A couple weeks back I attended “math night” at my kids’ school- when the parents hear about the math curriculum they can expect their children to be following in the coming year. (Bear with me- I promise this is relevant to green building.)  The major focus of the evening were changes that will be required by New York State’s adoption of what are called the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for mathematics.  The CCSS are a state-led effort to develop best practices guidelines for teaching mathematics across the country.  When I first heard that we were about to review the findings of an enormous committee of state bureaucrats I kicked myself for not bringing a book to the meeting.  I presumed that we’d be subjected to a nearly illegible mess of obvious and/or irrelevant platitudes- all delivered in bureaucratese, crammed onto Powerpoint slides in chunks of 3-400 words.

Imagine my surprise when the items presented to us were clear, instructive and, almost unbelievably, intellectually invigorating.  What I found most astonishing as we walked through the standards was that they were so sound and so deeply fundamental that they could be applied to almost any discipline.  In their own way, the standards are systems thinking at its most effective.

The common core standards are below, along with my thoughts on how they can be applied to the sustainability and green building fields:

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
I like the implication here of making sense of a problem before searching for the solution.  Often the way a problem is presented to us obscures the core issue.  Taking a moment to ask if the question being asked is the right one can help us ensure that we are not slaves to habit and inertia- the forces most powerfully aligned against change.

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My day at the conference was dominated by an excellent session on the future of the Cradle to Cradle framework.  Reading William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s book when it was first published was a transformative moment in my life.  It focuses on most everything that is wrong with our industrial economy, a system devised for 19^th century needs, and they do it with a wonderful mixture of intelligence and humor.  Later in life, I helped persuade McDonough to deliver the keynote address at Urban Green Expo.  And one of my fondest memories is of spending two surreal early morning hours at a hotel bar with Michael Braungart, talking about everything under the sun.  He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, hilariously funny, and totally committed.

The panel this morning walked the audience through recent developments on the C2C front.  David Johnson from William McDonough + Partners spoke of small things, such as the release of LEED pilot credit #43 for the use of the Cradle to Cradle framework on building materials, and large, such as their recent projects.  These include the Ferrer Grupo building, which is shaped like butterfly wings in plans, and includes an atrium that will release huge quantities of local butterflies seasonally.  He talked about Martha Johnson (head of GSA) calling for her agency to base their future on a cradle to cradle framework.  Johnson is effectively the landlord of the federal government, so it’s a big deal that she is thinking like this.  David Johnson quoted her as saying, “What if disposal wasn’t disposal, what if disposal was pre-design?”

David Nieh, from a Chinese developer called Shui On Land, presented on a massive project in Dalian, China that included the C2C framework in their master planning.  His best line, “The most efficient form of transportation is ‘taking the eleven line’, otherwise known as using both of your legs.”

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On September 27^th Urban Green Council will debut a truly unique course on New York’s Energy Conservation Code.  The project was funded by NYSERDA, developed by Urban Green, and will be delivered by the AIA New York chapter. We think it represents a major step forward for energy code training.

As our energy code thresholds are being raised, and as compliance with the code receives more and more attention, quality training to bring architecture and engineering professionals up to speed is of paramount importance.

Most courses that cover a technical subject like the energy code can be pretty grim affairs—slides packed with relentless bullet points and indecipherable tables.  There are often very few images, and the material presented seems to rely on the student combing through printouts of the slides at a later date.  Worse yet, there is often little prioritizing of the content being conveyed.

Over several months Urban Green Council worked with highly experienced consultants to develop course content that is detailed without being overwhelming.  The goal is for the students to “understand” the code rather than providing a survey of every paragraph of the code book. The course neatly guides the student through recent changes to the code, and refers them to those items that are most often misunderstood and those places where the greatest opportunities for energy efficiency exist.  The result is a course that is graphically pleasant and covers the material in a way that is comprehensive without being overwhelming.  A manual is provided with the course to allow students to revisit the content.

The course will be delivered multiple times between now and mid-2012 – the first on September 27th. Complete details are here.

At least 90,000 birds are killed every year in New York City by colliding with glass in buildings as they migrate to and from their breeding grounds. Many fly at night and are disoriented by illuminated buildings and structures; bright light interferes with their natural navigational cues. To help mitigate this critical problem for birds, New York City Audubon is encouraging New Yorkers to participate in Lights Out New York. From September 1st to November 1st, midnight until dawn, they urge everyone to turn off the lights in city building to save birds and save energy.

Urban Green Council’s Rachel Schuder recently spoke with Dr. Susan Elbin, Director of Conservation and Science at New York City Audubon about Lights Out New York:

Rachel Schuder: Why should someone interested in green building care about this issue?  Is it a really a big problem?

Susan Elbin: Being a green building is not just about being resource efficient in terms of energy consumption and construction, although Lights Out New York certainly does curb energy use.  Being truly green is about taking a holistic approach to our environment, and part of that is conservation of wildlife.  When manmade structures impede the ability of migratory birds to safely pass through or over our city, it is our responsibility to correct the problem. Turning lights out is an easy solution that really does help.

And yes, the problem is a huge.  New York City Audubon’s data indicate that 90,000 birds are killed every year from colliding with glass—a number that we know is underestimated.

RS: How does turning off interior building lights at night help migrating birds?  Aren’t birds more likely to collide with a building they can’t see?

SE: Migratory birds traveling at night are drawn to lighted areas, a phenomenon known as the beacon effect. Combined light emissions from city buildings produce an urban glow, like you see in nighttime photographs from space. Light disorients birds.  It diverts them from their migratory path, brings them lower in the skies, and can cause them to use precious energy. Because most birds actually migrate at night, you can imagine the magnitude of the problem! Birds may collide with lighted windows at night or window reflections during the day.

Once these night fliers come in for a landing and begin to look for food and shelter, they face the daytime hazards of glass: reflections of trees in windows and false passages through glassed-in courtyards and indoor plantings confuse birds and cause them to collide with glass.

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Quite a few people have commented on the recent proposal by Apple to build a kind of suburban spaceship headquarters (pictured above) in Cupertino, CA.  Alexandra Lange at Design Observer has noted that suburban HQ’s are decidedly retro, and Lloyd Alter at Treehugger is reminded of the passage from Lord of the Rings, “One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them” and predicts the end of the creative giant (Apple, not Sauron.)

There is something kind of creepy about the uber-slick aesthetic Apple has successfully applied to their gadgets and retail stores being applied to such a massive structure. With a diameter similar to the Pentagon, the pop cultural reference it brought to mind for me was Revenge of the Sith. But that’s all totally subjective. What struck me most forcefully was the difference between this particular design solution and the solution proposed by another global tech company trying to house a rapidly growing workforce: Google.

First, let’s review the Apple proposal. The building, though only 4 stories in height is massive and is designed to provide space for 12,000 employees. Presenting the project to Cupertino City Council (see the video here),  Steve Jobs points out that the current site is only 20% green space and that their proposal will increase this to 80% landscape, achieved by placing “most” of the parking underground. I put “most” in quotes because in addition to underground parking below the main building there is a huge above-ground parking structure proposed alongside I-280. Jobs says this parking structure is 4 stories because they want everything on the site to be “human scaled,” but one wonders how a parking structure that appears to be 2,000 feet long can be considered in any way approachable. To give you a sense of the scale of parking required in places like Cupertino (where everyone drives everywhere, for everything)- Apple will reduce the surface parking by 90%. It’s a laudable achievement, but still leaves 1,200 surface parking spaces on the site. Another scale adjustment for you, the “café” in the new building serves 3,000 people at a sitting.

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In partnership with Les Bluestone’s firm, Blue Sea Development, Habitat for Humanity has completed a 60+ unit affordable housing project in the Longwood neighborhood of the Bronx. Habitat for Humanity projects are notable for their “sweat equity” program in which families actually help build portions of the projects – in this case, installation of interior finishes. This particular project is expecting LEED certification under the Home for Midrise Multifamily standard, but it is also notable for its adoption of Active Design principles like open and inviting stairwells, and exercise rooms.  Read more on the New York Times piece here.  As an aside, almost all American obesity programs have focused on our poor national diet (fast food, corn syrup) and sedentary home life (coach potato TV watching) but a recent study suggests our sedentary work lives also play a major role- so I hope you are reading this while jogging.  In any case, it’s great to see the Active Design guidelines begin to impact built projects, and wonderful to see another impressive project by Habitat come to fruition.

Photo credit: Amal Chen/The Epoch Times

James Russell visits the new Syracuse Center of Excellence, and finds both a gorgeous building and a host of reasons to focus our national research efforts on energy conservation.  The center will focus on advanced building technology, and the architect, Toshiko Mori, made sure that every aspect of the project was an advertisement for practical energy conservation.  We should also commend New York State for placing this building in an urban core.  Too often we see these sort of research centers plunked in the wasteland of suburbia where all the benefits they might produce are mitigated by the energy intensity of their location.  For instance, plugging the Syracuse CoE location into the Walk Score website fetches a highly respectable Walk Score of 83, while as a counter example the also new Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at SUNY Albany receives, eh-em, a 48- which basically means that every human that ever enters the building will have driven to the location.

James Russell focuses on the design and technical components of the Syracuse center (as opposed to its location), but uses these as a framework to discuss the big picture- our profligate use of fossil fuels.  Too few of today’s critics (of architecture, culture or art) are connecting the dots like this.  James understands that sustainable architecture doesn’t come at the expense of design- it is produced because of design.  As he puts it:

“The stakes are too high for America to continue to pretend conservation is not urgent.”

We knew there was a good reason we asked him to moderate the final panel of the day at Speak Green.  If you join us at the conference, take the opportunity to thank Mr. Russell for his work.

What more could you ask for? A stellar music lineup every week in this Brooklyn venue is the icing on this LEED-certified bowling alley.

Last week, the Emerging Professionals took a behind-the-scenes tour of Brooklyn Bowl to hear firsthand the many facets of its sustainable design from co-owner Charley Ryan.

Charley walked us through the trials and tribulations of becoming the world’s first LEED certified bowling alley.  Starting with the envelope, we were surprised to learn that not only were the original flooring and walls preserved in this former iron foundry but so were the rafters – including the illuminating skylights’ strategic placement.  Where new flooring is concerned, the stage consists of 100% recycled truck tires and the bowling lounge is 100% reclaimed cork.  Even the carnival-themed decor, from the clown bean bags to the shooting gallery birds, was recycled from movie sets.  The materials used throughout the venue aren’t just sustainably-produced or salvaged, they’re local.  The majority of the furniture, fixtures, and building materials were sourced from Brooklyn.  Even the 10 draught beers were brewed here – much of it from their adjacent neighbor Brooklyn Brewery.

Erica peruses a book on their design process while Charley describes the difficulties of sound-proofing the roof.

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On June 17^th we are holding our first full-day workshop on the LEED for Neighborhood Development standard.

Although our organization largely focuses on buildings, we’ve mentioned many times the great importance we feel should be placed on community planning. Where your building is located, and the contextual fabric of that location, is often more important than the design of the building itself.  It has always been clear that choosing a greenfield site over an already urbanized location has major environmental repercussions: from simple disruption of ecology to less efficient utility distribution.  Since climate change has become the most pressing issue of our time, we have come to understand that even just within the limited focus of energy-use there is a clear imperative to curtail sprawl.  The transportation and energy impacts of a building’s location were codified into the metric of “Transportation Intensity” by Alex Wilson in a quietly transformative article at BuildingGreen.com in September of 2007.  Here were the statistics that backed up many of our suspicions that, say, replacing a poorly performing inner-city high-school building with a LEED platinum school 20 miles outside the town was not an unequivocally good thing.

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Tonight, Ed Mazria speaks at the Great Hall of Cooper Union- don’t miss it. It’s always been frustrating to me that someone like Ed Mazria doesn’t receive more attention outside green building circles. He was basically the first person (let alone the first architect) to point out the massive impact buildings have on climate change. The man who spawned a million pie charts, he is the reason that virtually every presentation on green building in the last few years includes a chart showing buildings as contributing roughly half of our carbon emissions.

He didn’t just point this out from the peanut gallery and tell us all to get our act together – he did something about it. As the founder of the non-profit Architecture 2030 and the 2030 Challenge, Mazria focused not just on the impact of our work as designers but on our responsibility to take these issues seriously on every single project. Over the course of his career, he demonstrated that a lower impact was not only possible but eminently feasible and cost effective.  Mazria was among the first to point out that design isn’t something that gets in the way of climate change solutions (a firmly held belief by many architects to this day), design IS the climate change solution.

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