Quixotic Ground Sloth

This week... I WILL BEGIN WRITING

2008-01-07T23:09:00.000-05:00

I am back at school and... okay! Let's get down to business! (to defeat... the Huns - hyaaah! No, not really.)

Guided loosely by the last outline (which my professor has encouraged me not to revise so hastily quite yet), I will begin writing this week. My goal is to write at least 20 pages by the first day of classes on Jan 16th. I plan to write parts of the Introduction and the bulk of Chapter 2, as that is what my professor has encouraged me to focus on: defining what LH is and what it does.

Some notes on where I'm headed from here:
- I will no longer focus so narrowly on relating LH's choice to go with Modernism with subconscious anthropocentric tendencies.. Maybe this is for one of the later critique/analysis chapters, but not for Ch. 2 where I introduce the company. The tour opened up other, most salient reasons for why Modernism, according to LH, was a suitable style to build, that it expressed virtues of cleanness and simplicity. LH's people are clearly passionate about the environment, but to them, it is also about pragmatism - and I think first describing that tension, between pragmatism/realism and passion, is more salient than just diving right into anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism is just ONE way of looking at LH, and I don't want to limit the entire paper to that.
- I will definitely still write about the history of LH and ground it its background in Case Studies, Post-WWII experiments in prefab, the hope of the times, etc. as well as to explain the Modernist ideals. Now that I've read more, I feel these are very important for understanding the ideology of LH, and just why they are so hopeful and passionate in starting up their company.

My professor said not to worry about changing direction just yet, so I won't, and will see how far I get this week. Stay tuned...

Conversation with a friend

2008-01-05T03:12:00.001-05:00

me: before i visited i got the sense that they just build a product and wait for ppl who are already eco-people to come

me: but after i realized its as important to the success to the company as anything that they actively convert

me: after all that's what marketing is, and any company that sells products is gong to use marketing

me: whether thats to convert a preference or convert a belief in whole lifestyles. LH just happens to deal in lifestyles

friend: i see

me: thats kind of the beauty of it

me: in more than one way, LH makes it so that financial sense meshes with eco sense

me: which feels sneaky

friend: or elegant

me: i'm in awe

me: are you?

friend: a little

LivingHomes tour

2008-01-05T00:54:00.000-05:00

Today I actually had the chance to visit LivingHomes #1, founder Steve Glenn's house! It went really well. My tour guide Shiron was really helpful and offered me lots of insights to ponder. He was also kind enough to let me take tons of pictures of the tiniest details. (And of course thanks must also go to Steve Glenn for offering his personal living space as a model home.)

My first reaction to the house was, wow, it looks so much more *real* in real life. Admittedly that last sentence sounded a little tautological but I mean it. So much more "believable." Part of me had expected to look just like the pictures that have been so widely posted on the web: pristine, picturesque, so idealized it was untouchable. But this was not so. First of all, today was a rainy day, so there was no luscious golden Santa Monica sun streaming in through the glass walls, like in all the beauty shots. Second of all, it looked surprisingly lived-in. The rugs looked like they'd been stepped on lots by shoed feet, there were a lot of unopened envelopes in a pile near the couch. Mr. Glenn's desk was stacked with paperwork and knicknacks. Closets had shoes and clothes in them. Bathrooms had half-used soap containers. My initial fear that it would feel like a soulless, sterile model and Modernist home quickly evaporated. The comfort-level afforded by this sense of lived-in-ness allowed me to enjoy the space more and imagine how a person might actually call this place "home."

My second main reaction was to the tour guide himself. He was really passionate about LH's mission. After leaving the tour, I got the sense that LH was truly setting out to change the way people built and thought about homes...

Here are some points of interest from the notes I took during the tour:

- Though the tour guide confirmed LH's marriage to the Modernist style in all future designs/architect selections, he also said the designs would be adaptable to different clients. He referred to this system as "constained customizability" - nothing about the structure would be changed, though the client could select different counter top materials, different flooring material (all sustainable harvested or produced selections), and even replace the material of the walls, which are curtain walls (non-structural). In the Santa Monica version, there was of course lots of glass, but he said when adapting for cold climates, it's most likely that the glass will be replaced with something with more insulation capability. So in short, even though the design is the same, differences in local climates will definitely be accounted for as much as possible.

- A corollary to the limited customization is the idea that the house could be easily expanded over time. The tour guide explained that the current building paradigm encourages buyers to buy too big of a house "in case," without knowing that they'll really need that extra space. (Or because they are concerned about property values.) The modular system makes it easy to add on (through LH-supported construction -- all this happens through the company) another room, another floor even.

- The space is very flexible: entire walls can be opened up or closed via sliding wood panels, to section off a private bedroom at night or let in more light during the day. It makes the entire second floor feel very generous, open and friendly; there's no dark cave-like hallway with clearly demarcated private spaces behind closed doors. The entire space also makes full use of natural lighting -- it was a cloudy day but the interior felt flooded with light. Sometimes there was a little TOO much openness, as the bottom floor bathroom was separated from the stairwell by only a translucent textured plexiglass sheet.

- The "constrained custom" essentially means that LH seeks to sell "out of the box" houses, where the architect's role is to delimit the options but not provide a full custom design for every locale. (Quite like the Sears kit homes?)

- The earlier concern I voiced in my blog about prefab requiring more materials than stick built applies only to traditional wood-frame houses, said the tour guide. The LivingHomes models would never have walls in the modules back-to-back either, as the modules don't even back walls (they are just frames). The only additional materials used for the extra needed strength are "more nails and glue."

- Tour guide's answer to why prefab kept failing before, and why it won't fail now: The economy was never quite ready back then. People's perceptions of Modernism and steel as cold and strange aside, "it was simply cheaper not to." The prefabs were still experimental projects and could not take advantage of economies of scale. (But what about the idea that all the airplane factories used during the war could be converted to building houses?) But now "people are more aware" and there are more and more government tax incentives for using solar, etc. However the tour guide felt that we aren't completely there yet; need more help from people, more awareness - so there has to be an educational component. Which moves us to...

- LH hopes its houses will educate people to live better lives. The tour guide believes that a house CAN fulfill this active didactic role, instead of just being a passive receptive for its occupant's ideals. He cites the cleanliness and purity of the Modernist aesthetic in encouraging a more minimalist lifestyle based on necessities rather than the accumulation of clutter and material goods. (I couldn't help noticing though that the house did have 5 sofas, which seems like a lot for a single occupant?) He also believes that the traditional Cape Cod or Tudor style houses are more ornate and heavy in feel, and therefore almost encourage the house becoming a repository of junk in hidden nooks and crannies, accumulating based on whim rather than real function or need. He believes the functionalist attitude of Modernism will encourage "cleaner" living in this respect.

- The tour guide seemed to believe, all in all, that if everybody were to consider living spaces logically, everybody would clearly arrive at a preference for Modernist homes like LH (keyword logically, not emotionally or sentimentally or otherwise...). He believes that there aren't actually that may differences between a traditional Cape Cod style house and this one - all it takes is a "few days of living here" to find out just how similarly amenable and comfortable this space can be. (He is making good sales moves - after all, product experience itself can be seductive, even if you don't intend to buy.) Seems to think lifestyle here is objectively better.

- Why all the luxury in the implementation of LH1? 1) LH believes that the most innovative products tend to rely on the rich first to gain the funding to develop into its full realization (as in space travel industry). There are no economies of scale for any of these ventures at first, but gathering interest alone will cause the price to be more in-reach for the average home buyer. 2) Luxury products make a lot of press and LH wants to get word out first. (To date it's been featured in more than 50 magazines and news publications.. wow) It's easier and more attractive to build a reputation for having great products and then lower the price, than to work your way up if you start out with a reputation for being average. So yes, in a sense, LH wants to effect world change and environmental good through seduction. LH does hope to eventually differentiate the product more to appeal to even the affordable housing sector, to truly reach out to everyone and make an impact on the status quo of how we live. (Big dreams! It's quite exciting.)

- Glass and steel - high embodied energy now, but in the future, energy will be all renewable (one hopes) so using high embodied energy materials is ok.

That's it for now... in short it was a very fruitful tour! Speaking to Shiron allowed me to gain a very different perspective on the company, one that was hopeful and passionate instead of just purely critical. it's refreshing. But at the same time it allowed me to reinforce some ideas about sustainability and modernism, i.e. why its attempt to be the one and only umbrella approach to sustainability might be counterproductive to solving the big problem. Modernistic attitudes can't be the only solution but rather part of a mosaic of solutions working in concert. My tour guide's hope was infectious and after being there, I enthusiastically want LH to succeed and really make a difference in lots of people's lives, educating them about better ways of living, and approaching sustainability from the angle of clearheaded rationality. At the same time, the definition of "better" needs to be contested. Is pure objectivity possible? I don't think it is, and that is one of the central flaws of Modernism.

WHY!?

2008-01-03T22:48:00.000-05:00

Why is the story of prefabricated homes always one of high hopes, promising experiments, yet spectacular failures? Stylistic issues aside, why are there no takers?? Is "radical" Modernism really the only reason?

On a related note, why are there no serious answers to this question in any of the 5 books I've read so far??

Relationship between consumerism and technology?

2008-01-03T19:20:00.000-05:00

I clearly still need to talk about the role of technology/technocentrism in LH's approach to sustainability, but where to fit that in? The introduction, where I give an all-over introduction and critique to the key characteristics of LH? Is there a better way to integrate it into consumerism so some of my prior research can still be used?

In thinking along these lines, I recalled the close relationship between mass production and consumerism, that one has historically stimulated the other by offering to the public products that are cheap, high-quality, and widely available.

Neil Jackson's "Metal-framed houses of LA" article, part II, talks a lot about Case Study architect Raphael Soriano's interest in prefabrication. Soriano, among others, was interested in bringing houses into the mass-production sphere by using standardized parts and steel frame construction. LH's focus on prefabrication and metal frames clearly pays tribute to this legacy, although they no longer seem to have that revolution-minded industrial zeal of those 50s architects. For LH it is more of a matter of pragmatism - it saves money. There is little talk of reforming how people live, entering upon a new era, etc. (in Arts and Architecture there was plenty of that.) And for LH, there is little talk of mass production, merely streamlining the process for the few who do decide to build. (or is there?)

Could it be that Soriano et. al.'s legacy for LivingHomes has been diluted after decades of lukewarm interest in prefab houses? Or is LH's interest in prefabrication indicative of a small desire to make the sustainable home into a mass-produced commodity? If the latter, then a strong relationship can be built up between technology (via fabrication and construction methods) and consumerism in the analysis of LH... that would be a good question for the tour.

Which, incidentally, is tomorrow!! Yikes!

Modernist homes and Southern CA

2008-01-03T16:40:00.000-05:00

Author Neil Jackson writes that the steel-frame architecture of the Modern movement inherently suits the Southern CA landscape:

"Indeed, it could be argued that the Lovell House employed a framing material more suited to the nature of southern California than the omnipresent timber frame, since constructional quality timber is hardly a southern Californian product. The natural terrain of the coastal plain which stretches inland from Santa Monica or Long Beach, is that of the desert: in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains to the north and throughout the Anaheim Hills to the south, it is high chaparral. In neither case is it forested like northern California, so single-storey, thick-walled adobe construction had once been the way of building. Thus Neutra's metal-frame house would seem to provide both a seismically acceptable and readily available contemporary response to construction. The metal frame would be designed to withstand the lateral forces so destructive in earthquakes and the use of steel would take advantage of a minimalist, industrial, building technique inherently suited to the
openness of the hot, barren southland." (154)

Whether intentionally or not, LH's choice to build in the Modernist style in the Southern California landscape reflects a subtle sensitivity to place. It is true that high Modernist residential architecture has become solidly embedded in the local culture of Southern CA - from the Lovell house to John Entenza's Case Study houses. Even along the coasts of San Diego where I used to live, one sees everywhere less famous but clearly Modernist residences, geometric in form and clad in glass. It is no longer being just built by the high theorists. You could say that it has become a local vernacular.

One could potentially argue that this move on LH's part addresses a concern in the sustainable building lit for place-appropriateness when building. If a building is to address a regional vernacular without being condemned of frivolous, sentimental pastiche (as it would surely be if building in a historical Spanish colonial or adobe style), then Modernism is surely just as valid a style as any.

EDIT: At the very end of this same article, the author questions Arts and Architecture magazine's attempts to frame Modernist steel-frame houses as a uniquely Californian style. He reminds us that elsewhere and contemporary to the Case Studies, other noted architects such as Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe, were conducting their own radical experiments with prefabrication and steel frames. He does however conceded that CA's development of the steel framed house may have arisen organically from the climate, geographical features (steep slopes, crumbly ground), and historical conditions (WWII), as the Neutra and Eames bunch didn't seem to be heavily in touch with the East Coast crowd. He ends on a note that, while LA is now "known" for these radical, celebrity instances of steel frame houses, it is certainly nowhere near being the dominant vernacular: "It is indicative of the inherently conservative attitude of the Los Angeleno that even today, what is perhaps the world's most automobile-orientated society park their eight million metal-framed vehicles every night outside timberframed houses decorated in Spanish, Tudor or, increasingly, Post-Modern styles."

Production vs. consumption

2008-01-03T00:58:00.000-05:00

I just had a silly epiphany. I realized suddenly why the architectural literature almost never talks about how architecture is experienced or sold or consumed.

Of course, it's because architects by definition are primarily concerned with the production of buildings, not the consumption of them. Note to self: duh!

The architectural journals and books talk a little sometimes about how a particular built project can have an impact on society via local community building, or city planning, or whatnot, but still it's fairly consistent with the developer/designer/builder perspective. There are few descriptions of what it's like to actually experience, for example, a sustainable building; a few that I've found so far are personal memoirs of very specific events - not very good reference material - or psychological studies about environmental factors and their effects on behavior.

Even if an architect builds a home for himself and lived in it, he would continually be aware of the its supports, massing, form, space, etc, all the elements that went into the designing and planning of the structure. That's because architects, after all, are the producers. And this is also why all the sustainable architecture books are preoccupied with material, energy use, siting, and form, almost to the exclusion of occupant experience.

(This also goes very far to explaining why a lot of the Greatest Hits built works from history all sounded great in theory, when explained by the architect, but the occupant never quite gets it... sigh.)

Was this obvious to anyone else but me?? I feel silly now.

Different ways of experiencing architecture?

2008-01-02T23:22:00.000-05:00

A research point that I really need to look more into: how do people experience a building differently when they are in possession of it, as in a private home, vs. when it is a public facility like a workplace? Is there a difference between how people feel about a home if it is rented or owned?

Might lead to some juicy tidbits about the idea of "consuming" a building, as a big part of it is clearly about ownership.

EDIT: Found a huge, 50-page survey of studies on the effects of home ownership (vs. renting) on X. For one (this may seem obvious, but now I have tons of cited studies to back it up), homeowners are much less likely to move than renters. This alone could have an effect on community involvement and attachment to "place." A great deal of the sustainability literature on urban planning deals with the importance of place attachment, in that attachment to a particular place is highly correlated with stewardship and care of that environment.

Also, re: suburban sprawl: "One question is whether homeownership affects the areal size of urban areas, so-called sprawl. There is agreement that the primary determinant of the spatial expansion of cities is increased demand for more housing in the form of larger homes and lots (Brueckner [28]). This increase in demand is not necessarily linked with homeownership. Although owner-occupied dwellings are generally larger and have larger lots than rental units, a community of rented residential dwellings could contribute to urban sprawl. Critics of sprawl are primarily opposed to particular building types and the low density of dwellings, not to homeownership per se." So the relationship between ownership and sprawl is not tenable, but the built form raises interesting questions: A thing that might be worth critiquing LH on: by focusing the buyer's attention so much on energy and material savings, the buyer misses out on learning about other, just as important, facets of sustainability. This is a critique that could be applied to much of the high Modernist style, High Tech skyscrapers like the Commerzbank or Ken Yeang's bioclimactic skyscrapers. Built forms are as important as environmental footprint themselves, but LH certainly perpetuates the form of the individual suburban plot and the unattached single family home. Multiplied in thousands, It inevitably contributes to the unsustainable scenario of sprawl.

Regarding the environment specifically: "Homeownership is found to increase significantly the occurrence of recycling. The authors speculate that homeowners are more sensitive to environmental concerns. They also argue that homeowners are more involved in their communities at a political and social level and are therefore more likely to be knowledgeable about local environmental issues." However no causational relationship between homeownership and recycling is implied in any of the cited studies so I should be careful what I extrapolate from this.

An explanation of why homeownership influences social behavior: "Cox [46] indicates that homeownership influences social behavior through two mechanisms. First, 'interest theory' holds that homeownership alters the financial stake of households. Homeowners have a financial stake in local affairs because these affairs, whether social or political, may influence the home’s price. Second, as discussed in Section 5, homeowners are less mobile than renters and thus they are more likely to remain in a neighborhood. Undesirable changes in the neighborhood will affect the consumption value of a home. Homeowners are thusmotivated to engage in political and social activities, including community activism, to reduce the likelihood of these changes." This might argue on behalf of consumption as a way to ironically bolster sustainability because self-interest (in property values relating to environmental quality) can produce sustainable results. The ends justify the means?

So in the end, you could extrapolate that consumption through ownership of a home leads to more responsible, stewardship-like feelings. Makes sense - for instance, I would not drive a car I owned like... well, like I would a rental.

Provisionary new outline

2008-01-02T22:58:00.000-05:00

If I were to focus on the relationship between consumerism and sustainability in architecture, my chapter breakdown might look something like this:

Intro - this should remain pretty much the same as the current outline
Chapter2 - Argue that LH promotes consumer culture as much as it does sustainability. Show that LH is in ways more similar to a marketing firm than an architecture firm, thus it represents a direct way for people to experience sustainable architecture through ownership (rather than just occupancy as in a work building, touring, reading about it, passing by on the street, etc.) Arguing that LH is both a consumerist product (in the way it is "packaged" and marketed); contrast this to other ways that architecture has tried to address sustainability (academic, aesthetically focused, or community-based). Outline ways in which LH seduces with luxury products.
Chapter 3 - Theories about why sustainability and consumerism are at odds (good handful of these abound...); all-around critique of LH's business-oriented approach to architecture
Chapter 4 - Why sustainability requires political power and consumerism can actually help ("voting with the dollar") - assess LH's overall role in promoting sustainability through consumerism
Conclusion/wrap-up chapter

So yeah! Looks like something more interesting might happen here; if I have to write a shorter paper and make it a senior project, then so be it. At least I'm not wasting my time writing from an angle that even I don't find interesting anymore. =)

Prefab and sustainability - all in the name of marketing

2008-01-01T22:20:00.000-05:00

There is a lot of interest brewing lately (e.g. Inhabitat, a green building blog, has their Prefab Fridays column) in the idea of prefabrication as a more sustainable way to build.

The usual arguments supporting its "green" stance are:

- Traditional site-built houses produce a lot of on-site construction waste (extra materials, etc.) that end up in landfills whereas, with prefab, there is significantly less because materials that aren't used up at the factory just go "back on the shelf." The LivingHomes website claims that up to 40% of a site-built homes' construction materials can end up in the landfill!

- Site-built homes consume a lot more fossil fuels in transporting materials from multiple warehouses to a single site. Site-built also requires construction workers to shuttle back and forth for a longer span of time to complete the house, thus adding to the carbon footprint. With prefab, all the materials are at the factory and only the finished product gets transported, all in one go.

This is in addition to other pros, mostly economical, which include:

- Prefab allows for more precision and quality control over the manufacturing process because the units are built at a factory where state-of-the-art equipment can cut more exact pieces.
- Prefab saves time because the foundation can be laid while the house itself is being built off-site.
- Prefab modules are made indoors, so rainy days don't impede construction as much. Also, the materials have less of a chance of contamination from mold, rain, etc. so the resulting product is more healthy and sanitary.
- Prefab has to deal with more demanding loads (due to crane lifting and truck transportation) and it has to comply with more stringent national quality codes, so by definition, it has to be better (more safe, better built) than the average site-built home.
- Prefab is cheaper due to economies of scale (logic behind mass-production applied here) and centralization.

A lot of these were taken from the LivingHomes website. (It is curious, however, that the point about factory built modules having less exposure to the elements during construction, was placed under the "sustainable building practices" header in their section about modular building. I'm not sure how this is related to sustainable building. Copy-editing oversight?)

Prefabrication does seem to have a lot of overall pros (and some cons, but I won't get into them here), but the debate rages on about whether it actually is a more sustainable way of building than traditional building. Only two points above were actually directly related to sustainable practices, and even the veracity of these two are contested. So when a company promotes itself as green and uses prefabrication to bolster this image, is it being bona-fide green or is it (gasp!) greenwashing?

I found an article on Inhabitat today dealing with this exact issue. The author, a seasoned builder, contends that the relationship between prefab and greenness is overstated, and overarching generalizations such as "prefab is always a better way to build in terms of environmental considerations" should be treated with suspicion. He argues that, while it is true that, in certain cases, prefab does result in a more efficient use of material and a smaller carbon footprint, even prefab builders can be unscrupulous about saving materials. It costs labor hours to sort scrap and isolate what is still usable, so sometimes it just makes more financial sense to toss everything, even at the factory. He also contends that the gas burned transporting modules to a site can be just as much as in traditional building. Modules require a crane, which gets 2-3 mpg, so that is clearly inefficient if your site is in a small remote town far from construction resources. The module-shipping trucks also require as an escort service of several smaller trucks on the way from the factory. And factories are fewer and farther between than building material supplier warehouses, so if the site is remote, the module likely has to travel a much longer way. Finally, because of the aforementioned greater loads in transportation, modules have to be intentionally overbuilt, wasting materials.

Just judging from the miles of comments underneath the article, you can tell that this is a hotly contested matter. Some were quick to defend prefab as being almost always better than stick built environmentally (at least in Cananda?). Others, like the author, are more reserved in giving prefab accolades, saying that it is very dependent on individual cases. But the general consensus among readers and the author is that one should never take "prefab" to denote sustainable without looking more closely at the wide range of variables. All this was shadowed by the fact that there ARE companies out there who promote prefab and claim that it has green benefits when in fact the companies are not taking the steps to ensure that those benefits actually take place.

Suffice to say, in LH's case, the company is certainly promoting themselves as being extra-sustainable because they use prefabrication, but is it greenwash? Greenwash is when a company makes false claims about being green. I don't know if it is greenwash; I'm not an undercover reporter, and in the end, I don't think that even matters. For now, I still have faith that LH is a good company, with honest aims (the paper is not out to bash them, but to critique their methodology in the wider context of sustainable debate).

What matters is the mere fact that LH recognizes that the public clearly perceives an exciting, promising relationship between prefab and sustainability (as made evident by Prefab Fridays and sites like fabprefab.com) even if the relationship itself is hotly debated (as made evident by the long comments). Thus it is openly doing its best to promote the fact that it builds prefab to bolster its green image despite that its actual sustainability benefits may be quite small. (Again, I'm not out to determine how small; not important.) LH may well be just using prefab for all the other aforementioned, non-green benefits, but it has created a special section on its website for pointing out that they also chose prefab because it is green. This is a clear marketing move, showing that LH is very intent on selling a product by pleasing a perceived market sector (reactionary), perhaps more intent than they are on promoting an ideology (proactive). (I believe that many sustainable architects put promoting ideologies before selling products.) This goes to further my argument that LH plays a big role in furthering the consumerist approach to sustainability.

EDIT: I found another blog that highlighted some of the better comments from the long discussion. In particular Philip Proefrock's blurb is a good way of summing up prefab's relationship to green building.

EDIT: On another blog, there is a reference to a UK-based organization's report, which provides an empirical research-backed proof that prefabrication does, on average, reduce construction wastes by a lot (up to 90%...), and for this reason alone, the organization encourages builders to consider prefab. So the claims to greenness have footing in reality after all! I am glad, because any step towards saving waste, no matter how small, is an improvement. It seems that most of the griping against using prefab to enhance a company's "green cred" occurs when the company overexaggerates the importance of prefab, placing it above other concerns. So while the truth of certain prefab claims can no longer be contested, its relative importance in the network of strategies comprising sustainability still is.

Tidbit on building material

2008-01-01T19:04:00.000-05:00

A quote I found ages (it seems) ago, that suddenly seems to bear a lot of relevance:

"The common building material with the least embodied energy is wood, with about 640 kilowatt-hours per ton (most of it consumed by the industrial drying process, and some in the manufacture of and impregnation with preservatives). Hence the greenest building material is wood from sustainability-managed forests. Brick is the material with the next lowest amount of embodied energy, 4 times (4X) that of wood, then concrete (5X), plastic (6X), glass (14X), steel (24X) and aluminum (126X). A building with a high proportion of aluminum components can hardly be green when considered from the perspective of total life cycle costing, no matter how energy efficient it might be." - Peter Buchanan, Ten Shades of Green

... which would suggest that, if you choose to build intentionally in a style that requires large amounts of high energy materials (glass, steel, aluminum - cough, "warm modernism," cough) , your most important objective here isn't really being green, is it? Mayhaps it is attracting customers with its image of a progressive, Southern Californian, Case-Study lifestyle?

According to Buchanan, aesthetics alone cannot justify the sacrifice of green principles. Though LH1 uses a great deal of sustainably harvested wood detailing, LH's marriage to the idea of prefabrication and to architects working in a contemporary Modernist style does feel rather suspect in the end.

Consumerism?

2008-01-01T17:33:00.000-05:00

If I were to take a new direction, would it save my thesis? I am trying to think back to what initially attracted me to the idea of studying LivingHomes.. I think much of it was due to the fact that I am a steady reader of "green" (and rather trendy) weblogs and it has repeatedly come up in the popular press. Moreover, I am interested in gadgetry and the technophilic Wired magazine recently had a sensational, headline-making home built by LH for them. It may suffice to say that I was seduced by LH's ability to make headlines, but not satisfied by how much I knew about it, so I undertook this project to see if I could learn more.

In the process of learning more, I learned how LH may well have been overrepresented. in my mind. In the wider context of sustainability, it is but a tiny sliver, more concerned with business feasibility, it seems, than seriously tackling larger issues of sustainability through community intervention, education, or politics. Though it has saturated, for a while, the media, I'm still not finding mention of it in the academic literature, except in passing. Jennifer Siegal's Office of Mobile Design is even being taken more seriously (Siegal is, perchance, also a recent darling of the popular green and prefab architecture blogospheres.)

This is probably because, after all, LH is a business venture - a development firm - rather than an architectural design office. It outsources design work to consultants and big-name architects such as Ray Kappe, a move that feels more like branding than of putting forward a particular architectural stance. In the end, LH seems more about marketing a product - green upscale living - than working to solve the societal issue of sustainability through proposing creative alternatives.

Clearly consumerism then becomes a big part of the picture. At this point it may well be worth looking into the relationship between consumerism and sustainability, as embodied through LH's marketing programme. Chapters could be built on first arguing that LH is promoting a product rather than an ideology, and then later deconstructing the pitfalls of this approach to sustainability. There should also be a section or chapter on why consumerism might be a viable approach to the question of sustainability despite that its fundamental premise - the valuation of material goods - seems allergic to some basic approaches to sustainability - making do with less, respecting the biosphere, etc.

The only question now, though, is how to bridge the gap between architecture and all this. Conceivably I could write a similar paper, making similar points, using... I don't know... Whole Foods organic pine nuts (yum yum)... or any other "green" product... instead of a house. But I guess that's where the first or so chapter would come in - arguing that even a house can be packaged this way, into a consumer product. Hmmm.. yes.

Forget this trying to prove that LH and sustainability is Modernist or not Modernist stuff... who really cares if you can call it by one name or another? It doesn't change the way it influences society and the public. It doesn't aid in community building or urbanization or changing the American landscape. (And this is why writing a thesis is hard: finding things that might actually matter to write about...)

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

2007-12-31T19:19:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-31T17:55:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-23T22:01:00.000-05:00

- 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

2007-12-23T21:31:00.000-05:00

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?"

2007-12-21T22:14:00.001-05:00

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!

2007-12-20T19:58:00.001-05:00

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

2007-12-20T19:26:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-19T19:34:00.001-05:00

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?

2007-12-03T13:25:00.000-05:00

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.

Dialogics vs. modular prefab

2007-11-30T23:01:00.000-05:00

I read an essay today called "Architecture and nature at the end of the 20th century: towards a dialogical approach for sustainable design in architecture." The author, F. J. Soria Lopéz, mirrors my concern that the dominant vein in sustainable architectural practice is that of the technological, the deterministic, and the physical. There isn't much mainstream attention paid, it seems, to spiritual, poetic, and aesthetic human needs in the search for a more natural architecture. This is a critique that can be applied to LivingHomes, but in thinking along these lines, I realized the critique is not nearly so simple..

Lopéz derives his idea of a dialogical architecture from the idea, first put forth by M. M. Bajtin in The Dialogic Imagination that works come in two forms: that of a dialogue, and that of a monologue. The dialogic work acts as a conversation that incorporates previous works, acknowledging the many surrounding factors that contribute meaning to the topic at hand. This is in contrast to a monologic work, which answers, corrects, silences or just continues a previous work. To Lopéz, a dialogical architecture is one that acknowledges all the factors of sustainabilty; that is, not just the matter of saving energy and minimizing footprint through amazing new technology that controls all physical factors of a building. But rather, all the humanistic, spiritual, literary, and aesthetic associations of a building. In order to do this, a dialogical sustainable architecture must recognize and incorporate such things as collective memory, place, beauty, viewer response, viewer experience, etc. in addition to the usual scientific factors of climate, topography, geography, material availability, etc.

What this means, for a prefab architecture that hopes to make a significant national impact, is that the pre-designed, modular, and necessarily systematic units must somehow accommodate not just geographical and climactic disparities (already a challenge enough), but also differences in local culture. It's a lot to try and fit into a pre-fab standard.

Lopéz's essay is a rallying call to reform the entire way we conceive of and work with sustainability, but it brings up the question of whether it is possible to reconcile the minute customizability that dialogism requires with the mass-manufactured mentality behind pre-fab. LivingHomes one day hopes to be a cheap, or at least mid-range, widely distributable, world-changing type of private shelter available throughout the U.S. But if it is to achieve this, it would most likely need to impose some sort of uniformity across all of its designs (a uniformity which is more than obvious in the existing models). This uniformity is anathema to the idea of a truly dialogic architecture, which seems to me to always speak of an individually commissioned architect, coming into a community to do very local, very specific case studies, and designing a very custom structure for that particular space and time. Lopez cites Aalto and Wright as inspirations for the type of architecture that he envisions; however, Aalto and Wright were almost always working for individual wealthy clients whenever they built houses, so they were more free to express the poetic and the spiritual than the architects of LivingHomes.

Perhaps there is a way to reconcile the two, to build truly sensitive, sustainable homes that are also prefabricated, modular, and ultimately widely available. Perhaps there is a collective memory and aesthetic sensibility common to all humans that could be tapped into by a particularly sensitive designer-architect, to make a widely-distributed green home that IS, to some extent, dialogical. But I haven't, in my reading, found any mention of what that might be yet...

For the purposes of my thesis, I definitely need to acknowledge this difficulty in analyzing LivingHomes. It is hard to be perfect, to incorporate everything, when you are trying to achieve environmental good through popular success; prefab all becomes invariably tied into economics and practicality - what could be built at a factory and how far could it be shipped etc.. Is it even necessary, then, for LivingHomes to try to incorporate slightly more artistry and rhetoric into the way its buildings are designed? The answer, I still think, is yes. Because that, at least, is possible, even when perfect dialogism isn't.

three themes in the search for a more natural green architecture

2007-11-30T17:05:00.000-05:00

These will form the basis for my new outline:

1) awareness/connectedness
2) humbleness
3) empathy

news clip

2007-11-25T01:42:00.000-05:00

Clipped from recent LA Times article, "Eco Friendly Consumption? Critics Don't Buy It":

"It's cynical on the part of the manufacturers and the people who want to sell this stuff," said Andrew Szasz, a sociology professor at UC Santa Barbara and author of the new book "Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed From Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves."

"In a world where people want to continue to aspire to middle-class consumption patterns, but they are also wanting to feel like they are responsible citizens who care about social and environment issues, how do they reconcile that? They go shopping for something that declares itself to be ecologically friendly."

I need to check out that book. (Eco-criticism, anthropology, psychology, and now sociology! I might be taking this interdisciplinary mandate a bit far, but it's been wildly rewarding and eye-opening so far... so why not?)

marketing, the media, and millionaires, oh my!

2007-11-21T00:51:00.000-05:00

I spent a few hours today researching Ray Kappe and LivingHomes as per a reader's recommendation. After gleaning all the info I could from Livinghomes.net (which turned out mostly to be marketing hype), I found my way to LexisNexis and did a few searches on "green houses," "sustainable homes," and the like in US publications. (Livinghomes turned up more than a few times, unsurprisingly.)

I'm finding that the way that green homes are discussed in the press and blogosphere and marketing materials supports my initial hypothesis, that by and large, the philosophy behind sustainable architecture (or at least, sustainable residential architecture) is tied more into economics than ecology.

Reading all these articles and browsing the LivingHomes website, I am confronted with catchphrases like "casual comfort," "sleek elegance," and other hackneyed lifestyle descriptors. It seems that green homes are more about ego than awareness: owning one would certainly give anyone a sense of moral superiority, material self-indulgence, and a hefty "cool factor." But it would hardly give me a sense of why it is important, in the first place, for green homes to exist: ecological balance, environmental justice....

On a completely biased, highly opinionated note: while watching the LivingHomes tour of Steve Glenn's home, I actually got a little disgusted with the product placements and continual featuring of consumptive excess. It's great that he has a home media center by Microsoft and some nice vintage furniture pieces, but it begs the question, "What foundations are this company really built on?" Is it built on a love born of understanding for nature and a sense of honest stewardship for the earth, or is it built on a fetish for energy-saving hot tubs, exotic materials, and "dumplings and soy milk lattes"? (Yes, that also came from the tour.)

I admit that there will always be a little bit of the latter, but I really get no sense of the former from the online tour... or does it not matter as long as a decently well-to-do public can be seduced into gobbling it up, because, in the long run, it IS better for the environment?

Luxury green homes!?

2007-11-18T23:41:00.000-05:00

I know, I know... haven't blogged in a month or more. This is just what happens when art projects engulf one's life. I have a lot of catching up to do, so catch up I will:

I am still focusing on critiquing sustainable architecture (for their aesthetic and experiential sense of disconnect from nature), but hopefully I'm getting closer to the focus I needed. I want to look at high-end, architect-designed green homes in the United States that always make it into coffee-table anthologies of cool new architectural design. (Funny, because this actually goes back to that very first outline I wrote, the one that I thought wouldn't work...) Members of the design/architecture blogosphere sometimes critically refer to some of these as "one-offs" because they are used by architects to show off their more extreme ideas, at the pleasure of very wealthy clients - which already highlights some obvious issues with this whole idea. Just a few of them are:

- Zero Energy Home by Zoka Zola in Chicago
- Sea Train House by Jennifer Siegal in LA
- 156 Reade Street by John Petrarca (Studio Petrarca) in NY
- 1310 East Union Street by Davild Miller (Miller/Hull Partnership) in Seattle

Another example that I found particularly interesting for its repeated appearance in popular press lately is:

- Wired Home by LivingHomes in LA

...but it is not really a one-off in the true sense. Well, it IS customized but it was also "pre-fabricated" which meant that it was built from parts that could be 80% assembled in factory and then shipped on-site to be put together quickly and easily (and money-saving-ly). But it is architect designed ("custom") and it is extremely expensive, for a not-too-big house. (Yes, it cost $4 million, is filled with custom fittings and high-tech gadgets, and is pretty much a glass box; thank you Mies van der Rohe)

Challenges and thoughts and notes to self...
One challenge with this is deciding... should I tackle one or more projects? I could just pick one project in particular and analyze it to death (in a good way). Or I can pick two and compare/contrast them. But even if I pick one to server as my central focus, I could still bring in other projects to "bounce" off of it.

But should I focus on an architect or company?
Right now, my inclination is to steer away from focusing on a particular architect or architectural firm and just look at specific built projects. If I chose to focus on the architect rather than the building, issues surrounding a particular practitioner's style/aesthetic or philosophy would come into play and that's not what I am interested in; I am interested in built projects. I am toying with the idea of focusing on LivingHomes, a company that's been mentioned copiously both in the published press (newspapers, etc.) and in the online blogosphere, because they have a lot of built examples. But then I might get embroiled in issues of what it means to be making pre-fab homes, market trends, consumer wants/needs, etc. Plus there are other companies sprouting up left and right that practically mirror what LivingHomes does (super-green, pre-fabricated homes for the upper-middle class, basically) - Marmol Radziner Prefab and Jennifer Siegal's Office of Mobile Design are a few of the more well-known. If I chose one, I might as well analyze them all as they all work in practically the same vein.

On the other other other hand, I could choose one project from each of these three well-known design companies (I almost forget to call them architects because their work is so sleek and aesthetically considered) and just use them as "prototypical representatives" of this new pre-fab trend which Arts/Living writers at the New York Times think is becoming the next big, cool revolution in housing. That would allow me to make critiques that could have an overarching application.

Could I see it in the flesh(glass/steel)?
It would be ideal if I could actually visit a project. I just found out too late that the Wired Home in LA tours ended TODAY, my first day back in CA for Thanksgiving. One day too late!! Aaah. Oh well, there are other opportunities. (But it would have been awesome...)

Dealing with the obvious
This issue is so recurrent, it's going to need addressing sooner or later, so perhaps in the introduction I need to discuss the public's view of green homes as expensive, aesthetically daring, and out-of-reach. The copious coverage of high-end green homes in the popular press definitely contributes to this myth. Turns out there are definitely lots of current attempts (and some budding successes) at creating budget-sensitive green homes that look like a normal home. Example: IdealHomes built their first prototype of a zero-energy home in Oklahoma last year that costs less than $200k. (article) It's not New York Times front-page material but it's marketable to the middle class...

After all the thinking experiments...
What it comes down to is basically me deciding which particular projects to focus on.

Reading "Loving Nature"

2007-10-14T23:32:00.000-04:00

Today I began to read Loving Nature: Towards an ecology of emotion by Kay Milton. I've read half of the book and plan to read a chapter a day this week until I finish it. This is the first truly academic work I've read so far (and about time, too...) and it's done a great job so far of filling in that void of scholarly theory I've been missing. It's at once a bit overwhelming (information overload) and exciting (lots of material to write about now...).

The book seeks to construct a theory of how people come to relate to and love nature. The author discusses theories of emotion and perception grounded in the work of mostly psychologists and anthropologists. She clearly has her own arguments and opinions, but she nevertheless gives a good overview of those that she seeks to overturn. There are lots of cited references to lead me to further research. One cited work that I intend to check out is J. Barry's Rethinking Green Politics for his idea that we need to "re-enchant" ourselves with nature.

Some ideas from Milton that stick out to me so far, which I think will be useful later on:

- The extent to which people "care about" nature depends at least in part on whether nature is seen as having "personhood." Personhood refers to beings that have intention (i.e. a religious entity, or rock/tree/animal spirits, or animals as being intelligent beings). A concept or thing that is imbued with a sense of personhood is also seen as having rights, which makes it a moral imperative to act responsibly in relation to this concept/thing. This "personal" view of nature is in contrast to a "impersonal" view of nature, more dominant in science and in modernist western ways of thinking, in which nature is seen as governed by mechanistic principles that have no purpose or meaning.

- Idea of "relational epistemology" - On page 47, there is a discussion of Nayaka hunter-gatherers' tendency to focus on events in their environment rather than objects and individuals, what something "does" rather than "is." Milton goes on to suggest that, through this world view, a sense of personhood can arise out of the way something responds to or relates to other things, such as ourselves — whether it moves or changes as a result of stimuli, for instance. Thus, the reason we relate best to other humans is not because they are human, but because they happen to relate the most closely and responsively to us. (A kind of radical idea that I intuitively feel is missing something... but it's an interesting idea.) She also proposes that relational epistemology is common to all human cultures, not just hunter-gatherer societies — and it persists despite rigorous scientific training. (52)

- A sense of personhood does not always yield sympathy. Milton gives an example of a fox: the animal perceived as a "thief" (which is a human construct) by the farmer, and is therefore loathed. (50)

- Milton observes that the most dominant way of viewing nature today is that of the impersonal, in large part due to a convenient alliance between science and economics. Science has a tendency to depersonalize nature; Milton attributes this mainly to the most popular mode of explaination in science, which is hierarchical reductionism (I don't really understand this line of thought yet... will read more on what hierarchical reductionism actually is). Milton argues that because economics (in the form of capitalism) is western societies' dominant force, and because science "serves capitalism very well" by making exploitation of nature morally acceptable through depersonalization, we have come to see nature in the scientific mode — as predominantly impersonal. This feels a bit over-simplified to me... so I'd like to read more about this, as Milton only gives a few paragraphs on this topic. (But she does set up an interesting comparison between modern society and early animistic societies in how they thank - or not thank - nature for providing economic resources - p53)

- Love of nature is closely linked to enjoyment of nature, as evident in anecdotal accounts from avid conservationists, in how they converse enthusiastically about hiking, camping, birdwatching, and other forms of outdoor recreation. But there is a sense that linking love to enjoyment trivializes the need for conservation; there is a story in the book about developers who scoff at birdwatchers protesting the destruction of a bird habitat, because their concern is relegated to the status of "hobby" rather than some serious concern like profit or progress.

- The biophilia hypothesis, which proposes that we have an innate predisposition to respond emotionally to life and life-like processes, is a potentially powerful argument for conservationists. It implies that, were biodiversity to suffer and nature to disappear, we as human beings would suffer emotional impoverishment.

- Emotions serve as learning mechanisms in that they increase incidence of retention (in memory) and therefore knowledge. (Interesting but probably not too related idea: emotions and logic are therefore NOT as mutually opposing as conventionally thought; there can be no knowledge without emotion.) So love of forests can lead to a desire to learn more about forests. The opposite also works: knowledge about forests leads to understanding and eventually love for them.

Clearly that is a lot to think about right now, but writing it all down helps. And all of this is helpful in starting to think about what environmental factors in an architectural space could spur all these feelings and ideas about nature.

One last note: Milton hasn't spent a lot of pages discussing various ways of defining nature (cultural differences, etc.). She also begins the book by saying that whenever she uses an ambiguous word like "societies," it should be assumed that she means contemporary western. Thereafter it is implied that she means "nature" in the way that [western] conservationists mean "nature" — the great outdoors, wild animals, undisturbed habitats, etc. She does not mean nature in the sense of "human nature" or "the natural" so much.

I'm wondering if it would be a good idea in my thesis to also make these initial disclaimers/acknowledgements of limitations. Is it necessary/expected in academic literature? Is it a sign of leaky scholarship to not be as all-inclusive as possible? Or is it ok because sometimes it simply is impossible to be that thorough and assumptions/self-imposed limitations need to happen in order to proceed? Which is better?

Off to sleep with lots to ponder...

Introduction and background

2007-10-13T17:35:00.000-04:00

As senior year shifts into fifth gear, I have taken on the task of writing a Senior Honors Thesis for my Architectural Studies degree. A month has come and gone and, after a false start, I seem to have finally decided on a topic. Two weeks ago I re-proposed my topic and rewrote a chapter outline. You can read about them here:

Topic Proposal

Tentative Chapters Outline

And now for some background: My topic was inspired half a year ago by, of all things, thoughts of food. This led me to read a remarkable book, The Ominvore's Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan, which set my mind a-whir thinking about humans' relationship to nature. Though I've always been a nature-lover at heart and been aware since kindergarten of an existing (practically clichéd) tension between humans and nature, I had never realized the depth and complexity of this tension, and the extent to which the human conflict with nature was a product of capitalism, industrial society and modernization. I became interested in finding out what the reasons behind our overall ignorance and disregard for natural environments and ecological reality were.

While thinking about this, I decided first that I would research sustainable architecture. While leafing through a huge stack of glossy, beautifully illustrated books on green architecture, sustainable building, and other permutations of those words, I slowly began to realize that, energy-efficient and well-designed all these pieces were, a great deal of buildings calling themselves green do not give their occupant any sense at all of "greenness," other than a monthly utility bill that is wonderfully low. Modernist paradigms of the glass box, transparent but austere and sterile, persist. These buildings, I felt, could do more, much more, to help solve the environmental crisis. Beyond just treading water via shortsighted "energy fixes," they could re-engineer the way people think about and relate to nature by expressing ecological truths (such as connectivity and complexity) and teaching occupants about the natural life-giving processes that industrial society has for so long obscured. My question, then, is how to do this?

That, then, is my premise. From here on, I'll use this blog both to free-write and to track my progress as I gather information and develop a more critical perspective. I'll also post any tangential thoughts and discoveries I may come across (sometimes such things may lead to valuable insights.)

I welcome your thoughts, opinions, and suggestions in the hopes that this will be a rewarding intellectual adventure for all involved. So please, comment copiously!