing the design to respond to these very different climates. They did not study changing the shape of the building, its orientation or form, or redistributing windows or using different windows to take advantage of natural light for daylighting or sunlight for heating (office buildings are day-use facilities). They did not study shading the glass in summertime to reduce the need for air-conditioning, using operable windows for ventilation (not even in Newport Beach with its beautiful year-round climate), using landscaping to reduce micro-climatic impacts, employing cost-effective solar hot water heating systems, employing an energy management control system or even study the impact of using inexpensive energy-saving occupancy sensors in rooms to turn off lights.

In other words, NAIOP intentionally kept out of the analysis all the readily available low-cost, no-cost and cost-saving options to reduce a building’s energy consumption. This deliberate omission is glaringly apparent in their press release and in the NY Times article. In fact, they take so many inexpensive, energy-saving options off the table that it is impossible for the imaginary building to reach commonly achievable energy-consumption-reduction targets. They then add an inflammatory headline to their press release, “Results show efficiencies unable to reach 30 percent mandates”, and state that, “The study provides an unbiased insight into the energy targets practical to commercial development today.”

Using this analysis as their baseline, NAIOP goes on to report, without any objective basis, that “reaching a 30 percent reduction above the ASHRAE standard (a commercial building energy code standard) is not feasible using common design approaches and would exceed a 10-year payback.” They conclude, “achieving a 50 percent reduction above the standard is not currently reachable.”

Clearly, this study is meant to confuse the public and stall meaningful legislation, insuring that America remains dependent on foreign oil, natural gas and dirty conventional coal.

The U.S. peaked in oil production in 1970 and natural gas in 1973. Our reserves are in steep decline and 70% of the remaining world oil and gas reserves are located in the Middle East, an area stretching from Saudi Arabia and Iran to the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union. This type of activity by NAIOP not only hurts our country, it is also a disservice to their membership and all those in the Building Sector who work hard to deliver a high-quality, energy-efficient building product.

NAIOP touts itself as advancing responsible commercial real estate development and advocating for effective public policy. This study and misleading campaign accomplishes none of these goals.

The American public deserves better.

Source

I just read this article by Saqib Rahim in the NY Times.

It’s been sold as the ultimate no-brainer climate investment: Make a building that’s more energy efficient, and you’ll pocket the savings while avoiding harmful emissions.

With buildings accounting for 40 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, the “green” building has also gotten a look from Obama administration policymakers hoping to shrink the nation’s carbon footprint.

Now a group of builders has issued a report arguing that the green-building vision may be more of a myth. You can make a building more energy efficient, the group says, but it won’t come cheap, and it could take decades to pay off.

The report, released this week by the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, found that a 50 percent energy improvement beyond federal standards is technically impossible. A 30 percent target is achievable, but only by adding a million-dollar solar system that could take up to 100 years to pay for itself.

Experts say it is one of the first efforts they have seen to question whether the green building’s economic foundation is as solid as advocates claim.

The association, which represents developers of office buildings and other commercial properties, goes by its former acronym, NAIOP. John Bryant, a lobbyist for the group, said he wants the report to wake up policymakers who are considering a big hike for building energy codes.

“Some of the language that’s been used in mandate proposals might not be as achievable as people have said,” he said. “We don’t want to stop the debate – we want it to move forward; we just want to add some economic data to it.”

Keep Reading

I just read an article about a family in Alabama who built their own house with the wood and stones they could find.

I love this stuff.

As a contractor, Guy knew that most building projects waste a lot of usable materials. “In my line of work, getting rid of old junk and debris is part of the bidding process anyway,” he says. “So if I got a job remodeling a house built in the early 1900s and happened to see a dilapidated barn on the property, I’d just ask the owner, ‘What’s the future of that barn?’ Generally, he’d say, ‘You can have it.’”

In the five years it took to complete the project, Guy collected old wood, tin and other materials from as many as 75 sources; every town in Randolph County is represented. “I got wood from old barns and sheds; some pieces I just found in a field somewhere,” he says. “My company also did a whole lot of work on a church from the 1850s that people claimed was the oldest in the county. I got all the windowpanes, some trim and a few pieces of lumber from that.”

Guy estimates that 85 percent of the house is made from reclaimed materials; the other 15 percent is wiring, plumbing, lights and the store-bought rocks that make up the 30-foot indoor fireplace.

For Guy and Kay, building the house was more than a means to an end: It was an important part of raising their sons, Jeffery, 22; Kyle, 20; and Adam, 18. “I wasn’t about to raise three boys who wouldn’t know how to work and get really tired and sweat and bleed,” Guy says of his sons, who were 15, 14 and 12 when the project began. “This project turned them into three fine young men. It taught them values and character, respect and responsibility.”

Keep Reading

I just read another article about architecture students leaving their architecture buildings and going outside and building something real.

Every time I read something like this, it makes me happy. It makes me happy because it’s what I want for myself.

We like to joke that we don’t get to build anything until our fifth year.

(Ours is a 3.5 year program. Not funny.)

In 16 days a team of undergraduate architecture students will travel to a township in South Africa to construct a nursery school for 80 children in just six weeks. Thirty-six second and fifth year students from the University of Nottingham, and their tutors Adrian Friend and Rashied Ali, have designed the building following a student competition.

The students are also are fundraising in order to buy materials and finance their flights. They will set off in 19 days for the township of Jouberton, near Klerksdorp which is 250km south west of Johannesburg.

The project began in September 2008 when more than 200 students entered an internal competition to design the nursery school. The brief specified a sustainable building, which took into account best practice in terms of kindergarten education.

In December 2008 a panel of tutors selected a project from one of the second year’s six units. A series of interviews was held with students from the second and fifth years to select the team that will travel to South Africa.

A series of timber portal frames has been constructed as a test in the grounds of Nottingham University school of architecture.

The project is being run in collaboration with Education Africa, a Johannesburg-based charity. It follows on from earlier building projects designed and constructed by students from Austrian schools of architecture in other impoverished townships.

The nursery is expected to be complete by the beginning of May. Regular updates will be posted and webcam images will be posted by the students.

Source