03/09/10 @ 02:38:14 pm, Categories: Green Design, 324 words  

I just read this article on Natural Home Magazine (dot com) by Carol Venolia about the Los Angeles Eco Village.

I know.

How can there be an eco-village in one of the most consumptive, car-based, sprawling, polluted cities in this country?

Exactly.

L.A. Eco-Villagers have planted a dozen organic gardens and more than 100 fruit trees in their two-block neighborhood; developed a community revolving loan fund that made it possible to purchase and eco-rehab two apartment buildings (which will be converted to co-ops); composted sixty cubic yards of green neighborhood waste; diverted twenty tons of brick from the landfill (from the 1994 earthquake) for Eco-Village beautification projects; and held weekly community potlucks to build a sense of community.

Future projects include developing eight live/work spaces; purchasing more buildings; bio-remediating several brownfields; creating a demonstration “slow street” (already funded by the city), where landscaping and pedestrians have priority and cars move slowly; installing a graywater system and a demonstration neighborhood “living machine” for sewage treatment; demonstrating innovative solar heating and cooling systems; starting local green businesses; organizing organic food buying and car co-ops; creating a training program for urban eco-villages; and establishing a local currency system.

Oh Los Angeles, you are my constant complaint. I hate your poison air and your constant traffic, your gridlock, your plastic people. But maybe there is the tiniest little ray of hope emanating from your cold dark heart.

When you stay put and gradually transform your neighborhood’s vitality, you can improve existing buildings (less wasteful than new eco-building); avoid invading rural land; educate neighbors who aren’t already part of “the choir;” grow healthy food that doesn’t need to be trucked in; help cool the urban heat island; recharge the water table; bring birds, bees, and butterflies back to barren areas; reduce car use; and lower crime while increasing a sense of belonging by increasing community.

Just so you know, I’m still moving.

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03/09/10 @ 02:16:18 pm, Categories: Articles, I love this building, 439 words  

World travelers, she and Dan have been heavily influenced by the European villa-style architecture with central courtyard that, in turn, serves as another room of the house. “We didn’t want a patio or a porch,” says Karen. “We wanted an outdoor living area.”

I just read about Karen and Dan Forey’s courtyard house in Denver on Natural Home (dot com), and because I love courtyard houses so much, I just had to share it with you.

Guests who enter the house are embraced by design that, indeed, replicates a European villa. Textured walls in warm ­colors, rich leather furniture, a hand-crafted stone fireplace, ornate chandeliers, and arched entryways create the feeling of an Old World country house where the inhabitants can relax and enjoy the good life. The courtyard reinforces this scene.

To create design continuity between the interior and exterior, Karen turned to natural materials. She opted for rugged Colo­rado flagstone for the terrace floor, a perfect extension of the multicolored Indian slate used inside. The textured interior walls melt into creamy exterior stucco walls. The iron and metalwork that distinguish the dining room and kitchen chandeliers are echoed by wrought-iron trellises, balcony railings, and the burnished lanterns that provide ­outdoor lighting. The arbor that leads to the courtyard recalls the interior eyebrow arches.

An outdoor room requires natural practicality. The umbrella and furniture cushions are covered in a waterproof cotton fabric that will not mildew. The wicker has been treated to be impervious to weather. Two limestone end tables can withstand the worst rainstorm. From early spring to late fall, the courtyard is intact, ready for use on a beautiful day.

To capture the outdoors that the Foreys so love, Karen has focused on two natural elements: plants and water. Attracted to red, fuchsia, and purple—punctuated with splashes of yellow—she’s created a flower garden that explodes with riotous color. Bright red Spanish trumpet vines climb the trellises; pots of red roses flank the outdoor fireplace. Flowers cascade off the shallow balconies that overlook the courtyard. A mature ash tree provides shade and privacy, and the arbor is smothered in grapevines that allow just enough sun through to nourish the ground cover between the flagstones. Shrubbery and other of Forey’s flora are hydrated with a computer-operated, drip-irrigation system that requires little maintenance and helps conserve water.

A stunning two-tiered fountain recycles water, minimizing the “splash” factor. The soothing sounds of the fountain water obliterate the sound of traffic, just a half block away, and it reminds Karen of the rushing stream that ran near her Rocky Mountain home.

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03/08/10 @ 11:50:27 pm, Categories: Books, 2864 words  

I read The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion by Ada Louise Huxtable a little while ago, and I just came across my notes. I thought I’d put them up here so you can read them, get intrigued, and maybe go read the book yourself.

Americans prefer entertainment, nostalgia, or never-never land to real places.

The publics is addicted to fakes and fantasies.

Instead of public architecture, or an architecture integrated into life and use, we have “trophy” buildings by “signature” architects.

Illusion has become a major part of the economy – it is the community used to fill that vacuum of imagination and ideas when commercial expediency builds to the bottom line.

In saving the thing, the thing is lost and a substitute provided; the past is as evanescent and irretrievable as time itself.

Vernacular is real.

What is being built is the result of the most successful marketing in history; the product is rigidly and restrictively formulaic.

Profit, not planning or, even remotely, public interest, is the generation.

“We have a hunger for something like authenticity, but we are easily satisfied by an ersatz facsimile.” – Miles Orvell

Architecture is the most immediate, expressive, and lasting art to ever record the human condition.

We pay homage to landmarks but are cavalier about their contect. The artificial environments we flock to in preference are one-dimensional con games by contrast, their attractions and satisfactions limited, illusory, and equally out for the money.

The change in the way in which we see the world around us – or, rather, don’t see it – has had a profound effect on our attitudes toward it. The inherited and inherent principles of the interaction of building and society are either actively ignored or deliberately overturned.

Serious architecture is…sidelined, trivalized, reduced to a decorative art or a developer’s gimmick, characterized by a pastiche of barrowed styles and shaky, subjective references, it is increasingly detached from the problems and processes through which contemporary life and creative necessity are actively engaged.

“The American imagination demands the real thing, and to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake…for historical information to be absorbed, it has to assume the aspect of a reincarnation…the ‘completely real’ becomes the ‘complete fake’…absolutely unreality is offered as real pretense.” – de Tocqueville

The popularity and progeny of Williamsburg have taught us to subvert reality on a grand scale, to prefer – and believe in – the sanitized and selective version of the past.

The act of preservation turns what has been “saved” into something else, as the same time that the improvements provide the economic base that “saves” it.

Sooner or later, image and function are defined and fixed in an artificial formula that combines sentiments, fashion, and tourist appeal.

“Will there be nothing in the historical centers of America or Europe between a tourism that denatures them and a squalor that degrades them?” – Andre Corboz

“Historic reproduction” is a semantic trap – its definitions and desires are set by the seductions of what survives – those rare, real, evanescent, and evocative pieces of the past that are ultimately betrayed or excised by the unreality of the restoration.

To express profound unease – when so many dedicated professionals struggle with the enormous tast of dealing with complex regulations, uncertain finances, and growing commercial competition while they try to keep what they know should not be lost – is to be considered remote and unsympathetic.

One is perceived as an enemy of the cause. I do not deny the need for the past, or the legitimacy and necessity of the movement that carries the preservation name, or the tragedy of the lost past when the destructive is brutal and willful. But I believe we can no longer wvade the reality of what we have achieved by expedient distortion or deliberate simulacrum, in forms to suit transient tastes and economic imperatives. In fact, to raise these issues at all, one must love the past very much.

The improved re-creation is valued over the flawed original or shabby survival; it is considered more iconic, representative, ideal, and congenial. For most, it has become the reality.

The perfect fake or impeccable restoration lack the hallmarks of time and place. They deny imperfections, alterations, and accomodations; they wipe out all the incidents of life and change. The worn stone, the chaffed corner, the threshold low and uneven from many feet, that marks on walls and windows that carry the presence and message of remembered hands and eyes – all of those accumulated accidental, suggestive, and genuine imprints that imbue the artifact with its history and continuity, that have stayed with it in its conditioning passage through – or absent or erased… The objects and places simply do not resonate. They are mute. They are hollow history.

We have invented a new past according to a set of criteria designed to satisfy our own current needs and standards. In today’s fractured and deeply troubled society the need is for something that comforts, reassures, and entertains – a world where harsh truths can be suspended or forgotten for a benign and soothing, preferably distracting, substitute. The nostaligic simplification of feel-good, participatory, romanticized history are the popular and profitable answer. To reinforce the myth of more rigorous “interpretation” and accuracy, we use increasingly sophisticated tools of invention and support: the “scientific” research of chemistry, the computer, skilled domestic achaeology, the discipline and discoveries of material culture. The familiar, formulaic procedure defines the brand of preservation that has become a staple of today’s tourism, and is an increasingly importatn part of local economies, often the main support of small historic towns that have lost their business base to suburban malls.

This is called “extermination by museumfication.” – Baudrillard

Public policy in the country, particularly in Republican administrations, is to see expenditures for preservation as in a league with original sin. In the US, the public sector has no funds for urban investment, least of all for anything that involves appropriate planning and design. Private investment defines quality of life as some up-front luxury trim and a few recreational amenities thrown in by the developer. Public policy militates against anything better; private interests recognize only exploitative and potentially profitable flourishes.

More people have experiences Disney’s fantasy environments than have visited the places that have inspired them; the clean and cozy, abbreviated and adulterated versions of the Vieux Carre of New Orleans, divested of the distractions of dirt, crime, and ethnic diversity, are preferred to the city itself.

Disney’s Main Street USA evokes entertainment and thereby cancels out the meaning and value of history and form.

Duany-Plater-Zyberk have reduced the difination of community to a romantic social aesthetic emphasizing front porches, historic styles, and walking distances to stores and schools as an answer to suburban sprawl.

People of our mobile, family-fragmented society crave the kind of neighborhood community that disappeared with an extinct way of life. Modernist and neotraditionalits alike rely on aesthetic solutions to the social problems created by urban sprawl. Also like the modernist, who “created machine-age images of “rational” cities that, when actually built, often functioned miserably” (Herbert Muschamp), the appealing and simplistically pretty towns ignore the history and messages of reality for an idealized small-town reality. It is an architecture for the Prozac age.

Perhaps there is a different message nobody wants to hear.

We were told taht criticisms were irrelevant because the Disney product, good or bad, is clearly what people want. That begs the question of how people know what they want without options, including products and opportunities they have never seen nor experienced.

The fact that City Walk is witty and sophisticated has not kept it from being an instant success…restained understatement is not a component of today’s pop sensibility.

It is a truism of American business praactice that standards are raised only when competition demands it.

“I define wit and fantasy differently: as a freeing if the mind and spirit to explore unknown places, rather than a handshake from some unconvincingly costumes actors in a totally predictable and humdrum context.”

These places fill a need that is not about to go away. It is not that people are voting for these enterprises in positive terms; they are simply responding to the satifaction of a need in the most passive way.

The real now imitates the imitation. Towns are remaking themselves, and developments are casting themselves in the theme park image, given a stage-set presence from a look to a complete concept carried out to the last “authetic” touch.

This is not Hometown America; it is upscale Never-Never Land with pricetags in the millions to match. It is a new kind of developer house – a two-story atrium entrance, with the omnipresent Palladenoid window above double doors, is designed specifcially to impress. This grand entry leads to the Great Room, as it has been named by real estate sales offices, into which the kitchen-family room has evolved.In this large, all-purpose social and entertaining center, the latest equipment coexists with current decorating fashions. There is an exit to an outdoor deck (gone is he bugless screened porch of yesteryear) with a ritual gas or charcoal grill. A vestigial living room has become an extention of furnishings for “gracious living.” Cathedral ceilings soar, topped with skylights galore…

The gesture most commonly made is the wrong one: the commissioning of “celebrity” architects to produce “signature buildings,” themed trivia that only celebrates and compounds the degenerative process.

John Cheever, writing in 1978 of the New England fast-food stands that resemble the House of Seven Gables or Colonial Williamsburg, believes that these images are “not picked for their charm or their claim to a past; [but] because we are a homeless people looking at nightfall for a window in which a lamp burns, and an interior warmed by an open fire, where we will be fed and understood and loved…” Cheever sees it as an escape from the solitary and mundane that marks so much of the present human condition. “The rash of utterly false mansards, false, small-paned windows, and electric candlesticks is the heart’s cry of a lonely, lonely people.” Eco discerns another kind of emptiness in the rage for replicas. “A vacuum of memories,” he calls it, “a present without depth.”

There are generations for whom the mall is the substitute urban experience. Thus the ultimate absurdity is achieved: an edited and appropriated version of exactly those distinguishing, organic features of a city that characterizes it, reducced to a merchandizing theme – the city as sales promotion.

The American shopping center is not, as commonly believed, an indigenous, spontaneous expression of instinctive or intuitive cultural and consumer patterns, something as American as the lag, as natural and inevitable as free choice and free enterprise can make it…It is, of course, a one-sided con game, in which the investor, not the consumer, always wins. There are no real choices, either those of natural selection or of a free market. Both concept and design are calculated elements in a skillful and strategic marketing plan, specifically targeted and carefully replicated. Whether the complex takes the form of a converted landmark or glitzy new construction, the underlying principle is the same. Whatever the style, the result is rigidly and exclusionistically shaped by a carefully devised formula based on the essential kind and number of shops – department store anchors, specialty retail and restaurant chains – considered necessary for an established level of merchandizing profit. In every case, success or failure is measured strictly in terms of dollars per square foot.

The real estate, financing, and marketing expertise and the scale of investment required have limited the field to large developers with major resources, virtually eliminating competition. Established patterns are repeated rigidly and uniformly; no one tinkers with what works. The look, quality level, and general ambience are determined by meticulously researched consumer profiles that go beyond income analyss and buying habits to “psychographics,” which identify “aspirations as well as needs…identity as well as income.” Thism in turn, sets the nature of the stores, their merchandise and mix, number and location. The deadly sameness that marks these places is absolutely intentional. This fine-tuned calculation is repeated for simmilar areas, subject to adjustment as needed. Restrictive clauses in leases set and maintain guidelines that specify everything from design to rpices. This standardization of setting and goods is meant to guarantee a meticulously conceived and predictable profit formula and cash flow, as much as the better-publicized aim or acceptable uses and atmosphere.

But the more one experiences the “mall miracle,” and the more it replaces the downtowns and small communities that it destroys and makes obsolete, becoming progressively and increasingly shabby and empty, the clearer it becomes that something crucial and vital is missing. What is not so clear to the consuming public is that this something is exactly what has been deliberately eliminated from all the calculations by those who have control of them. THere has been little awareness, and less scrutiny, of the kind of controls exercised and what has been deliberately eliminated or lost.

Entrepreneurship has nothing to do with what Anerica wants; it is instead a function of alnd values, lending practices, leveraged real estate development, and conglomerate corporate ownership looking to the enormous bottom line.

The mall has become the substitute for the publuc square, minus our constitutional freedoms.

Our culture is a function of investment economics.

“Faux” fits. It is everywhere today, because it is so right for what is so wrong. Skewed in meaning, rather than indicating falseness, it gives a stamp of approval to the blantantly unreal, a suggestion of class to the frankly inferior. Using athe French faux makes the fake chic; it gives the phony cachet. It goes with the same state of mind that sees architecture as a gift wrap and accepts tarted-up history. Something real has been perverted, and something important has been abdicated. The result is faux architecture.

This state of mind has made possible the drearier aspects of postmodernism – pompier works with Tootsie Roll moldings and cartoon cartouches, cardboard cutouts and apaer thin pretensions. These buildings are not witty and learned references to anything; they are carcatures, stand-up jokes, ponderous one-liners.

We love those retro cottages and freshly minted Classical villsa to which everyone can instantly relate witout being of the manor and money–born; no matter that their expensively and consciously understated and overdone detail turns correctness into a too perfect grossness…We admire glib contectual solutions that are as unreal and irrelevant as their fake stonework trim and as permanently meaningful as the next building cycle. We tolerate sloppy free-fall history and surface novelties where paraphrase is considered an act of creative design and, supposedly, of irony and art. We accept the casual rip-off Punk Pallaidian skyscrapers with breathlessly overscaled, drop-dead lobbies above which everything else is shamelessly standard bottom-line. Games are being played, with marginally convincing results that are far less witty and wonderful than advertised. This theatrical pseudoarchitecture gets all the lines – praised, publicized, and generally accepted as the real thing.

We are being told that it has become more important for architecture to be than to serve, to send messages than to fill needs, to exist as an art object in itsef than to be integrated through its art into the rich and complex totality of life and use that makes this the most far-reaching art of all. From there it is not far to the revolutionary claim that architecture can completely reject its intrinsic nature as a social art because of the antisocial nature of the time.

Style as become divorced from both use and structure; style is its own excuse for being. Today form follows feeling. Desire was the suppressed word for both the Victorian and the modernist; today desire, not utility, dictates design. Style responds to a different purpose and vision. Style is dream, inventionm wish fulfillment. “Appropriate” is in the eye and mind of the creator and/or beholder, and the definaition changes with the dream… Identity is a product of the mood and the moment; the persona is the clothes that hang in the closet.

History used like wallpaper trashes both history and architecture.

In spite of their size, these structures hardly command a second glance. There is something so flat, so lacking in density and conviction that their offensiveness virtually evaporates; they fail even at being seriously awful.

To design without the challenge and discipline of solving real problems is to go beyond trivialty to irrelevance. To speak of background buildings vs. signature buildings turns context into a visual game, instead of an accomodation with history and society’ it reduces the city to absurdity.

Only the outrageous gets attention today, and the outrageous in architecture has a limited usefullness. Without the accelerated shock apeal that keeps other art forms in the public eye, the audience for innovative buildings, or for buildings as an art form, consists largely of professionals or patrons; it barely reverberates with the general public. The new architecture may be the best kept secret in the arts.

Art never stands still.

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03/08/10 @ 08:38:55 pm, Categories: My Travels, 751 words  

Tiny JPG Theatre presents…

Mercer & Fonthill Museums

Mercer Museum History
By 1897 handmade objects were being discarded in favor of new machine-made goods. Historian and archaeologist Henry Mercer (1856-1930) recognized the need to collect and preserve the outmoded material of daily life in America before it was swept away by the Industrial Revolution. Mercer gathered almost 30,000 items ranging from hand tools to horse-drawn vehicles and assembled this encyclopedic collection in a system of his own devising. To enhance the collection’s educational value, and to share it with the public, Mercer decided to design and build a museum to display the artifacts.

Redware exhibit In 1916, Mercer erected a 6-story concrete castle. The towering central atrium of the Museum was used to hang the largest objects such as a whale boat, stage coach and Conestoga wagon. On each level surrounding the court, smaller exhibits were installed in a warren of alcoves, niches and rooms according to Mercer’s classifications – healing arts, tinsmithing, dairying, illumination and so on. The end result of the building is a unique interior that is both logical and provocative. It requires the visitor to view objects in a new way.

As gifts to the Bucks County Historical Society, the collection and building were maintained by the trustees without benefit of professional staff until 1971. With a resurgence of interest in early American crafts, an ambitious program to develop and promote the Mercer Museum as an institution of national significance was then undertaken. The Museum has made major advances in collections management and care, exhibitions and interpretation bringing the Museum in line with contemporary standards while, at the same time, respecting the historical integrity of the site. In 1985, the Mercer Museum was recognized as a National Historic Landmark and achieved subsequent accreditation by the American Association of Museums in 2005.

Family viewing stoveplate collection The Board of Trustees successfully completed a Capital Campaign in 1994 to address restoration needs. The Museum announced in October 2006 a $10M Capital Campaign for expanded exhibit and program space. Mercer’s collection and museum are enjoyed annually by more than 65,000 visitors from around the world. The collection has grown to some 40,000 objects. Among museum professionals, technology scholars, and tool collectors, the collection is considered to be the most complete of its kind in America. Interactive programs provide insights into early American history in enjoyable and educational ways, and changing exhibits provide a reason for visitors to return.

Fonthill History
Built between 1908-1912, Fonthill was the home of Henry Chapman Mercer (1856-1930). Archaeologist, anthropologist, ceramist, scholar and antiquarian, Mercer built Fonthill both as his home and as a showplace for his collection of tiles and prints. The first of three Mercer buildings in Doylestown, Fonthill served as a showplace for Mercer’s famed Moravian tiles that were produced during the American Arts & Crafts Movement. Designed by Mercer, the building is an eclectic mix of Medieval, Gothic, and Byzantine architectural styles, and is significant as an early example of poured reinforced concrete.

Upon his death in 1930, Mercer left his concrete “Castle for the New World” in trust as a museum of decorative tiles and prints. He gave life rights to Fonthill to his housekeeper and her husband, Laura and Frank Swain. In accordance with Mercer’s Will, Mrs. Swain resided in the house and conducted occasional tours until her death in 1975. Upon her death, the Trustees of the Mercer Fonthill Museum determined to operate Fonthill as a historic house museum and contracted with the Bucks County Historical Society to provide professional care and management. In 1990, the Bucks County Orphans court appointed the Trustees of the Bucks County Historical Society as the permanent Trustees of the Mercer Fonthill Museum thus solidifying the commitment to professionalism at the site. Fonthill Museum remains a separate legal entity from the Historical Society.

From 1976 to the present, Fonthill has evolved into a unique professional museum that provides a full range of museum programs related to Mercer and his collections while maintaining a strong commitment to the preservation and conservation of the building and its collections. In 1985, Fonthill was designated a National Historic Landmark; the site achieved subsequent accreditation by the American Association of Museums in 2005. Today, Fonthill attracts over 30,000 visitors annually from nearly every state and more than 35 foreign countries. It has been featured in numerous print and electronic media including the Arts & Entertainment Network’s popular “America’s Castles” series. Fonthill is one of the original associate sites of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios program.

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03/08/10 @ 08:30:34 pm, Categories: My Travels, 379 words  

Olana is the Persian-style home of fames Hudson River School painter, Frederic Church.

Scroll to the bottom of this page to see 360 views of the Vestibule, the Great Hall, the Dining Room, and the Sitting Room.

History of the House
When Frederic Church purchased the property for Olana in 1860, he hired architect Richard Morris Hunt (who was later to build several of the “cottages” in Newport, R.I.) to design a small house in which he could raise a family. Called “Cosy Cottage", the house was occupied in the early summer of 1861. Soon Church and his wife had two children filling Cosy Cottage, but, tragically, both children died of diphtheria in 1865.

In 1867 Church purchased an additional 18 acres at the top of the hill overlooking his property. Before building his new house, he and Isabel and their infant son Frederic Joseph left for an extended tour of Europe and the Middle East.

Frederic and Isabel Church, impressed by the architecture they saw in cities like Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus, envisioned a home at Olana that incorporated Middle Eastern elements and designs. Drawings by Richard Morris Hunt document that Church considerd using him as an architect, but ultimately decided on Calvert Vaux. Church spent the next two years working with Vaux designing and building a home that would be, as he called it “Persian, adapted to the Occident”

In the fall of 1872, Church and Isabel and their growing family of children moved into the second story of the new house while Church continued to decorate the ground floor. He designed stencils and chose the colors with which to decorate the walls and ceilings. Eclectic furnishings soon filled the house, gathered from NYC and abroad, and eventually, from the Church family home in Hartford, Connecticut. Frederic even designed a few pieces of furniture. The couple filled the house with thousands of objects meant to direct the attention to the great civilizations of the past.

Church continued to work on the house for much of the rest of his life. In 1885 he began a campaign to repair and improve the house, and in 1888, began the studio wing, with guest rooms and a glassed- in observation room in the tower. By 1891, the house was essentially complete, looking much as it does today.

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03/05/10 @ 11:06:25 pm, Categories: Green Design, Vernacular, 200 words  

Some of the oldest buildings on the planet are made of earth. currently it is estimated that one half of the world’s population - approximately three billion people on six continents - lives or works in buildings constructed of earth.

Earth is a 100% eco-friendly building material. it is neither manufactured nor transported.
a wall made from raw earth serves as a natural air conditioner, being warm in winter and cool in summer. When the building is demolished, the earth returns to the soil and can be recycled indefinitely.

Largely shunned since the arrival of its close cousin ‘concrete’ in the 1950s, earth is now back in fashion as its ecological and aesthetic benefits attract the attention of an increasing numbers of contemporary architects and eco-builders. industrial sectors devoted to earthen building are currently emerging as this sustainable material wins over.

The misconceptions associated with earth architecture is that many assume it’s only used for housing in poor rural areas - but there are examples of airports, embassies, hospitals, museums, and factories that are made of earth. current research efforts are focused on increasing its resistance and processing speed in order to make it a modern and competitive material.

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03/05/10 @ 04:38:55 pm, Categories: Architects, Green Design, Videos, I love this building, Building, 14 words  

Check out Nader Khalili’s super adobe Eco-Dome!

Learn more at Cal-Earth.

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03/05/10 @ 03:55:38 pm, Categories: Green Design, Videos, I love this building, Vernacular, Building, 814 words  

I got this from Design Boom.

Hand-built in four months by architects, local craftsmen, pupils, parents and teachers, this primary school in rudrapur, a village in north west bangladesh, uses traditional methods and materials of construction but adapts them in new ways. The architects, Anna Aeringer from Austria and Eike Roswag from Germany, made every effort to engage the skills of local craftsmen, helping them refine processes and learn new techniques that they could then use to improve the general standard of rural housing.

Sunlight and ventilation can be regulated through the use of shutters.

In Rudrapur, the traditional local materials are bamboo for constructions and earth for walls and foundations, straw for the roofs and jute rope for lashing constructions.

Earthbound materials such as loam and straw are combined with lighter elements like bamboo sticks and nylon lashing to create a environmentally sustainable foundation.

Thick walls assure a comfortable climate on the ground floor of the building.

The philosophy of METI (modern education and training institute) is learning with joy. The teachers help the children to develop their own potential and use it in a creative and responsible way. The building reflects these ideas through its materials, techniques and architectural design.

The design solution used in this rural town may not be replicable in other parts of the Islamic world as local conditions vary. however, new design solutions can emerge from an in-depth knowledge of the local context and new ways of building. This provides a fresh and hopeful model for sustainable building globally. The final result of this heroic volunteer effort is a building that creates beautiful, meaningful and humane collective spaces for learning which enrich the lives of the children it serves.

The construction method used is a historical earth building technique similar to cob-walling which is ideal for ‘self building’. The wet earth is mixed with straw and applied to the wall in layers. Each layer is approximately 50-70 cm high, and after a couple of days drying, it is trimmed on the sides with a sharp spade to obtain a regular flat wall surface.

After a second drying period, a further layer can be added. the earth in this region is well-suited for such construction and the stability of the mixture was improved by adding rice, straw and jute.

Earth construction: the most important technical improvement in comparison to traditional buildings is the introduction of a damp proof course and a brick foundation. The traditional building technique (which uses very wet earth) has been replaced by the ‘weller’ technique that is quite similar to the traditional one.

The school building was built by experts and volunteers from Germany and Austria along with craftsmen, teachers, parents and students from Bangladesh over the period of September to December 2005.

The aim of the project is to improve existing building techniques, to contribute to sustainability by utilising local materials and labour and to strengthen regional identity.

The ceiling consists of three layers of bamboo poles arranged perpendicularly to one another with bamboo boarding and an earth filling as the surface of the floor. The same construction in a modified form can be used for general residential buildings.

Society in Bangladesh is changing. Although it is still strongly rooted in agriculture, people are getting more educated - privacy and individuality are gaining more importance.

A house is no longer just a shelter to store things or to sleep in at night. It has evolved to becoming more defined as a home.

METI school in Rudrapur Dinajpur, Bangladesh
Built area: 325 m2
Cost: $ 22,835

Commission: January 2004
Design: March 2004 - August 2005
Construction: September 2005 - December 2005
Occupancy: December 2005

Client: Dipshikha/ METI non-formal education, training and research society for village development

Design and concept: Anna Heringer

Technical, detailed planning and realisation: Anna Heringer and Eike Roswag

Anna Heringer (b. 1977) studied architecture at Linz University of the Arts, Austria. Since 2004 she has held a lecture there, and is project manager at BASE - habitat/architektur konzepte, Linz University of the Arts. In 2006 she began her doctoral studies at Munich Technical University, on strategies for sustainable building in Northern Bangladesh.

She is vice chairwoman of Shanti, a German-Bangladeshi partnership founded in 1983, with the aim of arranging exchange programs such as the transfer of professional volunteers.

Eike Roswag (b. 1969) completed his architectural studies at Berlin Technical University in 2000, after which he took on freelance architectural work and consultancies. In 2003, he joined ZRS Architects and Engineers to plan and build a variety of projects using earth as a building material. In 2006, he joined the staff of Berlin Technical University and founded Roswag & Jankowski Architects Partnership.

Founded in 1978, Dipshikha - informal education, training and research society for village
development is a Bangladeshi development organization set up to encourage the independence
of communities in rural Bangladesh through sustainable development.

The METI school won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2007

All images © Kurt Hörbst

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03/05/10 @ 02:57:06 pm, Categories: Architects, Green Design, Videos, I love this building, 8 words  

Learn more at Cal-Earth.

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03/05/10 @ 01:40:35 pm, Categories: Green Design, Videos, I love this building, Vernacular, 195 words  

Let us bow our heads and give thanks to In the Name of Good Architecture…

Thank you, Facebook Profile “In the Name of Good Architecture,” for gracing my life daily with awesome examples of vernacular architecture. You are more highly regarded in my NewsFeed than all of those stupid FarmVille requests that I delete. Amen.

Here’s the latest: a video of three non-professionals building a bamboo and thatch house in like a day. “Non-professional” is my new favorite hyphenated word because it implies a lack of student loan debt. Which is sexy. And smart. A kind of smart that they don’t teach you in school. But I digress.

Here’s the video!

I know, you want more videos of bambook structures. Me too. Here you go:

Time-lapse photography makes it awesomer:

A class builds a bamboo + clay house:

Time-lapse construction of a bamboo plantation:

A living bamboo house in Hawaii, fun facts on the superiority of bamboo, and pre-fab bamboo houses:

People in Ghana building a bamboo dome:

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03/03/10 @ 06:00:35 pm, Categories: Building, 924 words  

Here’s how you can save 30% to 40% when building your own home…for just $17.95. Which is less than a week’s worth of Starbucks.

• Save between 30% to 40% of the cost of a new home by contracting it yourself without having to do any of the hands-on work. Save even more if you plan to do a few jobs yourself.
• Build your own home without quitting your job. Even with a full time job elsewhere, you can contract your own home successfully!
• Choose a home design that saves you the most money without sacrificing your “must have” features. Learn the secrets of effective home design that can you save thousands on the same size home.
• Find the best location to build your home. Discover the major land traps and how to avoid them.
• Finance your building project to maximize your profit potential. Learn the strategies for getting lenders to give you construction and permanent financing.
• Create a solid estimate of how much your home will cost. This critical step can save you thousands or cost you thousands if not done right!
• Find the best quality subcontractors and learn how to get them to do what you want.
• How to buy materials at the best possible price. Learn the secrets and tricks that builders know.
• Learn all the construction terminology you need to know to understand the process and talk effectively with bankers, subcontractors and suppliers.
• How to develop a construction management system to keep your project on time and on budget.

Learn More

Sometimes you decide to take on a challenge and your life changes profoundly as a result. Deciding to build your own home is one of those life-changing challenges.

Your home is not just a “roof over your head” but an expression of your lifestyle, your personality, your hopes and dreams, and even your financial position and security in the world. By building your own home, you are taking control of two of the most fundamental aspects of life — your shelter and your financial well-being.

Why let someone else make critical decisions and choices about one of the most important emotional AND financial possessions in your life—your home? With a little knowledge and some perseverance, YOU CAN build your own home, save substantial money, and increase your own net worth – essentially creating a bank account for your future!

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you want to save up to 40 percent of the cost a builder would charge?
• Do you want to make ALL of the decisions about your new home?
• Do you want to take control of your financial future?
• Do you want to gain valuable knowledge and skills?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then my book, The Ultimate Guide to Contracting Your Own Home: Save 30 to 40 Percent on the Cost of Your New Home, tells you exactly how.

Why listen to me? I’ve built more than 200 custom homes for clients and for my family over the past 30 plus years (I started my career as a construction superintendent for a custom home builder in 1977) and I’ve learned the hard way what to do, and just as importantly, what NOT to do. And I’ve gotten good at it…very good. In fact, I’ve turned my own personal homes into a wealth building machine of sorts, but that’s another topic altogether that you’ll learn about in a bonus free gift when you buy the book.

I’m not going to pretend that building your own home is the easiest thing you will ever do, but I do know that it will be one of the most satisfying and rewarding accomplishments you will ever achieve. So, if you are ready to take control of your own home and your own financial future, my book will teach you everything you need to know.

In short, the book condenses my 30 years of professional building experience into an industry insider’s guide detailing the strategies, procedures, and thinking that builders live by. It’s a concise system for building your own home that I’ve employed over and over again and have made substantial money as a result.

Even if you are just in the thinking stage about building or remodeling your home, this book is the best investment you can make. You’ll gain a “must have” insider’s knowledge and an action plan that could change your life forever. The book’s price of $17.95 is small amount to pay for something that could potentially make such a positive impact on the way you live and your financial security as well! For the cost of going out to lunch, you might just discover how to change your entire way of life!

Maybe you’re thinking that I’m being overly dramatic, but I’m really not. Building my own
personal homes over the years (not to mention the 200+ I’ve built for others) has created a wonderful way of life for my family and me and I know it can for you too! There is nothing more rewarding than watching a home that you’ve planned come to life. The feeling is truly powerful.

I’ve received some wonderful compliments over the years from people who have asked me to help them build their own homes (see some of their comments on the sidebar). In fact that’s why I decided to write this book. I wanted to help other people achieve the same goals and dreams that I have. I want to add you to that list as well! I look forward to learing from you as you embark on this exciting and lucrative journey!

Learn More

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03/01/10 @ 11:20:20 am, Categories: News, 409 words  

Some of you know that Janine Benyus is one of my heroes, and that her book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature
was one of the things that helped me make the leap from my undergraduate degree in microbiology to a career in architecture.

So check this out! Scientists have made fake leaves that are capable of photosynthesis!!!

(NaturalNews) Researchers from Imperial College London have launched a £1 million ($1.6 million) study to create what they call an “artificial leaf,” mimicking the process of photosynthesis that allows plants to generate energy from the sun.

Plants use solar radiation to power a chemical reaction that converts water and carbon dioxide into sugar. Part of this reaction entails splitting water molecules into their component hydrogen and oxygen parts, something that remains very expensive using modern technology.

Photosynthesis is so efficient, however, that scientists estimate that it could meet all the Earth’s power needs for a year from merely an hour of sunlight. An artificial photosynthesis system that used only 10 percent of the light hitting it could meet all global energy needs if it covered only 0.16 percent of the Earth’s surface area (about 315,000 square miles).

“We know that plants have already evolved to do it and we know that, fundamentally, it’s a workable process on a large scale,” said John Loughhead of the UK Energy Research Center. “Ultimately, the only sustainable form of energy we’ve got is the sun. From a strategic viewpoint, you have to think this looks really interesting because we know we’re starting from a base of feasibility.”

In contrast to other alternative energy sources such as solar panels or windmills, which produce electricity directly, the Imperial College researchers want to use photosynthesis to produce fuels – either hydrogen for fuel cells, or sugars for biofuel engines. Even though the burning of these fuels would still produce carbon dioxide, the researchers believe it would be balanced out by the carbon dioxide that the artificial leaf removed from the air to make the fuel in the first place.

As one of their first steps, researchers are working on an artificial copy of the enzyme, photosystem 2, that plants use to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

“It doesn’t mean that you try to build exactly what the leaf has,” researcher James Barber said. “Leonardo da Vinci tried to design flying machines with feathers that flapped up and down. But in the end we built 747s and Airbus 380s, completely different to a bird.”

Source

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