Deadtree Design - architectural designer - residential and commercial

The Bigger Picture

The kind of thinking that has gotten us into this situation is not the kind of thinking that will get us out of it.

_Albert Einstein

The Dead Tree Scrolls

Better Buildings are Coming (but don't hold your breath).

Light transmitting masonry units; ground source heat pumps; labor saving building techniques: Many advances in building science and manufacturing are available right now . But so far, the new developments have lacked the necessary incentives for penetrating mainstream markets - though not for lack of interest. What I see as the biggest obstacle to such progress is the absence of a universal rating system for the houses we build and buy.

Sure, there are Energy Star Qualified Homes, LEED for Homes and the National Green Building Standard (NGBS), along with federal, state, and local tax credits. But these are all voluntary, relying on conscientious builders and homeowners to be current with changes in materials, products and technologies and to take the initiative in trying to implement them..

It's funny to think that we can easily compare the yellow sticker price of an eight hundred dollar refrigerator against its anticipated energy use in order to assess long-term value, but have no such standard of comparison for a $250.000 house. Building codes dictate minimum energy standards but the difference between minimum and optimum represents a hidden cost to the buyer and relatively poor performance, usually for the life of the home.

Those of us who follow green building technologies see terms tossed around like sustainability, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) - sometimes recklessly, even deceptively. Another term, greenwash, is a sort of catch-all for those kind of practices, often giving the public the impression that building science is just another marketing gimmick. Sometimes it is, but there's a lot more to the picture.

As a whole, a building's energy performance, life cycle considerations (cost vs longevity) and reduced impact on limited resources, make up the bulk of the innovation in the industry over the last few decades. We've just been slow to catch on - which might explain a lot of the hype and the absence of any real reform. But for the most part, what is pushing the industry toward these advances has had more to do with consumer demand than marketing.

I've often had clients express a desire for optimal thermal performance, for example, only to abandon the goal when they discover how much it would add to the initial cost of the house. When it comes to a choice between better insulation and say, hardwood floors, the floors win every time. Back to the refrigerator example; if the consumer buys a model that costs less now while knowing that with electricity use it will end up costing more in the long run, that's his or her choice. One can quickly put a dollar figure on it and make a decision.

For purchasing houses there are no such objective comparisons. With a custom home design, customers can optionally request energy analysis that will reveal the cost of heating or cooling of their home at current utility rates over a given period of time and make decisions accordingly. Unfortunately, doing this also costs more initially and is seldom done, apart from being a requirement of one of the certification programs mentioned previously. My observation is that the people who go the LEED type route generally have fewer budget constraints to worry about than the rest of us, meaning that, all else being equal, those that can least afford it will generally pay the most in the long run.

If new production homes had a sticker on them (doesn't have to be yellow) showing an independent rating system for long-term cost of ownership like the ones on cars and appliances, home buyers could make better decisions. For example, if it could easily be determined that a large house carried with it a lot of burdensome utility expense each month, the shoppers might decide they didn't really need all that space and look instead to something smaller and more efficient. Or, looking at ratings for materials used in a house, the consumer might look for products that cost a little more but last much longer.

Given the power to choose, homeowners will not only save money but reduce energy demands, inevitably steering the industry toward making better buildings and putting comparisons for custom home design on a equal footing with production homes.

Outside The Box.

With all the left-brain exercise we got in the previous section, it might be fun to switch lobes for a while and look at why we want to build or buy the thing in the first place. For starters, we'll assume that our building's raison d'être is always going to be functional ease, comfort and enjoyment, and not energy conservation, which usually comes in at best, a distant second. Very few of us want to base a design purely on utility or some rigid, esoteric ideal.

Okay, I'm stating the obvious. But you wouldn't know it to look a some buildings. There are technocrats in all building-related fields that will tell you that a six-sided box is the cheapest thing to build and, apart from the sphere, the most energy efficient (true). Others will tell you it is the minimalist ideal and that simplicity unclutters and frees the mind (arguably true). Still others seem to have trouble imagining anything else.

For those in the latter category I would suggest trailer homes and their offspring: manufactured homes. For modern architecture, sure, a simple structure removes interior bearing walls and makes for flexible floor plans with clean, open spaces that do not detract from exterior views or interior furnishings. The basic box? Absolutely. If you are simply wanting to live as cheaply as possible, a simple box simply can't be beat.

Living in a building that looks and feels like a polar research lab dropped in by a helicopter, however - or attempting to live in an impossibly clean (except in photographs) Star Trek vision of otherworldly, blissful bodily separation from the unnatural world - has its proponents. But we're going to annoy them all by following a few right-brain-ish (and Wright-ish) roots in search of homes that not only consider, but celebrate their surroundings. First though, we need a dash of history:

Briefly, the concept of organic architecture originated with architect Louis Sullivan back around the turn of the (previous) century, while the term was later coined and branded by Frank Lloyd Wright, who had mentored under Sullivan. Scores of architects and scholars that followed have continued to further refine and articulate what began as a kind of fuzzy, right-brain notion. But, since we're still mostly in that lobe, the idea is what we will focus on.

Unfortunately, the idea of organic architecture was really nothing new. It just seemed fresh and new to a relatively new country composed of mostly transplanted Western Europeans in the latter part of the 19th century. A new continent with still abundant natural resources needed its own architectural identity and organic architecture fit the bill. Contemporary architect, Eric Corey Freed beautifully points to the distinction, both then and now:

"Using Nature as our basis for design, a building or design must grow, as Nature grows, from the inside out. Most architects design their buildings as a shell and force their way inside. Nature grows from the idea of a seed and reaches out to its surroundings. A building thus, is akin to an organism and mirrors the beauty and complexity of Nature."

A cynic might conclude that the movement's originators, instead of having a new idea, may have simply "ceased to have an old idea" - and that, seeking inspiration in the new world, one had merely to take a sojourn to the wilderness to rediscover nature and apply it. It may have also occurred to them to look back to the vanquished American Indian or beyond, to imagine a span of a million or more years of human history and a time when "declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal" was the obvious and inescapable norm.

Say what you will about a fuzzy idea becoming a philosophy and an institution with rules and different schools with untold numbers of doctoral theses, leading to careers as disciples of disciples, each trying to carve out their own little niche. Say the idea is as old as art - no matter; the modern version of organic architecture has deepened our awareness of how our buildings can reflect and respond to ourselves and to the natural world.

Revolving around a respect for materials and the integration of the site, structure and spaces into a coherent whole, the idea is as fresh and adaptable in its interpretation for each individual today as it is to each new generation. Emerging technologies become assimilated, but rather than displace core principles, they enhance and offer new opportunities. As the antithesis of an imposed style, our building is always related to its place and time. It will continue to reflect an idea, and an ideal, that is seemingly as inexhaustible as nature itself.

The box, as it turns out, has developed some connections.

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