Dwell and Worldchanging, this is all your fault...

In finally finding a pathway into the literature on sustainable architecture, I am realizing just how doomed my original thesis idea was!

I had originally thought to argue, using LH as an example, that the modernist, "technocist supremancy," as Simon Guy put it, misses out on other, better ways of approaching green architecture. Fundamental to this endeavor was first proving that there WERE other aspects founded on alternative philosophies, then defining what they were, and then seeing if they were "better."

2 problems that I now realize are going to kill this endeavor:

1) Turns out these alternative perspectives are already thoroughly acknowledged in the academic literature (if not in Dwell magazine) and have already been sought out and well-defined using various models. (see Journal of Architectural Education Vol 54 issue 3, pp149-8.) so to continue to pursue this vein of inquiry would be futile, as well as intentionally ignorant

2) I cannot write about whether something is BETTER because it would take years of research to even define what "better" means, as there are multiple viewpoints competing. This is in addition to the obvious issue that making value judgments belies the fact that I am not being an objective researcher. And I've already been warned from the beginning of writing a "manifesto."

So now there's the slight possibility that I will write a redundant , pointless thesis owing to the sheer fact that I did not known enough about the topic to start out on the right foot. The point I had originally thought to prove shows that I really had no idea what sustainable architecture was about, besides what little shallow tidbits I had managed to glean from the popular media, which is usually how one first finds out about these things.

So what now?

Help!

Moore & Engstrom on green building codes

The more I read, the more I feel that my outline is insufficient and that my topic, even, is too restrictive (and that I'm rapidly running out of time). At this point, looking back, I must admit that writing this thesis has been a bit of a blind stumble through unfamiliar territory. Because only now have I found some actual critical literature about sustainable architecture itself! (And not just books about nature, environmentalism, economics, history, etc. or pretty coffee-table compilations of spectacular one-offs.)

At this point I'm also wrestling with the gradual realization that my thesis may well fail because it took me this long to get to a point that despite all the hard work I put in, I should have gotten to months ago..

But I will at least keep going.. and if my outline has to take a fourth beating, so be it...

----------

Anyway, I finally managed to get my hands on a book called "Sustainable Architectures: Cultures and Natures in North America." It is a collection of articles that contribute to the central idea that sustainable architecture is more a symphony of different discourses and understandings than a single unified ideology stemming from a well-defined practice. (Like I said, I should have reached this point in understanding much earlier, had I known what to read.)

Among these articles, I found one titled "The social construction of 'green building' codes" particularly insightful.

The authors use a categorical analysis of several building codes and standards in the US to argue that the idea of "green architecture" is comprised of not one but several competing, sometimes opposed ideologies stemming from local discourses. They further conclude that that these differing ideologies are not necessarily tied to the type of organization (government, NGO, industry) drafting the codes.

Good points/quotes:
- "Conflicting standards tend to frame problems and propose solutions in ways that define opposing 'goods.' All manufacturing standards are, in this view, socially constructed agreements that favour a particular set of actors because they contain the interests of the standard-makers." (52)

- The article also suggests that standardization is a sign of modernisation (read: cars, industrial processes, even going back to Le Corbu's interest in Greek temples...), so that the prevalence of green building codes today are a continuing relic of modernization. (Can use this to link LH's compliance to LEED with the interests of the Modernist school of thought) (52)

- Moore & Engstrom argue that sustainability can be viewed as the fusion of the (anthropocentric) public health and (ecocentric) environmental protection movement. Historically in America, the 2 were separate and even saw each other as the opposition (former emerged from Left, latte from the Right - p56). The link between environmental quality and human health was not explicitly linked until sustainability discourse came to the fore in 1980s, which is fairly recent. (Thus sustainability can be seen as a more holistic way of tackling the same issues, or as a compromise between various opposing interests.)

- However it's interesting to note that environmental quality had been linked to human health as early as 1840s in ideas of Edwin Chadwick in England. Then it was known as "the sanitary idea." (54) But then, it was in the hands of the ruling body, and has been criticized by writers such as Michel Foucault of being "little more than the illegitimate mechanisms of the modern bureaucratic state through which social deviancy might be eradicated." (bottom of 54)

- "By arguing that the concept of sustainable development can be understood as the fusion of the public health and environmental preservation movememnts, we do not mean to suggest that there is a single logic or set of ideas associated with the concept. Rather, we will argue two points in this section. First that 'sustainability' has become an umbrella for a number of competing social values and second, that contrary to an idealised model of sustainability in which competing values become balanced, it is far more likely that one set of values, or standards, will come to dominate the field." (57)

- Scott Campbell's "planner's triangle" provides an elegant way of looking at sustainable development. He sees it as the balance of economic development, environmental protection, and social equity, and that it is the role of a third party - a "valuable stranger" - to mediate the 3 forces to arrive at the center. However the authors point out that such mediators are in short supply and, when absent, the more powerful corners of the triangle dominate. The process of standardization suppresses "creative public conflict and alternative technological choices" that may occur in place of a mediating stranger, and standardization "consistently favour[s] the interest of economic development over those of environmental protection or social equity." (60, top)

- Point gleaned form looking at pictures: reading popular magazines such as Dwell and environmentalist blogs gives one the sense that a green house is a specific product that looks a certain way (modernist, highly designed), not that there are varying degrees of greenness and that ordinary homes can be green. Many of the building codes studied in this article applied to certifying ordinary homes built in vernacular colonial styles.

- The survey of building codes identified 4 types of logic: restrictive (efficiency for own sake, supports econ growth, defines unsustainability as lack of efficiency
sometimes seen as greenwashing), strategic (values efficiency but as means to protect home/industry owners, not for own sake; environmental problem defined in terms of conflict; sustainability seen as a "trade-off" problem, so seeks middle point where least is given up), adaptive (proactive, seeking long0term solutions; signs of first 2 logics; seeks to continuously redefine relationships between industry, gov't, public, and environment; constructivist worldview), and expansive (environmental problem understood as social problem requiring reform; whole-systems approach; "civilizational change" - society slowly modifying its values; seek concretization - process by which buildings are integrated into natural energy-flows - and fundamentally redefine limits of economic choices) (66-67)

- idea of concretization is most interesting: most green building interests would consider solar panels sand alternative energy sources exemplary additions to a green home, but this does not fundamentally change our reliance on energy add-ons. Solar panels are essentially the same as a/c in relying on an external source of power. Proponents of concretization support only passive processes such as passive heating, cooling, etc. (67, bottom)

- "Standardization is, for better or worse, the process by which local conflicts are commonly resolved. Interpreting this phenomenon positively would be to argue that the standardisation of green building practices reflects a changing cultural horizon and aticipates new technical codes intent upon altering the definition of 'good building.' To interpret this phenomenon sceptically would be to argue that standardization tends to suppress those local discourses that constitute what Kenneth Frampton has called 'tectonic culture.'" (68-69)

- Authors see the reason for LEED's pervasiveness as a matter of timing: it arrived early to the market and promoted itself strongly as an international standard. It also reflects the interests of shareholders by giving added market value to those products that it certifies.

questions for LH tour

- to what extent were the "green" interior fixtures and furnishings the choice of the client or the choice of the architect/designers?

- According to the website, LH homes are sturdier than stick-built because they need to be able to withstand the loads of transportation from factory to site. However, do LH homes require more materials for support than the average stick-built home in this respect?

- I noticed on the website that LH is very interested in the philosophy behind the Modernist movement, and that both Hertz and Kappe work in a similar style. Does LH have plans to hire architects working in more disparate styles or is "warm modernism" going to be a common thread through all of the houses that LH markets?

- Sensitivity to place is a very important point made in a lot of the discourse on sustainable building. If LH were to built in another climate and geographical locale altogether, would it adapt styles or stick with the same designs?

- People often DIY-style remodel their own homes, making it truly theirs over the span of the house's life. With an architect-customized home, even a pre-designed plan, I assume this DIY dynamic will be entirely different. Nonetheless, how much of the the house is open to personalization without the help of the architect or consultant? Is there a level of artistic control that is solely in the hands of the architect?

- Do you think prefabrication could ever allow homes to become a mass-produced commodity? (Although the answer is probably not - even within LH's standard parts comes customization; and it would be pure hypocrisy to preach sustainability and then churn out a universal, anonymous product.) Better question: Will LH's choice to go prefab eventually result in cheaper homes that are more accessible to the middle class?

returning to the point

A new outline, in light of recent epiphanies. It feels somewhat half-hearted, because I am feeling progressively more down about the whole prospect of doing a thesis. I feel lost; I have read a ton and accumulated a ton of ideas but it only serves to break down assumptions that once held my ideas in place.

So clearly, I've had to redo my ideas and this is what I have now. But it no longer has the focused determination I started out with, and might just turn into an incohesive rant. I don't even have the last chapter worked out yet.

I'm sending this to the professors to see what they think. I desperately feel that I need some guidance but it seems they just don't have time to reply to my emails. Hopefully this time they will.

Outline Revision #1.5

notes on "Greening of a Nation?"

As mentioned below, this week I half-skimmed, half-read two books on the history of environmentalism in the US. The book that I mostly read from cover-to-cover is "The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the U.S. Since 1945." It dealt mostly with politics, federal agencies, and governmental policy but also gave overviews of trends, movements, and environmental thinking throughout the decades. (At times it was a little too general, bordering on repetitive, but for background info it should suffice.)

Points/quotes from the book that I think will be useful:

"As a nation we want convenience and abundance, but we want it without risk. Environmental protection was designed to mitigate that risk, to measure it and make it tolerable, to guarantee and minimum level of quality of life. That assurance comes with its own set of costs, which Americans tolerate in varying degrees, often depending on their economic situation and their perception of the future. When people perceive limits on their ability to succeed, particularly in material terms, they become more willing to accept greater risk to their health and society if that risk provides them with the money to purchase the amenities they crave. In effect, Americans have shown a tendency to be "green" when it is inexpensive — economically, socially, and culturally — but a reluctance to collectively sacrifice convenience and even the smallest of material advantages to assure a "cleaner" future." p5 (I feel that LivingHomes contributes to this "culture of convenience" by denying the owner nothing in terms of creature comforts in return for increased eco-friendliness; it even tries to play up the "sacrifices" in appearance - like the solar pipes on the roof - as an aesthetic plus.)

Some numbers: Beginning in 1850, 83% of growth occurred in suburbs; by 1970 more Americans lived in suburbs than in cities. Consequences of suburban growth: more use of land, drastic reduction of wilderness. People were also more interested in owning a home than in how architecturally unique/artistic it was (resulting in proliferation of cookie-cutter models). p10

Vocab lesson (FYI for me) - conservation is different from "environmentalism." Former is characterized by belief in compatibility of progress and preservation. Born out of leadership of Sierra Club and Wilderness Society, groups started by Progressives and consisting mostly of wealthy white men (at least at beginning). Interest in nature limited mostly to outdoor recreation and focused attention on "pristine" wild areas rather than problems of cities (where people lived). Concept of ecology wasn't really around at this time (early 1900s) p17

Interesting: "The comparison between wilderness as a 'mental' resource and coal, timber, and other natural physical resources was distinct. To sell the concept of wilderness in 1930s America required utilitarian packaging." p23 (you could say that the same is still true today, as not many people are prepared to embrace biocentrism, and the only way you can argue on behalf of respecting the biosphere is to frame it as a human life-support system)

Early arguments to preserve natural areas such as the protest to block development of a dam in Hetch-Hetchy Valley were based on "higher aesthetic values" and "intangible beauty" - thus the fight for nature was still based on its utilitarian value to human users. p37 (the dam was built anyway, which suggests that beauty does not trump resource use as one of humanity's more immediate needs. indeed leaders of Bureau of Reclamation at this point really did think providing resources was more important and they were serving the common good. p38 ) Also, preserving wildlands essentially made them into national parks which were of course for tourism and recreation - definitely utilitarian and human-centric.

Don't forget about the bigger political picture: Dams were a symbol of American might during the Cold War, which is another reason the conservationists kept losing. p38-39 (basically, international affairs can have a big influence on how much environmental policy gets implemented - can clearly be seen in contemporary enviro. issues taking a backseat since 9/11 - we "need" the oil from Alaska Wildlife Reserve to combat foreign threat)

p40 - in battles to save land from development, conservationists often made a compromise where, in order to gain protection for 1 bit of land, they promise not to try and halt development on other bits. Sets up problem of "sacred" and "profane" space - a short-sighted solution. (ex. was president of Wilderness society's Olaus Murie adopting policy of supporting dams outside of parks as a way to protect parks from dams)

Good quote about signs of hubris (about the Glen Canyon Dam) - "The dam itself overwhelmed the landscape; the pool of water behind it demonstrated the mastery that Americans believed they had achieved over nature. The existence of the dam magnified every trait of modern America..." p47

"The affluence of American society, its optimism and faith in the future, allowed both the passage of legislation such as the Wilderness Act, which reserved large areas of potentially economically valuable land, and the idealism characteristic of other Great Society programs. A nation in which standards of living rose every year could afford to set aside a part of its bounty for noneconomic, spiritual, and cultural reasons, and Americans did so with gusto." p55 (quote about the 50s) (another similar idea about 60s on p79)

The importance of choice, including consumer choice: "In the introduction to The Place No One Knew, Brower accepted partial responsibility for the drowning of Glen Canyon and argued that modernity, with its pace, abrogated the basic tenets of American democracy. 'Progress need not deny to the people their inalienable right to be informed and to choose,' he wrote. 'In Glen Canyon, the people never knew what the choices were.'" p77 (arguing that the real reason they were unable to save the land from a dam was b/c people weren't aware, so they couldn't have spoken out)

Sense of entitlement and personal rights is initially what drove gathering interest in the environment (quality of life issues) in the 60s. p85

Tech can do both good and bad: Atomic bomb is case in point. p90 "The image of progress required a tarnish that it never entirely lost..."

consumption and convenience becoming the norm in American life, made possible by technology: "By the 1960s Americans had become accustomed to American newer and better versions of every household necessity as a way of life; 'new and improved' was already a cliché of American life." p100

synthetic detergents problem in 1940s - supposed to be a great thing but caused environmental harm through foam that would not dissolve or biodegrade - "The challenge to synthetic detergents was a couched attack on the idea that things always could be made better without consequences. It also suggested that the consumption-oriented lifestyle of American society might have flaws." p100

"Despite calls from (Roderick F) Nash and others to give up the comforts of technological civilization for the simple life, Americans were not prepared to give up the amenities of their society and their opulent ways of life to assure a pristine environment. Instead, they wanted to have their figurative cake and eat it too; they wanted a clean environment and an ever-increasing standard of living." p104 (on p112, example of Jimmy Carter's efforts to get Americans to save E, but during this period of economic decline, polls showed enthusiasm for "quality of life" environmental issues declined)

funny but not related: "Energy conservation became so widely espoused that during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, the thermostats in federal buildings were turned down to sixty-eight degrees F to conserve energy during the winter. The cultural ramifications were even broader, in one instance changing the definition of "room temperature" in cookbooks from seventy-to degrees to sixty-eight degrees F. The impact on recipes remains unclear." p112

Under a section called "the limits of 1970s environmentalism": "The raw numbers of people interested in the topic were good for environmentalism but their interest was not always very deep. Conspicuous by their absence were minorities—African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in particular—and people from rural areas. Conservationists and environmentalists historically had come from the classes of people who were economically secure. Environmentalism's message about deferring material gain in order to preserve the future held little appeal for the poor or others previously excluded from economic prosperity." p125 (same problem with many green residential homes: audience was limited to suburb or rural areas - rather than cities where lots of the poor lived - and to upper/middle classes that could afford custom or custom-prefab houses)

A roadblock to utopia: to protect the environment, not everyone is happy: "The cries of the new environmental coalition a few years before had not seemed threatening. But by the mid-1970s everyone in a range of industries felt that entire ways of living and earning a livelihood were on the line." p131

Good quote about the dystopian element of modernity: "When a mysterious disease killed a number of delegates at an American Legion meeting in Philadelphia in July 1976 and when a few years later highly toxic PCBs... were created by the combustion of other materials in a building fire in Buffalo, New York, it seemed that the very essence of the modern world had become potentially lethal. The technology that made possible the abundance that Americans enjoyed also had consequences that people feared. Hazardous and nuclear waste came to represent the downside of industrial prosperity." p136

Toolbox upgrade!

By the way, yesterday I discovered and installed Zotero, a Firefox extension that helps you track webpages and manage citations. It has tagging, an integrated search, and website parsing ability that lets it automatically "detect" and save citations, such as on an online library catalog page. So darn useful.

If anyone else is reading this and writing a research paper, GET IT!





I wish I had known about this at the beginning of last semester, so I would have an organized library of resources instead of a folder full of disorganized bookmarks spread out over 2 computers. (Wish I had known a lot of things..) Ah well.

Rethinking the point

Initially, I had wanted to spend the whole of this thesis trying to critique LH - for its clear expression of the machine-efficiency of Modernism, its overt tones of consumerism-pandering luxury, and ultimately its lack of aesthetic and spiritual ties to philosophies that espouse a more intimate, caring way of relating to nature (such as deep ecology).

But these few days, after getting a comprehensive if general dose of history, I've realized that, heady and passionate though such revolutionary, paradigm-changing philosophies may be (they really do sound like they can change the world, if only people can be convinced to believe in them), they also are only one in countless ways of looking at the issue of how people relate to the planet.

My goal at the outset was to argue why deep ecology represents one of the best ways to relate to nature, an ethic that architecture should strive to instill in its inhabitants. At the outset, I really believed in this goal, and I thought this would make for an interesting, if difficult to support, argument. (I didn't want to write a philosophy paper, yet concrete examples as case studies were lacking.) At this point, I still do believe that alternative philosophies like deep ecology (and its sisters the Gaia hypothesis, bioregionalism, biocentrism, etc.) represent an awesome paradigm shift in attitudes, a different way of looking at nature that could solve immense problems. It has the potential of philosophies like Marxism to "revolutionize," to effect massive change. But for the purposes of a relatively insignificant undergraduate academic paper, I'd better do the sane thing: look at it the topic at hand level-headedly, doing what I can to analyze LH from a good, fair range of perspectives. And not go nuts trying to argue on behalf of a controversial philosophy. I'll leave that to the veteran scholars who have more time and clout...

I've jumped into a stack of articles from the sustainable architectures community that, taken all together, appear to be warning against just this: preferring one viewpoint over another. And over time I have come to appreciate that, though the highly marketable, seductively beautiful homes designed through LH do not strike that passionate chord that crusading, non-anthrocentric, paradigm-changing radicals do, their approach is valid in other ways (such as those related to the post below on utopic promises made possible by technology).

The more you read, after all, the more you learn, and the more you have to retailor what you can and cannot say (with evidence). This is why I was so hesitant to write an outline at the beginning. But it's still good; even if I have to edit the darn thing 5 times (this stands to be about the 4th time - sigh), at least I have mistakes I can learn from.

History lessons

Finally, at the gentle prodding of various professors, I have started to read into the history of the environmental movement in the U.S. And it's proven very fruitful: in just a few chapters I have already gained many new ideas and perspectives that reading endless architectural theory books never seemed to provide (once again bolstering my concern that the world of architecture, like art, is sometimes a little too self-involved).

One new perspective is stems from thinking about the 60's idea of utopia, as revealed in the optimism not just of commune hippies but the prosperous post WWII nation in general. In that age, as author Hal K. Rothman put it, Americans wanted to have their cake and eat it too - to them, it seemed possible to have beautiful wilderness areas preserved for their amusement while at the same time continuing on with their tremendous prosperity and economic growth. However as the decade wore on and prosperity began to put strains on natural resources (energy, lumber, land, etc), it turns out the "utopia" was a false one that only appeared so to certain segments of the American population. (HEY!! There's a hummingbird flying around my window! SO COOL. Sorry, that was completely not related to anything I'm talking about.) To workers in the lumber industry, pressure from environmentalists who
demanded better, cleaner, healthier human and natural habitats meant that they have fewer logging areas, fewer jobs. Though you could criticize the logging industry plenty for caring only about feeding the market and not on more long-term goals such as sustainable harvesting of virgin forests, at the time it ultimately down to people were at risk of losing their jobs and livlihoods.

Anyway, so the idea of utopia is faulty in more ways than one, and basically it came down to economics: utopia fails, in this instance, to be realized because not everyone can be economically happy and sound in such a world where environmental concerns dominate. To an environmentalist that sounds like anathema to their goals (because nothing is worse for the environment than overt, myopic concern for the bottom line), but perhaps this is a different, useful way of framing a look at LivingHomes and today's booming "green goods" market.

The idea inherent in LivingHomes is utopic beyond compare, and it seems (so far) to be rather ingeniously flawless. Thanks to the strides we have made since the 60s in recycling, sustainability studies, technology, alt. energy research, etc. etc. etc. it is now possible to support economic wealth and prosperity while also being friendly to the environment. This seems, more clearly than ever, to be the message inherent in LivingHomes' mission: to provide luxury at no cost to one's sense of ethics - something which was impossible before due to limits in technology.

To explore this idea further might be a good move I think, as so far my critique of LH has been rather one-sided, focused on its faults rather than its hopeful idealism and redeeming qualities. Of course, looking at LH as an act of idealism and utopic aspirations doesn't come without its doubts and critiques, but it offers a more historically-based approach that isn't only dependent on contemporary eco-philosophies...

falling into a gap?

One thing that has been bothering me lately about this thesis, which up until now I haven't been able to place my finger on, is that I am essentially attempting to apply the dense theories and subtle thinking of academia to what is ultimately and essentially a product that caters to consumer popular culture... and, well... just how valid is that? (I feel as if I am attempting to discuss rugby using only literary analysis terms, or economics using Middle English or.. you know.)

In reading an article from Design Issues about biophilia vs. technophilia in design culture today, I came upon a statement that I've probably encountered dozens of times already: "The idea that technology cannot be an anodyne for society's ills is a relatively recent development." What stopped me this time around was the fact that I had just so recently been casually browsing an issue of Wired magazine, in which a giddy faith and excitement about technology is overtly quite alive and well. What do you mean, people are losing faith in technology? For normal people, the type of "normal" people over at Dwell magazine, who are raving about LivingHomes, who are paying attention to Steve Glenn's every move, their faith in technology doesn't seem to be taking a hit from the supposed jadedness of the academic world. To the normal world, the academic way of looking at their world may as well not exist. And yet.. the normal world is where actions need to happen, solutions need to be found. I am clearly identifying problems with the aesthetic glorified by LH in my thesis, but because it is couched in the thinking of academic spheres, how will those problems ever be solved in a real-world way, a way that affects investors, builders, and homebuyers?

I've always worked under the assumption that if I happen to have the ability analyze something deeply and poetically (i.e. I've been armed with all the rampant theory and learnedness of four years of an expensive liberal arts education), then by all means apply I should apply it to anything and everything, be it the cheese on my hamburger patty, the most recent Tate Modern show, or a line of sleek and alluring residential homes in Southern California.

On the other hand, I have this nagging suspicion that none of this research will ever bear any real world relevance to the design and construction of actual homes in the future, even though I am really enjoying it. My whole reservation about writing a thesis in the first place was that a semester-ful of knowledge and writing will get us no where in actually suggesting improvements to the state of affairs in Green housing today, in getting closer to tangible solutions. The real estate market operates on principles of marketing, consumer desire, etc. not on the poetry of Whitman or academic descendants of Thoreau's transcendentalism or the writings of cultural philosophers, no matter how thought-provoking and spiritually uplifting. I've been trying desperately to find academic work that bridges the gap between cultural theory and sociology/economics but I'm only finding texts that fall squarely in one camp or the other. And I'm not sure that I have the background and authority to do the bridging myself. (Or the time, for that matter.)

So... any suggestions? Or have I just been thinking about this too much?

Either way, it's definitely too late to back up now, and as I said, I do enjoy theory and academia.. I just wish other people outside of college would take the time and energy to think the same way about these houses as the way I am trying to think about them now.