Green Architecture | selophane.blog

The curious case of the LEED lawsuit

Feb 152011

I’ve seen a lot of tweets lately about the LEED lawsuit. While I can’t speak to the veracity of the lawsuit’s claims I can and will weigh in on my own personal opinion of LEED and the USGBC.

I think LEED was incredibly important. It was a first step towards a national shift in the way developers, governments and commercial clients think about buildings and performance. Without LEED we might still be living in a world where green and white roofs would still be found mostly in Europe, where dual flush toilets and waterless urinals would be a curiosity found at Epcot but no where else in the USA, and where post-consumer recycled content percentages would still be found only on paper and not listed proudly on the resource webpage for carpets and other finishes. With all of that said, I think we have outgrown LEED.

Solar Decathlon

Architectural thought, DC, Green Architecture 2 Responses »

Oct 162009

Today I headed down to the Solar Decathlon on the National Mall. While there I was able to tour 15 of the 20 homes. I was happy to see that the Mall was crowded with people braving the wet and cold to visit these houses, even if that meant that the lines for some of the more award winning homes (like Germany and California) were so long that I chose to see 8 other houses instead of trying to get into them. These houses all had innovative design solutions to create energy efficient and responsible homes. Interestingly enough, most of the homes used off the rack products, but just assembled them in innovative ways. Where I found the homes to be lacking was that most of them did not fully address their sites. Many of the homes did not interact with the portions of their lots that faced away from the main walk-way (those on the North were predominantly South focused, and those on the south were mainly North focused). Now I know a lot of this had to do with strategic window placement, but for homes which were little more than 15′x50′ rectangles it felt like opportunities to fully [...]

LEED, the trials and tribulations of the Green Revolution

Concerning the Professional, Green Architecture, News 1 Response »

Nov 182008

I just finished reading an article on the Wall Street Journal’s site about the green building movement and the practical issues faced with training professionals and navigating an unstable and untested market. As a design profesisonal who keeps putting off his LEED exam in favor of other equally worthy endeavors, this article hit home. The problem with green building right now is that the market is so new and untested both for professionals and for the products. The article describes a situation similar to one I recently faced at work. An architect specified a Green product that ended up not being reliably available which caused delays and impacted budget. In the end litigation was reached. Fortunately, in my situation we were able to determine that the LEED point was unattainable even with the specified product, and that we were well within our target status (silver) so a non-LEED approved solution was found which allowed the budget and schedule not to be impacted. This type of problem is rare in proven markets, when was the last time you heard that concrete or brick was not available? And when they are not, an alternative product usually exists and can be used without [...]

Adaptively reused Circuit Cities, here we come!

Architectural thought, Blog Management, Green Architecture, New Buildings, New Orleans, News, Uncategorized, Urban Planning No Responses »

Nov 172008

With the recent closing of many of the area’s Circuit City stores and the bleak financial forecast, this Sunday’s Washington Post article about what to do with big box stores after they close down, seemed to be fortuitously timed to impact the local planning discourse. For this article, the Post assembled a collection of local architects and artists, such as Darrel Rippeteau, Roger K. Lewis, Esocoff & Associates, et al., and asked them how they would reuse a big-box store. The graphics in this article are intriguing and open an sub/urban planning discussion on what to do with the trappings of early twenty-first century American development once this business model has changed. The proposals include luxury housing, gardens, vineyards, and other adaptive reuse measures. This is all green and good, but I have to question the safety and cost of reusing these big box stores. Like fast food franchises, big box stores are not built to last. They are not constructed with any concept of their permanence, instead they are meant to go up quick and cheap and come down the same way when the new mega-ultra-super mart opens around the corner. The advantage of reusing old warehouses and factories [...]

From Highboy to Turbine

Architectural thought, Green Architecture, New Buildings, News 1 Response »

Nov 032008

So it looks like Dubai is approaching its Po-Mo phase, Philip Johnson beware!

In an almost deferential move, there is a new building slated for construction that looks like a Turbine (see this post at Inhabitat). Instead of going the Masdar route and building a building that generates its power, this building just refers to the shape of turbines as a way of co-opting the green building trend and making it a design statement. In place of power generation, the “turbine” will generate spectacular views of the desert mirage that is Dubai for the dinners in its floating restaurant.

An Urban Plan for a New New Orleans

Architectural thought, Critical Regionalism, Green Architecture, New Orleans, Urban Planning No Responses »

Oct 022008

I submitted the op-ed below to the editorial desk of the New Orleans Times Picayune two weeks ago. I have not received any response to my inquiries, so I assume that they are not interested; if that changes I may have to remove this post. In any case, I would like to present my solution for a sustainable redevelopment of New Orleans: An urban plan for a new New Orleans. Although New Orleans avoided GustavÊ¼s wrath, we need to learn as much as we did the hard way from Katrina. Instead of rebuilding the city and the levees as they were, we need to make it so that New Orleans will never worry about a hurricane again. New Orleans has had a past fraught with disasters: twice ï¬res wiped out the bulk of the French and Spanish colonial city and there have been numerous ï¬‚oods and levee breaks which have altered the cityÊ¼s shape.Â Over the last century we believed that we had bent nature to our will by controlling the course of the Mississippi River and preventing the annual ï¬‚ood.Â At the same time developers drained the surrounding swamps to make new low-lying easily ï¬‚ooded subdivisions.Â The damage caused [...]

Articles of Interest

Architectural thought, Concerning the Professional, Green Architecture, New Buildings, News, Urban Planning No Responses »

Aug 192008

Here are some links to articles that have peaked my interest in the last few days: ‘Can of ham’ to rival Foster’s Gherkin – Building What is it with Londoners and buildings that look like food? I am waiting for the Yorkshire pudding building, or the spotted dick building. FreshWater House by Chenchow Little Architects | CoolBoomThis is a nice little piece of critical regionalism. The shutter walls are really genius way of bringing operable shutters to a contemporary design style. In addition the bundle of sticks element of the architecture thoroughly responds to the beach setting. 19th century Western town layout: myth vs reality | Cyburbia – urban planning communityCyburbia has an interesting discussion on the depiction of frontier/western towns in cinema and in real life. I find the discussion of early planning and zoning and false fronts very interesting. AIA Deconstructs Green-Building Standards| News | Architectural RecordArchitectural Record has an article about the AIA’s analysis of three different green building standards: LEED 2.2, Green Globes, and SBTool 07.

Green Buildings

Green Architecture, News No Responses »

Aug 102008

Newsweek has an interview with William McDonough, Q&A: The Future of Green Buildings | Newsweek Future Of Energy | Newsweek.com, which focuses on his ideas about the green building movement and the direction architecture is taking. For those versed in Green Architecture, there really is nothing new in this article, but for the general public this can serve as a nice introduction to some of the standard green concepts such as “cradle to cradle design”, densification, green roofs and renewable energy.

Bio in Brief

I am a licensed Architect in Virginia and DC. I have ived in the DC area since 2005 and have my own Architecture and Design firm, studioSML, llc.
Disclaimer:

This blog contains statements that are the personal viewpoint of the author. It is not sanctioned by nor represent the opinions or ideals of any current or former employer. Support for or rejection of any product, person, law, company, or business does not constitute endorsement or a legally qualified opinion. Images of work designed by and built by any current or former employer are used to portray the author's involvement with said project and should not be constituted as the author having intellectual or copy rights to said projects.
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