designmyhome.com

Have you ever asked your architect friend what they thought of your house?  Don’t.  Or at least don’t if you don’t want them to have to lie to you.  Most architects I know have what one might call a discerning palette.  They are pickier than my 5 year old at dinner time and will lie to you like my 18 year old at dinner time (or any time really).

It’s not that your house is “bad,” or “ugly,” or anything else, it’s just most likely that your house is both bad and ugly at the same time and deep inside he is thinking that he can’t get out of it fast enough and wonders how you could possible live there without becoming Archie Bunker or Ward Cleaver depending on which neighborhood you live in.  The next thought they are having is why you didn’t think to ask him that opinion BEFORE you “built” your house that was designed by the 19 year old nephew of the developers wife who took a drafting class in high school and is still using his ripped off copy of AutoArchitect and whose idea of custom is letting you pick between hollow core flat or 6-panel doors and the color of the paint.

The question is, how much do they value their friendship with you.  That will determine how creative they are with the lie they make up.  You see, an architect may design hundreds of houses and therefore he claims ownership of all them.  If one is not so good, he can go on to the next one with little emotional investment.  You only own one house.  If it sucks, well, that sucks.  If your architect friend told you he loved your house and was impressed with the creative use of negative space and its ability to both homogenize with the neighborhood and express your individuality, don’t think of it so much as he’s a big fat liar, but more like, he must really like you because of the effort he put into that whopper of subterfuge.

You got yourself a real friend there.  But if you want to be a good friend to him, don’t ask.  If you don’t ask, (most likely) he won’t tell and you can both go home happy!

Ever since LEED became mainstream I have really struggled to find my place within its world.  Something about it just never really felt right.  Most telling to me, I think, is that the exam to become LEED AP tests you more about your knowledge of the certification process than about the science and the strategies behind energy and resource efficient design.

First, I don’t think the world needs saving.  At least not from humans.  And if it were really in trouble, there is really nothing we could to do to save it.  It’s too big.  It’s too complex.  It’s too dang awesome for us to have much more than a superficial impact.  To be sure, we may be able to wipe out ourselves and some animal species (which would be bad), but the planet?  I don’t think so.  So any impact that we may be having, really, is an impact on us and how we can or cannot enjoy the earth.  For example, we may pollute the water, but the earth will filter it.  We may pollute it so bad that we can’t enjoy it or that it eventually kills us, but in the end, when we’re pushing up daisies, the earth will clean the water and it will go on.  So the impact we have in keeping the water clean is more about us than it is about the earth.

Second, I like clean water and air and I’m poor.  Those are all the reasons why I design “green.”  In fact, they are the only good reasons to design energy and resource efficient buildings.  Anything else and all you are doing it for is social status and self aggrandizement, to make yourself look good against your neighbors so you can walk around all smug.  LEED lets you do that.

It’s like buying a Prius.  It isn’t really any better for the environment than many cars when you consider the life cycle costs, relative fuel efficiencies and the effects on the environment of the creation and supply of all the components that go into one, but they sure do scream to the neighbors that you care more about the earth than they do.

LEED is a Prius.  It’s a badge.

We recently got a proposal from a 3rd party consultant that would prepare all the documents and do all the legwork to obtain the LEED certificate for a commercial building.  Mind you, they weren’t going to do any design, select any materials, choose any building location on the site, specify any HVAC system or anything else.  They were just going to do the documentation after we designed everything.  Their price to do this?  $15,000.  15k for a piece of paper that is really only good to show people.  The certificate doesn’t do anything to help my building.  It doesn’t increase the efficiency of my air handlers, or CFL’s.  But it looks good and I sure can tell the world how much I care about the environment once I have one.

You see, I think that after designing, selecting and building a structure that would otherwise qualify to be LEED certified, you should take that $15,000 and save it.  Put it back into the project and do one more thing that you otherwise would of run out of money to do.  Maybe a little more insulation, a little bit better glazing or maybe just 15k worth of bike racks.  Then, you are actually doing something.  Otherwise, you’re just showing off, and showing off doesn’t do anything for the environment.

I have been designing buildings using good building science and energy and resource efficient design since long before LEED came around.  I don’t need LEED to tell my clients that I am going to design the best possible building for them.  They can look at my track record.  They can talk to my customers and then I will save them their 15k and the fact that they actually care about clean air and water will be our dirty little secret.

There.  I’ve said it.  I’ll say it again.  Save a tree is stupid.

Over the last 15-20 years we’ve heard that phrase a lot.  We’ve heard the term “dead tree edition” for a printed version of a document or book.  We’ve been bombarded with the idea that not using paper will save the planet.

It is just plain wrong.  Here’s why:

Paper, as we all know, grows on trees.  Ok, it doesn’t really grow on trees, but you get my point.  Paper comes from trees.  Trees are one of the most fantastic crops we have:

• Trees are renewable
• Forests aren’t monoculture
• Forests need to be managed but they do not need to be sprayed with pesticides (usually) or fertilized.
• Forests support all sorts of wildlife
• Forests support human recreational activities
• Trees sequester carbon (if you believe carbon in the atmosphere is a problem)
• Trees are pretty
• Things made from trees are pretty

The Scandinavians, particularly the Finns, and the Canadians have been harvesting their forests for generations.  Are those countries clear-cut?  No.  Do they clear cut?  Sometimes (it depends on the forest being managed and the particular circumstances).

The point is that trees are a great renewable resource that ought be exploited.   Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace (who left because it was taken over by communists) has said:

I believe that trees are the answer to a lot of questions about our future. These include: How can we advance to a more sustainable economy based on renewable fuels and materials? How can we improve literacy and sanitation in developing countries while reversing deforestation and protecting wildlife at the same time? How can we pull carbon out of the atmosphere and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emissions, carbon dioxide in particular? How can we increase the amount of land that will support a greater diversity of species? How can we help prevent soil erosion and provide clean air and water? How can we make this world more beautiful and green? The answer is, by growing more trees and then using more wood, both as a substitute for non-renewable fossil fuels and materials such as steel, concrete and plastic, and as paper products for printing, packaging and sanitation. [Much more here...]

I recommend you spend some time at Patrick Moore’s web site Greenspirit.  He’s a true environmentalist who cares deeply for the forests and the trees.

The next time you hear “Save a tree” please reply “Paper does grow on trees.  We can always plant more.”

UPDATE: Let me be clear.  I’m not for destruction of forests.  I don’t think that the rain forest is destroyed to provide additional grazing land or firewood.  I don’t think clear cutting for the sake of short term gain is right.  Forests are a resource to be managed.  Well managed forests will provide wood resources to us indefinitely.  Key term:  Well Managed.

Image Copyright, Detroit News

Would you live in a house that cost $1,125/sq. ft.?  Probably not.  Even if you didn’t need to pay for your electricity, heating or cooling.  It just plain costs too much.   What if that cost didn’t include the “slave labor” used to build it (it was actually built by students, so slave labor may not be the right term)?  Yet this is what is being promoted as the “future”.

This house, which was supposd to be able to heat itself suffered burst pipes and subsequent damage.  It’s never been used and the city doesn’t have the funds to repair or open it.  Maybe the publicity of the article will help.

But this is what gives “green” a bad name.  A house that costs far too much that doesn’t have aesthetic appeal to most people that doesn’t perform the way it was marketed.  All of these things turn people off to “green.”  They also show that hyped green isn’t affordable.

We’ve been doing “green” all along.  We encourange and design structures with high energy efficiencies, but also realise the law of diminishing returns.  A “net zero” structure is a great goal – the construction sciences and trades just aren’t there, yet, to do it affordably.  But we can get closer without spending almost a million bucks.

It’s projects like this, and their associated publicity, that really give “green” a bad name–making it that much more difficult to get people to understand that “green” isn’t bad, nor is it weird, nor is it necessarily expensive.

A few years ago our local reseller for Autodesk products that serves the Brainerd, Minnesota area called and strongly encouraged us make the transition from Architectural Desktop (now known as Architect) to Revit.  Apparently, according to him, everyone is going that way and if we don’t get on board, we will be behind.  Furthermore, although I don’t remember the details, if we converted when he recommended we could do the whole thing for a little bit less than if we waited too long.  What I do remember is that both prices, the regular cost to convert and the discounted cost to convert, both felt like highway robbery.

After using Revit to complete a couple of different projects we were completely frustrated.  We could get 95% of the way there but in that last 5% there was nothing we could do to make the drawings look right.  I about pulled all my hair out and wasted large amounts of time and money trying to make it work.  We went to the blogs and the help stuff even some training and were told of many “shortcuts” that would trick the program into getting a look close to what we wanted, but in the end, we had to settler for documents that didn’t quite look like we wanted of buildings that weren’t quite constructed accurately for BIM.  All of this, quite frankly, made the whole thing a waste of money in my mind.

Furthermore, Revit, because of it’s shortcomings provided no additional value to my clients.  We want to stay on the cutting edge of technology.  We want to implement the best tools.  But in the end, if it is not improving my clients experience then I would just assume keep my money.  It’s about added value.  Revit doesn’t add value, it just costs more…at least for now.

I love the concept of Revit.  I think that they are almost there.  But in a BIM system almost makes the whole thing useless, and now, here I am many thousands of dollars lighter in the pocket and nothing to show for it.  Are we the only ones who have had this experience?