During this year’s NeoCon, the largest contract furniture trade show held in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) introduced Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Pilot Credit 43, which applies to all Building Design and Construction, Interior Design and Construction LEED rating systems.

The pilot credit supports LEED’s objective of encouraging building owners and facility managers to implement measurable green building goals as these relate to maintenance and furnishings, specifically. LEED Pilot Credit 43 promotes the use of non-structural products, with known life cycles in LEED buildings, in order to set the foundation for continuous improvement. Also, for the first time, the USGBC recognized several third-party certifiers, which validate the sustainable attributes proclaimed by manufacturers about their products. Many of the methods of earning LEED Pilot Credit 43 revolve around the use of third-party certification.

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Photos: Robert Vizzini

It was one of the most profound pieces of public art I’d ever seen.  The tribute first appeared on the night of March 11, 2002, six months after the World Trade Center attacks: twin beams of light, pointed to the heavens, emanating from close to the site.  It literally stopped me in my tracks. I remember standing on the sidewalk—five or six miles away—looking up at the lights slicing through the clouds, disappearing into infinity, thinking: this is the ultimate memorial.

Tribute in Light—designed by John Bennett, Gustavo Bonevardi, Richard Nash Gould, Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda, with Paul Marantz as lighting consultant—became an annual event, sponsored by the Municipal Art Society, appearing at dusk every September 11 and fading with the dawn of the following day. It has remained remarkably powerful, largely because of its impermanence. Read more…

Photo: Kevin R. Horn

Next month marks a full year of work on the Tingo water system. In previous posts I described the process of site surveying and planning, and then how in late January we finally began construction.  Earlier this summer we finished the intake, sedimentation tank, and pump house, three structures which will, respectively, collect groundwater, clean it of sediment, and send it upwards to the community through 3,300 feet of stainless steel and high-grade-PVC piping. At the top of the mountain the water will gather in a storage tank and then flow down the other side of the slope through another set of pipes that connect to individual households. The piecemeal construction schedule – we built each segment of the system as time and logistics allowed – means that we have finished the first and last parts of the system – the intake and pump house and the distribution system – but have yet to lay stainless steel pipe to connect the water source to the community tank. In September we hope to do that.

As I write, a group of American engineers, recently arrived from Pittsburgh, work on the foundation and walls for the storage tank, which sits at the highest point in the village. They are the second group to visit this year from the nonprofit Engineers Without Borders (EWB), the organization that is responsible, along with engineering students from the University of Pittsburgh, for the design of the entire water system. Under their supervision this week we will pour concrete and bend rebar, and embed galvanized iron and PVC piping within the walls and floors of the tank. Read more…

Homes in the Lower Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina.

Contrary to some politicians’ beliefs, climate change has become an urgent matter. This urgency calls on everyone involved in the designed environment to critically re-evaluate her or his relationship with the Earth. Here I want to address one of our major threats and resources: water. Today in coastal cities worldwide planners and policy makers discuss flood mitigation strategies that can be flexible, multi-layered systems able to adapt to sea level change. Research reveals that passive systems, which can be both static and dynamic, are needed to accommodate the ever-changing relationship between land and water.

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Photo: Francesca Pedersen.

The conventional wisdom about New Orleans these days is for the most part positive: an engaged mayor (with the obligatory “60 Minutes” profile under his belt), rebounding neighborhoods, improving schools, young people flocking in.  All of this is true, as far as it goes, but it’s an incomplete accounting. What has gone largely unreported in the mainstream press is the condition of the neighborhood hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina.  Much of the Lower Ninth Ward—despite the heroic efforts of Brad Pitt and Make It Right—remains desolate.

This past weekend I went on a bus tour of the Lower Ninth, sponsored by the local chapter of the AIA and hosted by John Williams, who in addition to his work as executive architect for Make It Right has taken on the role of unofficial master planner for the embattled neighborhood. While there are pockets of hope in the Lower Ninth—the Holy Cross section has seen about half of its residents return—the overall picture is troubling.

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We were greatly saddened to hear about the recent death of Doug Garofalo, the Chicago-based architect and educator. At Metropolis we felt a particular connection to him: Doug was part of the digital wave that swept through architecture in the 1990s. His collaboration, with Michael Maltzen and Gregg Lynn, on the Korean Presbyterian Church in Sunnyside, Queens helped introduce an entirely new way of working. It was the product of three architects working in three different cities (something taken for granted today).

But the project that best conveys Doug’s spirit was the house we featured on the cover of our November 2004 issue (below). Using the digital processes he’d become increasingly known for, Doug wrapped a swooping, biomorphic addition around a somewhat traditional form, creating an entirely new take on the American farmhouse.

Our story, written by Edward Keegan, captured the collaborative connection between Doug and the clients. “We wanted our grandchildren,” Susan Manilow told Keegan, “to live in a wonderful environment that was new and creative and strange for them.  We want them to sense how wonderful something can be that is so completely different from what they’ve ever looked at or thought about or lived in.”

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It’s impossible to overstate the impact that Ray Anderson—who died yesterday after a long battle with cancer—had on the built environment. An engineer and entrepreneur, he founded Interface Carpet in 1973 and spearheaded its growth into a multi-billon dollar enterprise. His now famous eco-epiphany in the mid-1990s set the company on a new course, one that helped transform not only Interface but the entire industry. Although his competitors like to grumble about all the ink we gave Ray—he was good copy, he knew the value of a powerful narrative—his example clearly inspired them to become greener, leaner, and ultimately more profitable. That sort of competition, Ray would argue, was healthy competition.

Ray told the story many times: how a late-night encounter with Paul Hawken’s seminal book, Ecology of Commerce, changed his life. Hawken’s argument was simple and direct: industry was responsible for plundering the earth and uniquely positioned to save it.  Our good luck? Ray took up Hawken’s challenge and set a daunting goal for his company: zero environmental impact by 2020. He called it “Climbing Mount Sustainability.” Although the goal remains a work in progress, the company remains dogged in its pursuit of the challenge. Ray’s enduring legacy will be the roadmap he created for future “recovering plunderers” (as he liked to call himself). His message: it can be done.

Related: For our July 2004 issue, Ray Anderson spoke to Martin Pedersen about “Climbing Mt. Sustainability.” His company, Interface, was later featured in Metropolis for their LEED Platinum-rated Atlanta showroom. In 2003, Anderson received the International Interior Design Association’s Star award, and in a 2007 interview, Paul Hawken told us that history may well find that Ray Anderson was the Rosa Parks of green building.

When I first heard last November that there was going to be a full-scale exhibition, Savage Beauty, a tribute to Alexander McQueen, I wasn’t sure the Metropolitan Museum of Art was going to be the best venue to facilitate the retrospective show. Then again, at the time, I had yet to delve into McQueen’s work. I had heard of his exquisite tailoring often presented in obscure runway performances, I recognized the iconic skull printed on his ubiquitous ready-to-wear silk scarves and I adored the tail of the uppercase Q in his brand identity. That was the extent of my McQueen knowledge.

But the exhibit was eye-opening, and after two visits, I’d still consider a third. The first time I went, I was well prepared, armed with a magazine and iPod as I joined the queue for a densely packed Savage Beauty. While the exhibit earned outstanding critic reviews, it also received significant publicity for its notoriously discouraging wait. Since the opening, the museum has consistently estimated waiting times up to two and a half hours, fending off visitors not keen enough to join the meandering line. Still, for the Kate Moss Widows of Culloden hologram and the intricately crafted mannequin masks alone, I’d say the wait is worth it, and still is even for a second time. Read more…

NOLA native Sarah Markel on the levee bike path along the Mississippi. Photo: Catherine Markel.

Earlier this month, I spent a week in Madison, Wisconsin, where I sat through lectures by some of the world’s leading authorities on ways to make cities more appealing, functional, and sustainable. But the most valuable takeaways came not from inside the Madison Convention Center, but from the city itself; more specifically, from the helmeted, benevolent army that pedaled its way quietly and efficiently through the streets.

I’d heard about Madison being a bike-friendly city, but wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, never having been to Portland or Minneapolis or Davis, California, or any of those other places that usually get the highest praise for their bike-oriented principles. Read more…

The Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust Company building at 510 Fifth Avenue, New York. The lower levels are being renovated.

The ancient Egyptians were the ur-preservationists, but I have always thought that there was something perverse about their method of immortalizing dead kings. The first part of the process, carried out by skilled professionals, was to extract all the internal organs of the Pharoah’s body—all the parts that we call “vital” for good reason, that enabled the man to walk, talk, eat, and think. These the embalmers put away in sealed jars. They then went to great lengths to swathe the hollow shell of a body so we can go stare at it in the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Much like the Egyptian mummifiers, the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) of New York gave the Manufaturer’s Hanover Trust Company building landmark status in 1997, but protected only its exterior. Read more…