What could be more green, (and more fun) than a lively city street that makes walking and biking more enjoyable than driving?
Throughout San Francisco, locals and visitors are enjoying a new urban intervention: the parking-space-sized public lounge spaces or ‘parklet’. The program is part of San Francisco’s Pavement to Parks program that was launched in 2009 and it’s been a huge success.
City residents began looking for ways to reclaim pavement as car-free public space and in 2005, thanks to the designers at Rebar, the movement got its first moment of success with Park(ing) Day. Since then the movement has spread beyond San Francisco to cities across the globe. (Did you know that Park(ing) Day is now an international event with over 150 cities participating? Nice job San Francisco!)
Another conceptual project for the Bay Area proposes repurposing the 2.2 miles of highway of the East Span Bay Bridge in anticipation of the opening of the new bridge in 2013. Fletcher Studio proposes the radical retrofit of the bridge to harvest water, wind and sun to cool a data server farm on the lower deck and to water and grow a medicinal marijuana farm on the upper deck. The two high grossing, non-public uses would generate enough income to pay off the retrofit expense within one year and then continue to generate income for public use throughout the Bay Area.
From miles long to the size of a bench; both temporary and permanent, other cities are finding their own way to reclaim their streets. Here are a few of our favorites:
The Highline Project, New York, New York by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with James Corner’s Field Operations allows pedestrians to walk 1.45 miles without stopping for a single car.
Crater Lake by 24° Studio in Kobe, Japan was developed to integrate leisure and play space into the cityscape.
The ‘Minhocão’ (giant worm) highway in Sao Paulo is closed to traffic on Sundays, becoming a pedestrian-only recreational space. - Bridgett
The Dirt on Airing your Laundry
An easy way to save energy this summer is by foregoing your dryer and using a clothesline to air dry laundry. In the heat of summer, I can’t bear to use my dryer, so I picked up a simple, retractable clothesline from my local hardware store. I am surprised how much I enjoy using my clothesline! There is something romantic about seeing a line of clothes fluttering in the wind. And sun-dried sheets on a freshly made bed is heaven! Of course, being a designer, I couldn’t help search for more design-y clothes-drying products. - Lindsey
Here are my favorites:
Above Left: The Alberto clothesline from Fabrica. Each “tree” is about 6’ tall. Center: Vintage clothespins are so cool looking. They are easy to find online too, this image is from a shop on Etsy. Above Right: For those who don’t have the luxury of outdoor space for air-drying, uncommongoods offers an easy mount indoor clothesline. Below Left: There are even cute ways to store clothespins. You easily could make your own, but this one is from uncommongoods.com. Below Right: I love this idea. Start them young!
Greenways: Feldman and Clients Get Around Town
Most of Feldman Architecture’s clients appreciate the importance of sustainably built homes and ask us to help them make choices that use materials wisely and reduce energy use. We know that buildings consume almost half of all fossil fuels burned in the United States, but not surprisingly, transportation consumes the next largest percentage of fossil fuels.
The team here at Feldman Architecture does its part to reduce carbon emissions by making smart choices in the buildings we design and how we commute to work. With few exceptions we all regularly bike, walk, take public transportation, or ride a scooter to our offices in SOMA. One of us even recently started taking a ferry that runs on bio-diesel. Since 50% of our office does not own a car, we visit job sites using City Car Share or Zip Car whenever possible.
We bring this same awareness of alternative transportation issues to our projects. Four projects under construction will offer dedicated 240 volt outlets with upgraded electrical panels for owners’ future electric cars. Several of our completed projects generate sufficient electricity through photo-voltaic panels to charge these vehicles. A project site in Santa Cruz was specifically chosen for its proximity to the beach, schools, transit and shopping. Though this particular client currently lives in Ohio, he has already bought a bike to avoid renting a car on his frequent site visits. For another project under construction, the owners will enter their home - frequently sweaty and muddy - directly through a large bike storage room. These clients have gotten creative with their bikes – see the photos below!
All of these efforts use energy wisely and conserve resources, but they’re also a great way to travel around the City and appreciate the sights. - Brett
Creative Reuse
When I decided to reuse my Kombucha Tea bottle as vase to bring a little color to my kitchen window sill, I thought it’d be great to ask the rest of the FA staff what objects they’ve reused; below is a showcase of either quirky personal or architectural examples of reused objects that give new life to old materials. They begin to speak about how being green can happen at many different scales and be as simple to achieve as drinking your tea. - Matt
1. Piece of weathered plywood becomes an art object 2. Salvaged teak as bath trim 3. Crushed windshield glass as roof surface 4. Wine boxes as storage bins 5. An ashtray becomes a dish sponge holder
The Cost of Going Green
Initial discussions with current and potential clients about sustainability may begin in various ways. From the first phone call, many clients begin to express that their “wish list” includes making the project as green as possible. Others are more hesitant. But both turn to us with all the best intentions but with questions of how much being green will cost, particularly in the current economic climate. Most tend to believe that green = more expensive, which it can, but there are many, many ways to approach environmental responsibility and many are cost-saving.
There are several moves in the early phases of the design process which can be considered low hanging fruit and best practice. This includes a thorough understanding of the site and climate and choosing an orientation for the home that takes advantage of both the sun and wind as free and clean resources for energy and thermal comfort. The placement of the building and its thermal mass in order to capture heat from the sun’s warming rays, or away from the sun’s ray in more tropical climates, doesn’t typically add to the cost of construction for a new building. A clear understand of how the wind moves across the site and orienting the openings to take advantage of natural ventilation and air flow changes is also cost neutral.
Another discussion that often happens early in the project revolves around the size of the building. A typical 10,000sf structure uses far more resources to build, and later to heat or cool, than planning and programming for a smaller building. Moving towards smaller buildings is both cost-saving and generally more environmentally-responsible, as long as other sustainable materials and methods are implemented in the smaller building. The pre-design phase often allows us to better understand the client’s program and to offer suggestions on multi-purpose rooms that can cut down the size of the program. A clear understanding of the client’s program also leads to a better understanding of which rooms should allow for natural light and shading. An office which is only used throughout the day might get all of its needs for light from the sun.
On the other hand, other sustainable products which can be implemented have a higher cost and a lower rate of return. For instance, water storage tanks are currently an expensive accessory to a building in large part due to the fact that water is so heavily subsidized. In one of our Northern California homes, three large storage tanks were implemented to capture water for landscape irrigation, largely due to the fact that the client felt strongly that it is the right thing to do. If water continues to be relatively cheap, the tanks will pay for themselves in about 30 years. However, it may be forward-thinking to implement such a system, since many experts claim that water will not continue to be so heavily subsidized.
Finally, there are many systems which, of course, add to the cost to construction but have a high and quick rate of return. These include integrated solar panels in projects that get a lot of sunlight, insulation with higher R values that help reduce heating and cooling costs, LED lights, and the specification of energy efficient appliances. Wood flooring or framing timbers which are FSC-certified tend to cost more to the client, since there is a certain amount of stewardship that the client is paying for, but we are encouraged by the trend of clients who see that the cost to the planet of specifying non-FSC certified woods is simply not sustainable.
As with any part of a design and construction project, sustainable materials and technologies represent a blend of client’s desires and needs in balance with a budget. A most encouraging piece of sustainable building in the current economic times is that cost-benefit analysis and consumer demand are bringing sustainable materials more and more into the realm of the affordable. Also, education of the clients about the hidden costs of certain practices and materials is pushing all of us in the building trades to think creatively about sustainability and to cause a more thorough analysis of the cost of being green. - Hannah
Breathing Life into City Streets
What could be more green, (and more fun) than a lively city street that makes walking and biking more enjoyable than driving?
Throughout San Francisco, locals and visitors are enjoying a new urban intervention: the parking-space-sized public lounge spaces or ‘parklet’. The program is part of San Francisco’s Pavement to Parks program that was launched in 2009 and it’s been a huge success.
On Valencia between 14th and 15th outside Four Barrel, a parklet with bike storage by Boor Bridges Architecture.
City residents began looking for ways to reclaim pavement as car-free public space and in 2005, thanks to the designers at Rebar, the movement got its first moment of success with Park(ing) Day. Since then the movement has spread beyond San Francisco to cities across the globe. (Did you know that Park(ing) Day is now an international event with over 150 cities
participating? Nice job San Francisco!)
Another conceptual project for the Bay Area, Beta Bridge, proposes repurposing the 2.2 miles of highway of the East Span Bay Bridge in anticipation of the opening of the new bridge in 2013. Fletcher Studio proposes the radical retrofit of the bridge to harvest water, wind and sun to cool a data server farm on the lower deck and to water and grow a medicinal marijuana farm on the upper deck. The two high grossing, non-public uses would generate enough income to pay off the retrofit
expense within one year and then continue to generate income for public use throughout the Bay Area.
From miles long to the size of a bench; both temporary and permanent, other cities are finding their own way to reclaim their
streets. Here are a few of our favorites:
The Highline Project, New York, New York by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with James Corner’s Field Operations allows pedestrians to walk
1.45 miles without stopping for a single car.
Crater Lake by 24° Studio in Kobe, Japan was developed to integrate leisure and play space into the cityscape.
The ‘Minhocão’ (giant worm) highway in Sao Paulo is closed to traffic on Sundays, becoming a pedestrian-only recreational space. - Bridgett
An easy way to save energy this summer is by foregoing your dryer and using a clothesline to air dry laundry. In the heat of summer, I can’t bear to use my dryer, so I picked up a simple, retractable clothesline from my local hardware store. I am surprised how much I enjoy using my clothesline! There is something romantic about seeing a line of clothes fluttering in the wind. And sun-dried sheets on a freshly made bed is heaven! Of course, being a designer, I couldn’t help search for more design-y clothes-drying products. - Lindsey
Most of Feldman Architecture’s clients appreciate the importance of sustainably built homes and ask us to help them make choices that use materials wisely and reduce energy use. We know that buildings consume almost half of all fossil fuels burned in the United States, but not surprisingly, transportation consumes the next largest percentage of fossil fuels.
When I decided to reuse my Kombucha Tea bottle as vase to bring a little color to my kitchen window sill, I thought it’d be great to ask the rest of the FA staff what objects they’ve reused; below is a showcase of either quirky personal or architectural examples of reused objects that give new life to old materials. They begin to speak about how being green can happen at many different scales and be as simple to achieve as drinking your tea. - Matt
Initial discussions with current and potential clients about sustainability may begin in various ways. From the first phone call, many clients begin to express that their “wish list” includes making the project as green as possible. Others are more hesitant. But both turn to us with all the best intentions but with questions of how much being green will cost, particularly in the current economic climate. Most tend to believe that green = more expensive, which it can, but there are many, many ways to approach environmental responsibility and many are cost-saving.