Sustainable Architecture

The Sublime

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:55:00 +0000

Kant contrasts the sublime (in whose presence the fundamental human response is awe) with the beautiful (which elicits attraction). For Kant, to be confronted with the sublime is to be made aware of one’s insignificance; it is a tonic to ego. On the other hand, David Nye in American Technological Sublime (MIT Press, 1996) goes to great lengths to argue that grand human inventions create a “sublime of technology”:

“Kant's sublime made the individual humble in the face of nature, the technological sublime exalted the conquest of nature.” (Chapter 6, p 152)

And:

“Contemplation of these sites or of the Natural Bridge taught the individual his place in the world, lifting him out of himself.” (Chapter 2, p. 36).

“This sublime significance, unlike that which Kant had described, was man-made, creating awe and respect not for nature but for technology and for the engineers and businessmen who erected the displays.” (Chapter 7, p 197).

Emphasis mine. Quite the opposite is true in fact. Contemplation of grand human achievements, even those that dwarf the observer, produces self-congratulation, the antithesis of humility before the grandeur of nature. Grand public works cannot be considered sublime in the strict sense of the word, because they celebrate and valorize human achievement, even if those humans happen to be other than the observer.

“ ‘Did you ever notice,’ Johnson remarked when we were about halfway across to Staten Island, ‘what a Jewy-looking thing the Singer Tower is when it’s lit up? The fellow who placed those incandescents must have had a sense of humor. It’s exactly like the Jewish high priest in the old Bible dictionaries.’ ”

–Willa Cather, “Behind the Singer Tower”

Later in Cather’s story the arrogance and folly of human efforts, rather than their anthropomorphic qualities, is underscored. But in Nye’s reading, rather than humble humans, these achievements puff them up, allow them to credit themselves for the grandeur at hand, even if only by association. To continue the distinction of subjective and objective postures, admiration of grand works such as electrification (or for that matter, the Saturn V) produce a relationship wherein the grandeur of human achievements replaces that due the natural world. The result is therefore not the sublime of technology, but rather the sublimation of nature, reframed and recontextualized as being on par with (or even dominated by) human achievements. Barry White was once misquoted as saying that man had replaced God; he corrected his interviewer and said that mankind had become like gods. In the context of the present day, this is hardly a shocking assertion, even if many do not dare voice it.

This substitution of by human achievements for nature in the origins of landscape architecture in the Western tradition is a theme for Professor Hope Hasbrouck. Artificial, planned landscape eventually replaces wilderness. Incidentally, this follows closely with the secularization of Western intellectual traditions; witness the medieval notion of “monsters”. The word is akin to the Latin demonstratum, which demonstrate the greatness of God and the variety of his creation. Contrast it with the remarkable dearth of public discourse on the ethics of genetic engineering. When the latter is debated it is typically only from a position of public health. Only in art it seems can the material world be understood as being the product of something outside of human control and domination. A case in point is the work of architect Josep Maria Jujol, who saw in every material object, even a lowly and twisted shovel, broken and bent, evidence of God’s glory, worthy of celebration as being of a world that is God’s mirror. In this view, the sublime is everywhere, and the physical world is evidence of the proper humility of humans. No distinction is made between processed and unprocessed nature, as all are the handiwork of the extra-human agent.

On the other hand, when Nye gets around to turning his attention to economic and social issues (Consuming Power), he there rings truer, striking a sympathetic chord with Tobey’s ironically titled Technology as Freedom. 1984, anyone?

Measuring Cost

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:29:00 +0000

[Note: this is a lengthier version of an article of mine which first appeared in Matthew Devries' legal blog, Best Practices Construction Law back in July]

As an architect and a concerned citizen, I frequently am required to evaluate the cost of a particular technology or artifact, and then voice my opinion or advise a client as to its value. In order to shed some light on some of the implicit difficulties in measuring cost, let’s take the seemingly innocuous case of weighing the merits of maintaining existing overhead power lines as opposed to running them underground (the grammatically unpalatable “undergrounding”). I hope I’ll be indulged if I write about cars, too, along the way.

Cost accounting is typically framed within the context of manufacturing or production. In this model, all contributing costs are determined (by one of several competing methods) only up to the moment a manufactured item (or "artifact" in Wiebe Bijker’s terminology) is produced. Thus contributing expenditures are the sole determinant of value; cost accounting is hence inherently historical. Furthermore, it is inherently consumerist: in its particular analysis of the cost of production it implicitly treats the artifact as relevant only through the production process; afterwards consideration for the artifact is discarded in effect by neglect. At no time are the costs of the consequences of the artifact considered.

Bijker’s perspective is far broader; his overarching concern is political currency. Such a perspective must account for an artifact’s cost — in his case a broad environmental policy — but of equal or greater concern are the ramifications of that artifact. In advocating a political, consensus-based methodology for evaluating expenditures, Bijker supports a democratic process whereby authority rests as much in how the artifact is used as it does in the technical expertise of the artifact’s scholars. His analysis is thus squarely in the phenomenological camp, concerned as it is with human experience as the foundation of value.

In some respects Bijker does not go far enough. For example, in his analysis of power and artifact, he takes a rather limited, above-the-waterline view of the automobile. The car is in fact two technologies: the technology of the artifact itself (the car qua particular machine), and the technology of the “ecosystem of carhood”. By the latter inelegant term I mean its embodied energy (the extraction, processing, and manufacturing of natural resources) and the consequences of its utility (in the form of hydrocarbon consumption, roads and the complex economic infrastructure which support this particular form of mechanized personal transportation). The individual may enter a power relationship with the particular artifact, but is de facto helpless against this “ecosystem of carhood”, as that system controls, or at the very least heavily influences, her regardless of whether she individually owns a car.

Put directly, Bijker is concerned with an artifact’s value; cost accounting is only about, well, cost.

Somewhere between cost accounting and Bijker’s social constructivism is Bradley Johnson’s engineer-like attempt to measure the cost and value of running power lines underground (“Out of Sight, Out of Mind?”, Edison Electric Institute, July 2006). This article points to some of the difficulties associated with calculating true costs (i.e., accounting for an artifact’s embodied energy and consequences). Johnson can fairly confidently make use of SAIDI and SAIFI data to compare overhead and underground electrical distribution system’s relative reliability, but he does not venture so far as to calculate relative lost productivity attributed to outages, nor lost billing opportunities to the utility company, nor emergency repair costs. Granted there are difficulties in differentiating between overhead and underground outages, and attributing losses to each. But when it comes to valuating qualitative factors like aesthetics, Johnson is at sea, in spite of his best efforts. In fact, his conclusions are at best ambiguous, at worst contradictory: he simultaneously cites cases of utility consumers being unwilling to pay modest sums for underground service, then concludes that communities regularly pay on the order of $1M per mile for conversion to such service. If anything can be determined from his conclusion, it’s that collectively consumers seem willing to pay what individually they refuse.

As helpful as it is in constructing an argument for overhead service (or preparing a defense against such an argument), Johnson’s methodology fails to properly account for value. Like cost accounting, it relies on historical production data, rather than a community consensus based on a phenomenological context for artifacts. An analysis of cost treats artifacts as objects (as in, “objectification”), pigeon-holing them as phenomena disassociated from their use, whereas considerations of value postulate that artifacts are meaningful as experiences in their broader social and environmental context. “Cost” is therefore not sustainable because it alienates artifacts from the environment, “value” is sustainable because it contextualizes artifacts as having agency within the larger environment.

Review: 3D Modeling in Vectorworks 2009

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:56:00 +0000

I'm an advocate of the strategic use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in architectural design, I've trained professionals in the use of Vectorworks (a BIM product) for over a decade, and I've taught Vectorworks in universities. So, I have both a practitioner's and teacher's interest in what's available for 3D users of Vectorworks. Lately, I’ve been reading Jonathan Pickup’s new training manual, 3D Modeling in Vectorworks 2009. Pickup is a New Zealand architect, longtime Vectorworks user and trainer, and author of several training manuals for my favorite software application. He’s well-known in the Vectorworks community, and has scores of short online videos demonstrating Vectorworks tips and tricks—check him out on YouTube and Twitter, or look up his Vectorworks web site.

3D Modeling in Vectorworks 2009 is both a spiral-bound reference manual and accompanying disc; the disc contains a PDF version of the manual and Vectorworks tutorial files. These are clearly explained in step by step instructions, accompanied by copious screen shots. From the PDF, the user can follow embedded links to watch short videos that further illustrate the accompanying text. While the book title suggests it’s best used for Vectorworks 2009, even users of Vectorworks several versions back will still get a lot out of this manual. One note: the multimedia PDF should be opened in Adobe Acrobat, rather than for example Preview, in order to access the embedded video links.

Whenever approaching a topic as rich and potentially complex as 3D modeling, a trainer is faced with a quandary. Should individual tools and commands be taught methodically, from simplest to most complex, but without the contextual benefit of a project? Or should the training consist of a project vignette that offers the user a context for the varied relevant tools, but may not have the logical rigor of the tool-based approach? Pickup has organized his book to take advantage of both methodologies; as a trainer myself, I greatly appreciate that.

Part One of the manual is almost half the book and covers basic 3D modeling: extrusions, multiple extrusions, sweeps, basic NURBS operations, to name a few. Rather than being a dry rehashing of the extensive online Help already built into Vectorworks, Pickup offers insights into the underlying logic of the tools and commands he covers, explaining them in a way that makes using them less of a “black box” experience for new users. From my own training experience, his explanations make a great deal of sense.

Part Two begins the work of applying some of the abstract tools in Part One to actual architectural applications, such as developing a site model from NURBS. This section provides helpful insights for those who might want to develop quick massing or presentation models from Vectorworks, effectively using the program as a kind of "SketchUp plus". This section also demystifies the Working Plane, a concept that for some reason seems to intimidate users who are new to using Vectorworks in 3D.

Part Three takes the user through a small bus stop project, effectively resolving the quandary I referred to earlier. The project may be unrealistically small in scope and not accurately represent most users’ actual work flow, but it does offer an opportunity to apply the concepts previously covered on a manageable scale.

Throughout, Pickup addresses topics clearly and succinctly. NURBS, which have traditionally overwhelmed users new to 3D, are covered in a highly approachable manner, if not in tremendous depth. This is appropriate for users first learning 3D work. The accompanying videos are short and to the point, and the author strikes a good balance between keeping the viewer’s attention and covering the material fully. Needless to say, having print, video, and sample files all together covers the bases for all kinds of learners. The book stops short of addressing lighting and rendering, which properly are another subject. Personally, I’d recommend Daniel Jansenson’s older but still excellent Renderworks Recipe Book (Imageprops.com, $25 eBook) as a follow-up manual.

Pros
Clear instructions that are extensively illustrated; includes book, PDF, videos, and tutorial files. Covers NURBS modeling, features that Vectorworks has that both SketchUp and Revit lack. Combines tool-based tutorials and project-based vignette approach.

Cons
A bit pricey at $75.

Recommended

The price of progress

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:54:00 +0000

In Hubris and Hybrids, Hard and Jamison adopt a posture which on the face of it attempts to mediate between unbridled technological enthusiasm and reactionary distrust of science. The former, heroic view of science and technology is one which casts all advances in knowledge as inherently salubrious to humanity, while the latter sees all such knowledge as inherently exploitative. (In the mere space allotted one cannot put too fine a point on the distinctions between science and technology. One supposes that lumping them together is something akin to throwing playwrights and linguists together in the same boat. Convenient enough, but not too rigorous. At its heart, the reading’s argument rests on the nature of applied technical knowledge.) The authors are careful in treading a middle road, recognizing the important weaknesses of both arguments. (There are moments of careless naïveté, as when describing the Pug-wash conferences (p 256); one must assume that any Iron Curtain and many Western scientists attending were carefully controlled by their respective handlers.) There is a third agency at work in the relationship between society and science, one which the authors mention repeatedly but which, in our reading at least, fail to fully critique. That agency is currency.

The implication in Hubris and Hybrids is that government co-opts science, technology and commerce in order to exercise control and wield power. Take but a single example: the realignment of American policy in the face of Sputnik is recounted as a narrative in which US government policy sought to harness technological innovation in order to foster economic growth. But Sputnik was a startling development only to the lay public who bought the propaganda of the day. In fact, the nascent American space program, perched as it was atop existing Peenemündian military launch vehicles, was the victim of American technological superiority. The US had successfully miniaturized its nuclear arsenal, in order to be able to deliver powerful warheads farther with smaller rockets. The Soviets, on the other hand, lagged behind in miniaturization. As a result their rockets had to be more powerful, as their warheads far outmassed their American counterparts. This was of course well known and understood by military experts and space program managers on both sides. When it came time to launch a satellite (and later humans), the Soviets had a significant leg up; one has only to compare Sputnik with America’s small, grapefruit sized Explorer (the first Soviet satellite was 6 times more massive than America’s first). Arguably one result of Kennedy’s May 25, 1961 speech was the commitment of billions to the private sector for technological development:

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

It might be argued that much earlier than the 1970s “… trans¬national corporations and transnational organizations have taken over much of the responsibility for setting the policy agenda” (p. 247). Kennedy’s speech, as heroic and inspiring as it was, serves as an example of a tendency already in existence. Is it the case that such projects represent government acting through the private sector, or the private sector exercising policy through government?

“…there has been a noticeable shift during the past three decades to assigning the main authority and responsibility to the private sector and the commercial marketplace when it comes to the political appropriation of technology and science.” (p. 251)

One may as well strike “political”. One may also wonder whether the commercial appropriation of technology is really a late 20th century phenomenon. As early as 1600 for example the East India Company, a commercial concern based in technology (navigation), was responsible for colonization and resource exploitation as an extension of British imperial policy. It virtually ruled India. In England, the Industrial Revolution broadly appropriated scientific and technological developments for commercial gain. And steam and electrical communication were quickly appropriated by commercial interests in order to “tame” the American West—and develop it.

“… it seemed … insufficient to support scientific research and technological development if there was not attention given to … how new ideas were actually turned into new products.” (p. 257)

In other words, commerce is, and has been since there was capital, the de facto method of defusing science and technology.

The implications are twofold: science and technology are at the service of commerce, as is government. Secondly, and perhaps more disturbingly, users of science and technology are inextricably bound up in commerce. As users of technology, beneficiaries of science, and consumers, we are bound to and benefit from social organizations whose primary interests are commerce. It is not, as the Deep Ecologists might imply, a case of “us against them”.

It is us against us.

Who owns saving the world?

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:31:00 +0000

In Schatzberg’s critique of Lovins et al.’s Natural Capitalism (2002), the reviewer claims the authors are naïve in enthusiastically and uncritically embracing technology as the solution to environmental problems. This emphasis on technology seems contradictory to the thrust of Lovins’ argument in his 1992 paper (“Energy-Efficient Buildings: Institutional Barriers and Opportunities”, hereafter “EEB”, and which I've mentioned previously in this forum), which points to economic inherencies (fee structures, typical project financing, business models, and legal liabilities) as formalized barriers to environmentally sound buildings. Lovins’ eloquent and compelling narrative of the Tower of Babel that is the building design process identifies several inherent problems to the socio-economic context of building design, underscoring how that context disincentivizes energy efficiency. In “EEB”, Lovins points to almost everywhere but technology as the culprit, and therefore opportunity for improvement. Even in his criticism of the practice of mechanical engineering (the poor practitioner and his profession do seem to bear the brunt of the author’s grinding axe), the author underscores economic reasons (fees and legal exposure) for inappropriate design, seconded by unsound engineering practices (oversizing). It seems curious therefore that in the span of a decade he and his coauthors would devolve to a less sophisticated posture by the time of the writing of Natural Capitalism.

Nevertheless, in “EEB” Lovins outlines a solution for addressing the problem: create a non-linear or recursive building design process wherein a variety of design-stakeholders may participate; and eliminate or redirect economic structures which encourage short-term benefits for stakeholders individually, rather than long-term benefits for all stakeholders collectively. In short, the problem is that those who develop, design, and construct the built environment are not inhabiting and maintaining the structures they build. Under the present system the sower need never reap the bitter fruits of his labor. Building operations in 2004 accounted for 99.7 quads or 40% of the energy consumption in the United States (DOE Buildings Energy Data Book, Sept. 2006), and those figures are projected to rise. Put another way, American buildings are responsible for about ten percent of the world’s energy consumption. There is clearly a need for buildings to be far more energy-efficient.

Aside from technology, one way to achieve that efficiency is to let the market do it:

“To a theoretical economist … it is inconceivable that in a market economy, such large and profitable savings would remain untapped.” (“EEB”, p 6)

And yet as Nye and Tobey suggest, the market alone should be viewed with a measure of skepticism. Indeed, arguably the market has gotten us to this very predicament, as each player leverages the market for his own benefit; this is the crux of Lovins argument in “EEB”. Where then to look? Inevitably one looks to regulation. The Austin Climate Protection Plan seeks to step in where the market has thus far fallen down. As a matter of public policy, the stick and carrot of performance mandates and financial incentives can be implemented, provided technology and the business sector can keep pace (not always the case; witness California’s failed attempt to mandate that 10% of cars sold by 2003 be zero-emission). By 2020 will we see backsliding on the ACPP? Perhaps in some areas; regulations and tax incentives are the result of a political process, one that is buffeted by fickle winds.

Representatives of the fields of architecture, engineering, planning, business, public policy, and law characterize a broad if incomplete sampling of the stakeholders creating the built environment. And this is Lovins’ other point, perhaps a more profound one: progress can be made through a multidisciplinary, nonlinear approach to design. It is true that technology will solve (and create) some problems, just as regulation and market forces will. A synthetic approach which considers all those factors, one developed through cross-pollination across disparate fields, seems to hold more promise than blind faith in any one sector, or profession.

Water Quality and Development

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:38:00 +0000

The tap, it could be said, is where the environment meets the house. As the fundamental infrastructure of community (at any scale), water is the first requirement for habitation, prior even to shelter. Drainage is a primary concern of Vitruvius when siting a city. Poor sanitation and water quality was in the West and is now in the developing world the greatest cause of disease; decreases in infant mortality (indeed most mortality rates) due to proper sanitation far exceed mortality decreases due to medical advances. Yet this necessary infrastructure, like power, is typically taken for granted in developed countries.

Within the context of new suburban development, Butler and Karvonen argue for the efficiency of an integrated approach when designing for water supply, sewer, drainage, runoff, and quality (Butler, K.S. and Karvonen, A. Integrative Water managements and Conservation Development: Alternatives for the Central Texas Hill Country. The University of Texas at Austin. December, 2004). Intentionally or not, their report supports organic notions of community development outlined in Melosi, albeit on a much smaller, suburban scale than the urban context the latter frequently cites. This integrated approach is on the one hand necessarily mechanistic, in that it relies on engineered sanitary solutions with distinct components or systems, but it also somewhat biomimetic in its emphasis on the interrelation of those system components.

This is in marked contrast, for example, to legacy urban sanitation systems. For good cause, 20th century sanitary infrastructures treat water supply, drainage and runoff, and sewer as independent systems. But in a justifiable effort to avoid contamination of the water supply, opportunities to lessen the impact of gray water are missed. For example, in a region prone to flash-flooding and with considerable impervious cover concerns, the City of Austin generally does not allow impervious cover credits for rainwater harvesting systems. (This is likely due to the fact that impervious cover limits are in many cases zoning restrictions designed to control scale of development masquerading as water-quality ordinances.) Likewise, expensive detention and retention ponds are not systematically downsized in consideration of bio-retention measures. Outside of designs negotiated ad hoc with City officials, such integrated sanitation strategies are not currently codified in CoA regulations.

In considering infrastructural change, whether an integrated sanitary system or an environmentally-sensitive power distribution system, in most urban settings one inevitably must overcome the considerable inertia of legacy systems. Butler and Karvonen’s report arguably addresses a relatively tractable problem: how best to provide infrastructural water resources to a suburban Greenfield development. Faced with an installed urban infrastructure, however, the problem becomes far less tractable:

“…decisions made about sanitary systems in the nineteenth century had a profound impact on cities more than 100 years later.
“one of [W. Brian] Arthur’s concerns was that a decision will ‘lock in’ an inferior technology path … early decisions on the path affect immediate decisions limiting available … [and] future [options].
“In 1842 … Sir Edwin Chadwick took a bold stand on the need for an arterial system of pressurized water which would place house drainage, main drainage, paving, and street cleaning into a single sanitary process… this remarkable hydraulic system was never implemented …”

—Melosi, The Sanitary City, pp 11-13

How then to circumvent the path dependency of a current infrastructure? Is it best to rely on market forces? Citing the rural electrification of early 20th century America, Nye argues that contrary to popular American notions, such changes can only take place when legislatively mandated. Butler and Karvonen admit as much:

“Individual home owners are typically not able to directly influence the direction of new developments or housing products—to move them towards more sustainable futures in terms of water use and environmental impact.” (Part 1, p 13)

Yet they hesitate to challenge the common perception of the invisible hand as all-wise, with this rather unsubstantiated claim, contradicted somewhat in the paragraph just prior (second passage):

“It is increasingly clear to the public that there can be large differences in the costs of living among communities and individual residences.” (Part 2, p 7)

“developers … all agreed that their successes were not achieved by marketing their projects simply as ‘green developments’ ” (Part 2, p 6)

One is inclined to suspect that American consumers tend to make decisions based on short-term costs rather than long-term value. An integrated, environmental approach to infrastructure may just have to be mandated.

BIM presentation movie

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 01:16:00 +0000

Nemetschek NA has kindly posted a recording of my presentation I did at the AIA National Convention. You can view it here.

'And', not 'Either/Or'

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 04:35:00 +0000

I have argued elsewhere that Carter did the sustainability movement a great disservice, even with the best of intentions, when he admonished the American public to turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater. In so doing, he immediately framed the discussion of sustainability as one of choosing between comfort (or quality of life) and survival. The subtext was (and in some quarters still is): either sacrifice and save the world or be comfortable and the planet goes to hell.

But as an architect, my training and experience suggest another context. Design without constraints typically does not lead to stunning results. When designing a building, there are the constraints of site, climate, budget, structure, materials, the end-user's expectations, and even codes and ordinances. While some of those constraints are artificial, and many are inconvenient, in the end the synthetic solution to conflicting constraints is what good design is all about. A professor of mine whom I admire greatly, the late Richard Dodge, used to say, "Architecture is about eating your cake AND having it too."

From an architectural perspective, sustainability as a context for design goes wrong when it becomes the only context for the conversation called, let's design a building. The same holds true when any one constraint — the arbitrary nature of zoning ordinances; the cost of a project; the caprices of an owner or the willfulness of the designer; the dictates of a style police — holds absolute sway and drowns out the other voices in the conversation. The result is can be drab lifeless buildings with PV arrays stapled on.

But when sustainability and the energy a building consumes and generates adds its voice to the chorus, the result is a richer, deeper, more meaningful project. Another dimension has been added to building, another perspective now exists for its interpretation and use, another story has been added to its life and the lives of those inhabiting it. In other words, we become concerned with making our world a better place, and living richer lives in more beautiful places. Not either/or, but and.

Imagination

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 21:18:00 +0000

In Last Man on the Moon, Gene Cernan writes (page 344):

"Sometimes it seems that Apollo came before its time. President Kennedy reached far into the twenty-first century, grabbed a decade of time and slipped it neatly into the 1960s and 1970s ... after Mercury and Gemini, we should have proceeded to build the shuttle, then an orbiting space station, and only then sought the Moon. As it was, we accomplished the impossible, then started over again. It was as if our young nation had chosen never again to cross the Mississippi River after Lewis and Clark ... "

Roger Launius argues that Kennedy made the Moon a priority for purely geo-political and prestige reasons, not out of a personal conviction. According to Gerard DeGroot, Kennedy said to NASA Administrator James Webb:

"I don't really care about the moon. I know it's important; I know there are people who really want to go there, but I just want to beat the Russians."

That may be shocking to some, but more important than Kennedy's political cynicism is the power of imagination to achieve an impossible goal. Not Kennedy's imagination, but the imagination of the American people and the hundreds of thousand of workers, engineers and scientists who made Apollo possible. What did we get out of Apollo? Among many other things, tangible evidence of the power of imagination. As a designer, I can dig that.

Technology, place and community

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 21:15:00 +0000

Andrew Light argues convincingly that the foundation of environmentalism is a primary concern for one’s relationship to one’s fellow humans (“The Moral Journey of Environmentalism: From Wilderness to Place,” in Adaptive Design: Tools for Sustainability, Steven A. Moore, editor). That is, the context for concern for the environment is framed in relationships and human community. In the process, he casts serious doubts on the effectiveness if not validity of the experience of environmentalism as being a quasi-spiritual one, to the point of mocking them. I’ll not take issue with his position on Deep Ecology and its adherents. Of greater interest, particularly in the context of the other readings, is the relationship between environmentalism and community.

(Just using the word environmentalism makes my skin creep if not crawl. Light’s chapter helped me see why: the term marginalizes those with concern for our global health and puts them in the ghetto of reactionary discourse. Thankfully that’s changing, but it has seemed that that label hurt the cause of our common future by objectifying its adherents as extremists. I think I’ll stick to sustainability, as clichéd as that’s becoming).

Now let’s look at GIS (geographic information system; it is to geography and planning as CAD is to architecture), a technology that points to a fundamentally phenomenological understanding of place. The methodology of mapping abstract data in layers (or Themes) onto a digital model of geography has interesting implications. The first is that an abstract tabulation of data can capture the qualities of place. This is not so new: homogeneity or equivalency of space is a Cartesian precept that, as Eliade argued, characterizes the modern world-view as distinct from the tribal or primitive. The difference here is that the sheer quantity of data can produce quite nuanced mappings, as TMY2 data tables or information modeling for land development projects can easily attest. GIS implies that with enough layers, enough data, the unique characteristics of a place will be wholly defined. In that regard, it has the potential for objectifying place as being a thing outside one’s self or world. The notion that a place can be contained within a machine, even virtually, may add to that objectification.

Secondly and more profoundly, the very nature of GIS data, both in its collection and tabulation, implies human use. That is, we collect and organize data according to whether it is useful. One could, I suppose, create a sentimental layer in a GIS model, and as in Light’s village, map locales where marriage proposals have taken place, but that is hardly the common usage. Soil alkalinity, prevailing winds, demographic income levels, automotive traffic—these are the types of data we tend to map. There is therefore an inherent relationship of use in GIS.

Third, GIS allows, even excels, at filtering data. Place is not a singular place; it can be seen as topography, or vegetation, or climate, or fauna, or any of hundreds of data types. In fact, to view all data layers in a GIS model is overwhelming and renders it useless. Its power is in its abstraction (much as architectural drawings).

On these three points — homogenous space, data oriented to human use, and data filtering — GIS or more properly the perspective it implies is an inherently objectifying exercise. But go back to Light’s critique of first and second phase environmentalism. The problem with an individualistic basis for an environmental concern is that while it might appear at first blush to be subjective, that is framing the natural world as the subject of our concern, in an odd way it actually objectifies “nature”, as a personal and exclusive experience.

Because of its emphasis on community — at least potentially — the GIS-view allows for the subjective. We rely on data derived from actual experience (the foundation of phenomenology) in order to construct a graspable model of a geographic region. Furthermore, the GIS-view’s relating geography to human use ties human activity, human experience, human community to “nature”. That is not to say that one cannot use GIS to exploit and damage a geographical region. But by deepening our understanding of the relationship between these layers of data, there is a possibility of seeing our relationship to the physical world not as self and other (objective), but self and larger self (subjective). In practical terms, when we invite “nature” to join our human community, or see humans as part of the “natural” community, we improve the quality of life for systems as a whole, and their human and non-human components.

Space Race 2.0

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 16:16:00 +0000

There's been an increase in the public discussion in the last six months on the establishment of lunar settlements, ever since the 2nd Space Exploration Conference in Houston in December 2006. Gregg Easterbrook wrote an article on NASA's plans for a lunar base for Wired nearly two weeks ago, then was interviewed on NPR, where he repeated some of his assertions and made some new egregious ones. While Mr. Easterbrook's priorities for NASA are only some among many valid possible goals for the agency, he makes incorrect and uninformed statements, unfair characterizations, and I believe misses the significance of manned space exploration. Click here and scroll down and read my comments.

Revisting the Brundtland Report

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 13:41:00 +0000

The overarching thesis of the 1987 United Nations report, Our Common Future: The World Commission on Environment and Development, could be thus summarized:

“The human misery due to the poverty of the developing world, paired with the excessive consumption of natural resources by the developed world, begets a menagerie of social, economic, and environmental ills, and these in turn beget more human misery.”

The Brundtland report thereby goes far beyond mere critique of resource management in its systematic (and oft-repeated) raising of issues of poverty: lack of proper sanitation, housing, education, nutrition, clean water, and healthcare (“decent human life”). Whereas in the northern hemisphere sustainability is commonly and popularly thought of as the preservation of natural resources, the report puts the problems of third world poverty front and center.

This juxtaposition of overuse of resources on the one hand and dearth on the other is raised again and again: in areas of agriculture, economics, housing, industry, and pollution, to name but a few. Implicit in the contrast is the quite sensible assumption that wealth is the result of abundance. But there are notable instances where that assumption might be undermined, or at least subverted.

It has been argued elsewhere that we have or nearly have reached the state of peak oil: where worldwide oil production, which heretofore has increased, plateaus and begins its inexorable decline. While a scarcity of oil may pose economic problems for both industrial and developing worlds, the decline of this resource is forcing technological and political advances in the energy sector. As a result, the world can look forward to an eventual decline in sulfur and carbon emissions from oil, both directly from reduced consumption, and indirectly due to improved efficiencies. And it is precisely the sort of efficiency improvements occasioned by recent oil market price increases which the World Commission on Environment and Development encourages. In this case, then, the impending dearth of an essential resource will eventually lead to environmental and even economic improvements.

In the case of coal, on the other hand, abundance of this resource is quite problematic. If we are near or at peak oil, we are perhaps two centuries from exhausting coal. Furthermore, coal is far more polluting than oil, with much more elevated levels of sulfur and carbon emissions. One might even imagine synthetic fuels derived from coal becoming economically feasible, not unlike that developed by Standard Oil and I. G. Farber and used by Nazi Germany. It is conceivable that given an abundance of coal, we have a future of greater carbon and sulfur emissions to look forward to.

The question then arises: how are advantageous environmental policies to be implemented when the beneficiaries of resource exploitation are not (at least in the short term) disadvantaged by such undesirable exploitation. If environmental consequences are not immediate, what structures can be implemented to make them so? “The enforcement of common interest often suffers because areas of political jurisdictions and areas of impact do not coincide.” (p. 47). Interestingly, the Lovins article I cited in a previous post picked up on this conundrum ten years after Our Common Future and in detail described the energy problems posed by economic systems in which a building’s developer is generally not its occupant. It appears that another decade on the same problems persist.

The conclusion is inevitable, if unpalatable in the immediate: “… it makes long-term economic sense to pursue environmentally sound policies.” (p. 334). It is precisely the abundance of a useful but noxious resource like coal, which makes the kind of market-driven environmental restrictions of interest. The Kyoto Protocol’s Carbon Credits provide a mechanism whereby the deleterious effects of pollution may be traded like a (negative) commodity, theoretically eventually leading to a reduction of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Hence an abundant but environmentally undesirable resource can be curtailed by being linked to an artificial negative commodity.

This subversion of abundance can lead to true wealth derived through sustainable development. But in order to do so, structural changes must be put in place to penalize consumption and reward conservation of particular resources. The use of market forces to do so is one way in which the call for action by the Brundtland report has been heeded. The alternative may be that “long-term” effects of short-sighted decisions may be just around the corner.

BIM, small sustainable projects, and Vectorworks

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Wed, 30 May 2007 07:59:00 +0000

While at the AIA National Convention, I gave presentations of a project of mine at the Nemetschek North America booth. They are the makers of Vectorworks, an outstanding design application for Mac and Windows. A buzzword these day in the practice of architecture (and other building professions) is BIM: building information modeling. Largely seen as a design and documentation methodology rather than a specific technology, BIM allows designers and users to get greater efficiencies out of digital files through the use of data-rich building models. Almost universally assumed to be appropriate to large projects with fees to support "left-shift" in the design process, BIM is often ignored by some of Vectorworks' competitors in the context of small projects, at least on trade show floors.

Sustainable design is also often seen as an approach more appropriate to large projects, again where design fees can absorb the requisite additional research and design innovation. Never mind that houses represent about 20% of American energy consumption (see my previous post); energy efficiency in housing is ignored at our peril.

On the other hand, the project of mine that I showed was a single-family residence designed in Vectorworks, using a BIM approach. I've posted a 4.3 MB PDF of the slide show (incidentally entirely built in Vectorworks ARCHITECT with RenderWorks and consisting of "live" drawings, not screen shots). While the slides alone don't do the talk justice, they might be of interest in their own right.

Back from AIA National Convention

info@francoislevy.com (François Lévy) — Mon, 14 May 2007 19:15:00 +0000

I've recently come back from the AIA National Convention, including Al Gore's Keynote Address. A great deal of interesting material to digest, especially as the theme of the Convention was "beyond green". I'd like to touch on two of the presentations in particular.

Odell, Wilson, and Lazarus delivered a lecture on "Sustainable Design in the Post-Katrina Era". Their most intriguing suggestion was that "passive survivability" — that is, a building's ability to allow its occupants to survive a disaster for a short or long period of time — was a design objective lying on a continuum with "sustainable design".

Before electricity and before Willis Carrier developed mechanical cooling as we know it today, buildings responded to their climates passively because that was the only possible response. From the dog-trots of the pioneer South and Southeast United States, to the cupola-bearing antebellum plantation houses of Louisiana, to Tewa adobe structures, to the passive cooling wind towers of ancient Persian architecture, humans have built in response to their climate, with great ingenuity, using natural materials at hand. In the last 80 years or so, however, we have become more and more estranged in our architecture from the climatological imperative. I am far from suggesting we pull the plug on mechanical cooling and heating (although I am not a fan — pardon the pun — of forced-air systems). Nevertheless, our current and justifiable preoccupation with climate may bring architecture to a kind of full circle.

Societally, we tend to think of architect-designed buildings as something of a luxury, forgetting that the role of architecture is founded in that basic human need, shelter. Since less than ten per cent of the built environment is designed by architects, that perception is reinforced by a paucity of professional design. Naturally (hopefully?) the lay public understands that large buildings are predominantly architect-designed, but roughly half the energy consumed by buildings (the built environment accounting for 42% of energy consumption in the US) is consumed by residences — and we see examples of lay residential design all around us. Some of it is good; much of it is not. I would argue that thinking of passive survivability is really just another way to consider the role of climate and environment as shape-givers to our buildings. Thinking in those terms as we design (or commission designs) may not only grant our buildings greater efficiency and smaller ecological footprints, but give their users greater satisfaction and joy.

Boecker, Martin and Schaffner (two architects and an engineer), in "Integrated Whole Systems Design: Redesigning the Design Process for High Performance Buildings", presented a model for a collaborative design process involving clients, stakeholders, and design professionals working democratically (my characterization, not theirs). While I didn't find their model ground-breaking by any means, it was refreshing to hear an engineer argue for early-stage collaborative design to a roomful of architects.

One of the model projects they presented involved a developer who was building a school to be leased back to the state (of New Jersey, I believe). They were able to convince their client (the developer) to invest in up-front system efficiencies because the same developer would be the building operator and would be paying utilities. As Lovins points out in his "Institutional Barriers to Energy Efficient Buildings", the problem with the vast majority of buildings is that the developer is rarely the operator; this disincentivizes intelligent (and egoistic) developers from creating energy-efficient buildings. The example used, therefore, was an ideal project, and not a common model for development. Unfortunately when I raised this issue and asked how up-front efficiency investments could be sold to a developer following a traditional development model, I did not receive a satisfactory answer. For a (much) deeper analysis of the inherent problem, read Lovins' article.