If we love it, will it last? This is a question at the heart of architect Lance Hosey’s new book, Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design (Island Press, 2012). Because the book is just out I want to offer you a quick peek, as Hosey starts talking about it; his first talk since the book launched this week was at SPUR in San Francisco. And in the interest of full disclosure, I must also point out that Lance, who is CEO of the nonprofit GreenBlue, an organization dedicated to making products more sustainable, is also a friend. He and I co-authored Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design five years ago.

There’s an ongoing disconnect between what is perceived as “good design” (like the Vanity Fair “A-list” published in 2010) and “green design,” as Hosey points out; he documented this when he polled for the readers of his Architect blog in response to the Vanity Fair survey of architects. The disconnect, to him, is more than something to lament; it’s actually something to mine. He writes:

“Following the principles of ecology to their logical conclusion could result in revolutions of form as well as content in every industry at every scale, from the hand to the land. Reversing the devastation of nature requires reversing the devastation of culture, for the problem of the planet is first and foremost a human problem. We create the crisis, but we can correct it—by appealing to both morality and sensuality, to both sense and spirit, together. Designers can promote sustainability by embracing what they have already cared about most: the basic shape of things.”

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Oyster-tecture is one of several emerging practices that are shifting the way we think about infrastructure. The old ideals behind public works projects were focused only on enhancing people’s lives. Oyster-tecture provides needed services to people while also fostering vibrant, healthy ecosystems. The result is a more affordable, resilient, longer-lasting underpinning that surpasses New Deal-style construction. The technique can be applied at the small-scale such as in a single city, estuary, tidal river or bay or at the large-scale to aid an entire region, metropolitan area or megalopolis. In Part 1 of the oyster-tecture series, I explore both scales to highlight the benefits of each and demonstrate how they are interdependent. Part 2 goes on to evaluate the viability and costs of developing infrastructure based on oysters.  Oyster-tecture is a big idea. It could save millions of jobs, generate billions of dollars in revenue, and protect coastal communities from ecological and economic collapse, and maybe even save the world.

New Infrastructure

I shouldn’t say oysters could save the world. They can’t, but they could save the majority of the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. They could also save the West Coast and most of the northern coast of Europe…and maybe even the coastal areas of the Mediterranean Sea, and probably a few parts of Asia too - so, not the entire world, but a large portion of it.

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There’s something daunting about a speaking slot called “15 Minutes of Brilliance.” At the Living Future (un)conference, these speaking engagements took place before the keynotes each day, a nice way to give individual speakers a platform. But the “brilliance” and the (somewhat false) time limit give these sessions a sense that the person might spontaneously combust after she finishes. (Think Cinderella at midnight.) Or that it will be the high point of her career. Where to go after brilliance, publicly exhibited?

One thing is for sure, Jennifer Cutbill, has a lot of brilliance ahead of her. Her 15 minutes introduced many of us to her wisdom, care, and passion, something that her mentors had already glimpsed at. Cutbill is an intern architect at Dialog in Vancouver, B.C. “She stole the show,” as Madav Mailin of BulidingGreen.com noted at an intriguing conference wrap-up session. I talked to him later about Jennifer when he added, “She wowed me with more facets of the one-percent-99-percent meme than I would have imagined possible, and showed us our ‘response-ability’ to make a difference.” (More on that “response-ability” term in a moment.)

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Sometimes they’re more alike than you think, Paris and New York. You just have to be looking, and it helps if you live in both cities, constantly, as does Vahram Muratyan. Growing up in Paris, Muratyan always dreamed of living in New York. These days his work keeps him straddling both the City of Lights and the Big Apple.

In Paris, he uses le metro to visit the Pompidou; in New York, he takes the subway to the Guggenheim. In Paris, he snacks on a macaron while walking up the Champs-Élysées. In New York he munches on a cupcake while strolling down Fifth Avenue. In Paris he grabs a baguette at a boulangerie. In New York he chooses a bagel and a coffee at the deli.

Muratyan refined these juxtaposed moments and translated their essence into charming, minimal illustrations.

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New ways of envisioning architecture, design, and construction are being created at ITAC (Integrated Technology & Architecture Center) by a team of professors, students, and industry professionals.

The lab focuses on what co-director, professor Ryan E. Smith calls a “building ecology.” Specifically, it centers on what many in the architecture and building profession know as “green” building. Unfortunately “green” is often the latest trend in establishing design cred, and fortunately the approach at ITAC is much more thoughtful and comprehensive.

Professor Smith offers some insight into the work at ITAC and on the larger discourse on “green” building. He begins with the terms people use such as “eco,” “enviro,” “sustainable,” and “green.” Many of these terms are often viewed as proxies for a “liberal” political agenda (for example, global warming), which can produce resistance to the terms themselves as well as to useful design and building strategies. He argues that part of the problem is the simplicity of these constructs: “‘Eco’, ‘Enviro’ ‘Sustainable’ and ‘Green’ all presume that humans and nature can find an ultimate balance.”

The debate, Smith explains, must transcend the labels of “green building” and “eco” because, those terms “seek a conceptually, but physically impossible, balance with nature. The human and nature dialectics of buildings are not to be reduced to morality (liberal agenda), or neglect (conservative agenda). Rather, the systemic relations between man and nature provide yet another more literal and measurable context against which we can evaluate design decisions. Therefore, rather than reducing the question of buildings and the natural environment to efficiency or conservation alone, architects need to view buildings more systemically.  We chose Peter Graham’s word to describe this movement: ‘building ecology.’”

Lifecycle Energy Accounting, image via itac.utah.edu

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New York City’s Le Bernadin was the tres chic restaurant venue for a recent press luncheon held to announce the opening of the new Barnes Art Museum in Philadelphia. A narrow stairway off West 51st Street led up to a not very large room. Circular tables ringed with top-flight design journalists and editors were packed in like proverbial sardines. “I’d rather be working on a building,” said Tod Williams, partner in Williams/Tsien Architects, smiling under his breath (try it sometime) as he approached his table dressed in the requisite black.

Tall, amiable, and given to occasionally salty language, Williams’ presence was in distinct counterpoint to the diminutive, serene, and more colorfully attired refinement of his wife, the architect Billie Tsien. Their complementary balance of sensibilities and skills have spelled success for a long time.

Williams, direct and unpretentious, sat down and took in the room. “This is a new level for us,” he said of the press event. You would think he was an old hand at this sort of thing, with international building projects clicking along and an esteemed reputation shared with Billie Tsien.

Earnest conversations filled the room and business cards traded deftly as expert waiters pirouetted around the tightly spaced tables.

A screened presentation for the press, coordinated with delivery of excellent food, commenced. The brief film that the architects themselves had not previewed was followed by still images of museum construction in progress. Taking turns at the mic, Williams and Tsien were introduced by the chipper Barnes executive director and president Derek Gillman. Laurie Olin, world-renowned Philadelphia landscape architect for the new Barnes, decked out in jacket, tie, and blue canvas sneakers also chimed in. (Did you think you had to be dressed to the nines to dine at Le Bernadin?)

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Recently at the Living Future event in Portland, Oregon, I had an opportunity to explore “lives of green” with eight other women working in the sustainable design space, as it is often called. We followed the Pecha Kucha format (my first time with the 20-seconds-for-each-of-20 slides).

Barbra Batshalom, a Boston-based “recovering architect” talked about her path toward transforming organizations, to transform practice, collaborate more deeply, and inspire change in the sustainable design world. “Our research has shown that most organizations, even those known for good green goals, are not making wholesale change. More likely, they are experiencing what we sometimes call ‘random acts of sustainability’.” This prompted the founder of Green Roundtable to launch the Sustainable Performance Institute, a certification program for organizations.

This was one of several recurring themes in this session (which, as our moderator Lance Hosey noted, mirrored the themes that turned up in Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design, the book that he and I wrote together a few years ago): Find ways to think bigger—much beyond single buildings. And if your current career path isn’t allowing that, change course. Almost every single presenter described a non-linear career, what author and anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson might call “lives of improvisation,” theme she explored deeply in her book, Composing a Life.

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Vertical Urban Factory Exhibit, Photo by Christopher Hall

After a six-month run in New York City, Vertical Urban Factory, curated by Nina Rappaport, opened on May 11th and runs through July 29th at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). A longtime fan of the process of making things and the buildings that contain the manufacturing occupations, as well as of Nina’s exacting and thoughtful research, I took the opportunity to the talk to the curator about the past. But as important, we discussed the present and future of manufacturing in urban neighborhoods. We also got into the new ways of making things that require none of the toxic smokestacks that loomed over the 20th century. After Detroit, Vertical Urban Factory will travel to the Toronto Design Exchange (September 12, 2012 to January 3, 2013).

Vertical Urban Factory Exhibit, Photo by Christopher Hall

Susan S. Szenasy: What made you choose the urban factory as the subject of your research, and what did you hope to find when you started out (when)?

Nina Rappaport: I have been fascinated with the role of the factory as workplace, part of the urban landscape, and a significant place of innovation in design since I was young. I remember visiting the Volvic water bottling plant in France and being intrigued with the process, the volume, the people who make things, the repetitive motions, and the creations that result. Then the architectural historian and urbanist, Reyner Banham’s Concrete Atlantis sparked an interest in the role of the engineer in the design of factories and the way in which Modern architects gravitated to the rawness of the innovative spaces of production. This actually led to my book, Support and Resist, on the role of contemporary engineers in design. I begin the book by discussing a Modern factory in Germany. All the while I wanted to return to the research I had begun on factories, some actually for a Metropolis article in 1995 on the fate of Albert Kahn’s factories on the 100th anniversary of the firm!

The factory as urban landscape and as part of a “spatial product” in the terms of Henri Lefebvre, contributes to the city in a different way than the office as a workplace did—shuffling paper all day but not making anything. And that led me to investigate how the processing and company organization as well as labor issues impact the design of the space.

And now I am drawn to these abandoned factories like a magnetic field of movement in the rust belts of the world; their historic structures the ruins in and of globalization. But what is the potential for a new kind of industry? Still of making things, but perhaps in a different way—both more hands-on and more robotics? How can it still be an urban situation smaller-scale and flexible production?

Continental Motor Car Co Interior
12801 E. Jefferson Ave. Albert Kahn and Ernest Wilby, 1911. Photograph courtesy of Albert Kahn Associates

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John Edelman, the CEO of Design Within Reach, has no patience for self-indulgent design. Or, as he disparagingly puts it, design-for-design’s-sake. Unless a product merges beauty and marketability, the ultimate sweet spot, he’s just not interested. For our “So You Want to Be a Product Designer” story, we talked to creative directors at six American manufacturers about how young designers might break through. Edelman asked that Kari Woldum, DWR’s vice president of merchandising, join him in the interview. An edited version of their joint conversation with Derrick Mead follows:

What are best ways for young designers to get noticed by manufacturers?

John Edelman: They can do shows, they can do competitions, and they can reach out to us. But the biggest problem we encounter is most designers are so out of touch with anything that’s marketable, they become valueless. They design for themselves, versus designing for the market. They purpose things that can’t be produced, or they don’t have a full industrial background. A lot of their ideas seem exciting on the exterior, but once you get past the first layer, they don’t become applicable.

Kari Woldum: With DWR, there’s such a perception of us being this giant retailer. There’s not a single email that comes to us that we don’t look through and assess. John said it years ago: “We want there to be a dialogue, and a open platform, no matter who they are, whether we’ve heard of them or not.”

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With a past life in corporate interior and architectural design in San Francisco, I have been aware of 3Form’s many uses as an interior manufacturing company for several years now. I had seen their products used again and again in our sustainable projects, but the image of a conference room divider using their organic Varia Ecoresin Interlayers, in which bear grass had been entombed within a sheet of 40 percent preconsumer recycled material still resonates in my mind. So when I was asked to preview their new showroom, I was confronted with a question I had never thought of before: how does 3Form use 3Form in their interiors?

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