Since 2000 when the Healthy Building Network (HBN) was founded, the advocacy group has been researching and making public their findings on environmentally friendly building materials and policies. In 2006 HBN introduced the Pharos Project, to publish information on the environmental impact of building materials commonly used by today’s architecture and construction industry sectors. In 2009, Pharos received an award from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which called the project “a revolutionary on-line tool for evaluating and comparing the health, environmental and social impacts of building materials in a comprehensive and transparent way.” In my series of Q&As about the Health Product Declaration (HPD), I asked Bill Walsh, founder of HBN and executive director, to provide the public advocate’s point of view. Here he talks about some initial victories and the dogged efforts of a small group of dedicated professionals (30 people in all) who have volunteered for the battle to clean up our environment, one building product at a time.

Susan S. Szenasy:  Recently you wrote in Healthy Building News that “March 17th marks the 10th anniversary of the EPA order that made it illegal to use the arsenic-based pesticide CCA (chromated copper arsenate) to treat wood intended for most residential uses,” and that, as a result, “the amount of arsenic used in the United States [has dropped] from over twenty metric tons annually to approximately six” since 2003. What do these hopeful numbers tell you about the inroads HPD can make on helping to eliminate toxic materials from our built environment?

Bill Walsh: The Healthy Building Network initiated the effort to create the Health Product Declaration [HPD] because informed customers are the most influential driver of healthier building products. With pressure treated wood, once consumers understood that there were two equivalent types of product on the market – that with arsenic, and that without – the writing was on the wall. Chemical manufacturers voluntarily withdraw their requests to EPA for an exemption to arsenic restrictions. That made it easy for EPA to take the action it did.

As HPDs gain currency, unnecessary, avoidable toxic hazards will be the first thing to go. For example, I expect we will see a steady transition out of chemical flame-retardants in many uses where they are unnecessary, such as below grade foam insulation, and provide no added safety benefit, such as in upholstery foams. Leading manufacturers have also said that the HPD will create an incentive for companies to make quiet transitions in order to avoid disclosing problematic chemicals.

Over the long-term, the HPD is going to create incentives for continuous improvement toward ever-healthier building products. But the first thing the HPD is going to accomplish is a rapid acceleration away from hazards that can be avoided today.

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Storms and hurricanes are nothing new for New York City. Some four decades after the European founding of the municipality in 1625, a severe storm was chronicled in Manhattan. Subsequently, the Great Storm of 1693 rearranged the coastline, likely creating the Fire Island Cut. Many more significant storms followed over the centuries. To underscore the lessons of super storm Sandy, there are people alive today who can remember the great hurricane of 1938.

What’s new in recent decades is the relentless development of the coastline, haphazardly accelerated with apparent disregard for protective natural buffers, such as wetlands and dunes. As recently as the 1980s, development exploded in today’s storm ravaged Staten Island, even filling and building on marshland.

Also new to many people is the realization of the human contributions to climate change through our modification of atmospheric gases, a warming climate, and the attendant increases in sea levels, storm frequency and severity, droughts, heat waves, and more. These meteorological changes are real and measurable.

Hurricane Sandy, aside from its tragic aftermath, has done us a huge favor, providing a loud and unequivocal “I told you so!” in the nation’s densest population areas and most developed coastline. The visible devastation of New York City and the Jersey Shore brings tangible urgency to our efforts to take all possible measures to alter the lifestyle and behaviors that have brought us to this critical juncture. We need a paradigm shift in our land-use patterns and energy consumption. Most fundamentally, we must change the ways we interact with the natural systems of the earth.  Massive sea gates and walls might protect against some storm surges, but what will they do to fisheries, sediment transport, water quality—to mention but a few potential repercussions? We need an integrated approach to climate adaptation and mitigation that uses natural systems as ongoing guides.

Wetland Restoration and Mitigation, image courtesy of appliedeco.com

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Living in a big city can be hard. If you live in New York, you have probably quoted the famous song, “If I make it there, I can make it anywhere.” But Portland-based developer Gerding Edlen recognizes the need for giving a softer side to the city.

They develop buildings that, from my perspective, promise to be soft on communities, soft on the environment, and soft on residents.

Gerding Edlen has spoken with Metropolis before, but now they are considering bringing rental development to the east coast, potentially to New York City. I spoke with Mark Edlen, CEO, about their development plans and how those plans fit into cities like ours, “the city that never sleeps.”

“We’ve seen a movement to the cities. Cities are the solution to our global population growth,” said Edlen. His firm recognizes that people see city living as a way to help solve global problems. They also see how it’s becoming more popular to live a mobile and sustainable urban lifestyle.

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The corner of Canal and Rampart Streets in 1954.

I’d been driving past the long abandoned Woolworth’s store on the corner of Canal and North Rampart Streets since I moved to New Orleans in July. And every time past I thought, in my typical New York naiveté (if such a thing exists), “That site desperately needs a building—the bigger, the better!” Later I learned that a somewhat controversial project was  in fact awaiting approval: a 190-foot, mixed-use residential tower.  Urbanistically speaking, this is just what the doctor ordered. The right building here on the upper edge of the French Quarter could act as a kind of gateway to both the quarter to the east and the downtown business district.

The historic preservationists in town almost reflexively opposed the project, citing its excessive height (seventy feet taller than current zoning). The truth is, preservationists here have a longstanding aversion to both tall buildings and (or should we say especially?) modern ones. This proposed tower, pushed by the local developer Praveen Kailas and designed by Harry Baker Smith Architects, was clearly a duel offender.

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The never-ending building boom continues on the Bowery and in NoHo in New York, and for the most part it is a good thing.  Neighborhoods will and should evolve. The East Village and NoHo are about to gain two new buildings, both of which are meant to look toward the future. One succeeds and the other fails.  

51 Astor Place, photo: Ann Weiser

The first is a welcome replacement for the dreary 7-story set of beige brick rectangles at 51 Astor place. In its place will be a striking 13-story building from architect Fumihiko Maki. While the base of the new building does consist of some right angles (which meet the  generous sidewalk in a welcoming way), its form begins to fully take off five stories above the street, with two muscular shards—one of glass, the other of granite—that slice mightily upward. The height shows restraint and is suitable for the immediate neighborhood. Read more…

New York is on a roll with high-profile public spaces lately. Following the success of the High Line, which recently extended its walkway to 30^th Street, three New York-based designers are now coming together to create the next big splash.

+ Pool is a proposal by Dong-Ping Wong, Archie Lee Coates IV and Jeffrey Franklin, to build a plus-shaped floating pool in the East River. That’s right, just floating in the river right off the banks of Manhattan. With the rising summer heat in New York, it’s no surprise that people are imagining creative ways to dive into the surrounding waters and cool off. But the idea behind + Pool is hardly new, in fact, “floating baths” as they were known, are a part of the city’s history.
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Like many others, I was brimming with anticipation last Wednesday to see the High Line’s recent expansion, the second section of a three-part plan to build a linear park out of an abandoned railroad on Manhattan’s West Side. Ever since my first visit to the High Line last September, I have been smitten with the experience of standing on an elevated greenway overlooking the waterfront. I’ve been equally blown away by the ambition of a project initiated and envisioned by Friends of the High Line. It became my favorite spot in New York where I often brought my visitors to marvel at this innovative development.

So when Section 2 of the park opened on June 8^th, I hurried to 11^th Avenue in the morning, eager to catch my first glimpse of the city’s latest urban redesign. I started my visit where the old High Line ended, climbing up the stairs at the new access point on West 23^rd Street where I was greeted by a 4,500 square-foot lawn, the only portion of the High Line inviting visitors to sit on the grass. Looking at the flat lawn occupied by young students with sketchbooks and adults lying leisurely on mats, was like staring at a stock photo—seemingly orchestrated but perhaps a good sign that the public space was being used just as the designers intended.

But aside from the tiny patch of lawn, the rest of Section 2 seemed bleak. There are fewer features along the new addition, situated further apart from each other, making this section of the High Line feel more like a boardwalk and less like a park. Read more…

Hong Kong Island (view from Kowloon), photo: wired-destinations.com.

Our interdisciplinary team, supported by the Runstad Center at the University of Washington, recently went on a research trip to Hong Kong. We were there to view the city through a multifaceted lens, looking to identify success metrics and their outcomes within the built environment. This led us to interview a diverse array of government decision-makers, private developers, investors, consultants, planners, policy-makers, and community representatives. The themes that emerged from our conversations were not quite what we expected in this intensely capitalistic city containing the most skyscrapers in the world. The glittering towers and pulsing streetscapes are on a foundation that is not quite what it seems. Hong Kong, from what we could tell, is at a monumental tipping point. Read more…

Bjarke Ingels is known to fill up rooms where his fellow architects come to be entertained, to learn, and to bask in the young Dane’s enthusiasm and seemingly inexhaustible energy. Most recently he made an appearance at Relative Space in downtown NYC, at a pre-holiday evening organized by designerpages. There, he revealed, among other things, that BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) now has a New York office. While others of his profession lament the lack of work, the leader of BIG is poised to start in on one of his mega-projects in a city crushed by frozen credit.  Michael Holt and Marissa Looby talked to the architect who, among other inventive moves, likes to coin expressions to fit his new ideas, such as “hedonistic sustainability,”  “neighborship,”  “inclusivism”. The interview focuses on BIG’s  “trilogy” of housing complexes in Copenhagen - the VM House, the Mountain House, and the most recent 8House (featured in the December 2010 issue of Metropolis).

The 8 House, by Bjarke Ingels.

Michael Holt: The recently completed 8House is you third project with the same developer in what you label a “trilogy”. Could you explain a little bit about this trilogy of housing complexes?

Bjarke Ingels: The term of trilogy? I think it’s mostly a result of the fact that it is three buildings! All three projects are located in the same new part of town, governed within a questionable master plan. As a result the whole neighborhood is suffering from a sort of dilemma or challenge - a typical tabula rasa modern master plan - how do you impregnate the future city with diversity and identity? The whole master plan was based on a single typology – the perimeter block – which is the sort of archetypical European typology dominating most old European cities. Hence, all three projects try to deal with this idea of how can you wedge as much diversity and surprise and variation into a virgin city and how can you liberate yourself from the tyranny of the perimeter block. Read more…

Watch out, Nicolai Ouroussoff. There’s a new architecture critic in town. And he’s a very mad man.

John Slattery, the impeccably squinty-eyed actor who plays career scuzz Roger Sterling on AMC’s Mad Men, has no love for a chunky new sanitation facility due to rise over Hudson Square, where he lives with his wife and children, in downtown Manhattan. “It’s incredibly inefficient,” he said squinting in a slick, gently lit art gallery last night at a community rally for an alternative design. (The community being Soho, there was both a popcorn machine and wine.) “It doesn’t take into account the people that live here.”

He went on: “The attention this received has spun the community’s concern for the as-designed project as, ‘We don’t want it in our neighborhood. Not in our backyard.’ That’s not the case at all. All we’re saying is we have a smart, better, cheaper, more responsible, more efficient, more sustainable, and more forward-looking design. It’s better in every way.”

What Slattery and his brethren are championing is, essentially, a greener vision of the neighborhood. Hudson Square is an awkward site off the Hudson River, an industrial ghost town that has only recently fetched up with New York’s (pre-crash) condominium craze. It has since become a wealthy redoubt with scarce few amenities; an ersatz Soho. Residents say it has some of the poorest air quality and among the least public green space in the five boroughs. Now, the city’s gone and made things worse with a plan to erect a monolithic (and vaguely prison-like) 138-foot-tall garbage-truck garage over two acres. Read more…