Why do I say this?
Because reading today's chapter from Ecocities really got me thinking...
"The City Today" chapter references a building in Oakland, California called the Montgomery Ward Building as an example of "appropriate technology." To give some formal definition of this, I'll quote from the book: "Appropriate technology was, in Schumacher's words, technology with a 'human face,' and it came to include solar, wind, geothermal, and biological fuels such as waste wood chips and alcohol; energy conservation measures such as weather stripping and insulation of water heaters, pipes, and buildings; recycling of all sorts; soil building through composting and human waste recovery; agricultural practices such as integrated pest management and companion planting; more efficient transportation systems such as bicycles and public transit vehicles, transcontinental railways and electric cars."
Wow, talk about one giant ron-on sentence...haha. Basically appropriate technology was justified in the design of our cities as, "If the tecniology seemed appropriate to a healthier world, it qualified."
Getting back from my tangent...
The Montgomery Ward Building is (or was) an example that Richard Register found to clarify the continuity of bridge between appropriate technology and ecocities. From the reading I learned that this department store had some amazing ecological practices. It was eight stories tall and covered almost a two-block area. Here's how amazing, and efficient, and completely logical their practices were:
On the first floor the goods arrived from a short spur off the regional rail line that came right into the building. Those goods were transported or "transferred" to the upper floors by a freight elevator. Customers would arrive to the building in the second floor called, the show room, where there were displays that could be looked over and where they could place an order at the sales counter. Their orders were written down, rolled up, and slipped into a canister placed in a pneumatic tube and sucked up to one of the six stories of warehousing above. This makes me think of those drive-thru banking canisters where you put your deposit or withdrawal slip and it gets sucked up and delivered to the bank teller. Anyways... once the order was placed and in one of the warehousing floors, a clerk picked it up and, on roller skates (how fun!), zipped off to the correct shelves to find the item and bring it back to a spiral delivery chute, which was then delivered to the show room by gravity. All of this happened in typically less than two minutes. Wait, what? Talk about an efficient system! Really, it is quite the amazing and efficient way to get items to a customer (not to mention fun riding roller blades at work!). Awesome. - Further the customer paid for the item, carried it out the door only a few feet away, and usually went home by transit - or if the package was large, it could be delivered by a truck already making the rounds.
So not only is this building efficient by its practices with having a local (just up the next floor or so) warehouse with all its inventory, but it was also efficient because transit came right into the building and there was enough efficient transit-oriented-designed infrastructure that allowed people to take transit to and from it, also. This blew my mind away... I've never heard of this building but it sounds amazing! I'd love to go see it but only I can't because sadly it was demolished...
Really??? Such an efficient building so many practical ways and it was demolished? The reason for the demolition is so aggravating, "Though it was exemplary for working well with conservation, it was demolished due to ego-infested local politics." Ego, that is the problem, and politics. It really is revolting to think of them demolishing such a building that should have been more of a landmark for illustrating how working intelligently in the third dimension solves numerous problems in one compact and elegant design." This building sounds amazing; ideal for ecological practices in most "big box" buildings...I can't believe it was demolished...This is why I think we have a nasty habit of throwing away the good things and replacing them with something worse.
Thinking of what we replaced this efficient system with might be even more revolting. Today, we have the goods warehoused in one-story big box "sheds" that are ten to forty iles (if not more) from Oakland that are transported by a fleet of trucks "clogging the freeways and burning millions of gallons of fuel a year." Instead of arriving by transit, the customer drives their car to the one-story big-box building that they have to walk to from a huge land wasting parking lot. Once inside they have to wander the giant shelves trying to find what they want and if they're lucky they might find an employee to help them spend lots of time finding their product and then carry it themselves back to the checkout line, pay for it, and finally take it back to the parking lot and drive far back to their home.
This really makes me more aware of how society is constrained to this and it makes me look a lot more negatively on big box buildings such as Costco and Sam's Club. Putting the Montgomery Ward Building and our current practices side-by-side really puts light on how messed up our system really is...
As I grow and learn each year in college in the Architecture & Planning program, I've grown to hate big-box buildings and their gargantuan parking lots... This just fuels that hate because of how much of a waste of materials and energy it is to transport the goods and for the consumer to pick it up.
Forgive me for quoting again from Richard Register, but this is good stuff!
"Permit me to say that this is an insane waste of fossil fuels, asphalt, concrete, and the manufacture of hundreds of trucks, accompanied by massive quantities of air pollution and the consumption of millions of hours of people's time and millions of dollars of people's money to move products in today's manner as compared to taking transit to the old Montgomery Ward Building and having goods delivered to your hands by a clerk on roller skates and gravity. Compounding the insanity, as Grube pointed out in defending the building, was the destruction of thousands of tons of building materials and of all the energy that went into creating the building. The structure could have been remodeled successfully, as, in fact, shortly before the demolition of the Oakland facility, was the case with the old Montgomery Ward buildings in Portland, Chicago, and Baltimore. It could have remained one of the best examples of urban ecological design and efficiency, of appropriate technologies united by appropriate architecture and urban layout." - pg 114-115, Ecocities
He puts it beautifully... I hate the demolition of buildings with a burning passion... If you are going to demolish a building if it is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for the Public's Health, Safety, and Welfare, then at least salvage the building materials and reuse them. Otherwise I think renovation and remodeling of buildings is much more efficient and "eco-friendly" than such destructive and consumptive measures as the demolition and reconstruction of buildings.
It is part of my job as a future Architect with a background in Urban Planning/Ecology and a Sustainability Certificat, that I will be the inducer of such positive change in the way we design our cities and the buildings within them.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
1/16/13 - "The City in History"
Today, I'd like to talk about part of my observation/thoughts from the reading we read for today in "Ecocities" on the chapter called "The City in History."
It was very interesting learning about how cities have come from villages to small towns to eventually the giant places they are today. What particularly stood out to me was the World Trade Center replacement model or scheme. Initially the author portrays (on page 84) a variety of forms representing all versions proposed for the new World Trade Center - "with 11 million square feet of commercial space...Not mixed uses. Not community." The plot or diagram illustrates a large white blank space void where the World Trade Center (and all of its proposed designs) would be located. Interestingly, on page 87, there is an actual image or diagram of it as a "world community facing the Statue of Liberty." The author describes it this way: "A highly mixed-use community celebrating the best of Manhattan and the United States brings the best of trade to the site." He describes that facing south on the 20th floor is a "view plaza" or "keyhole" that has a great view towards the south over some of the other buildings in the area.
This diagram really stood out to me. I thought it was excellently portrayed by the author between both pages/diagrams and it really gives a visual of what our communities can really be like - how they can be designed. To me, as an architecture and planning student, this really helps me visualize the constraints of our society today with not building directly for people, as well as helps me recognize the potential for the design of communities in a way that enhances the quality of life in an area or project.
It was very interesting learning about how cities have come from villages to small towns to eventually the giant places they are today. What particularly stood out to me was the World Trade Center replacement model or scheme. Initially the author portrays (on page 84) a variety of forms representing all versions proposed for the new World Trade Center - "with 11 million square feet of commercial space...Not mixed uses. Not community." The plot or diagram illustrates a large white blank space void where the World Trade Center (and all of its proposed designs) would be located. Interestingly, on page 87, there is an actual image or diagram of it as a "world community facing the Statue of Liberty." The author describes it this way: "A highly mixed-use community celebrating the best of Manhattan and the United States brings the best of trade to the site." He describes that facing south on the 20th floor is a "view plaza" or "keyhole" that has a great view towards the south over some of the other buildings in the area.
This diagram really stood out to me. I thought it was excellently portrayed by the author between both pages/diagrams and it really gives a visual of what our communities can really be like - how they can be designed. To me, as an architecture and planning student, this really helps me visualize the constraints of our society today with not building directly for people, as well as helps me recognize the potential for the design of communities in a way that enhances the quality of life in an area or project.
1/14/13 - Thinking GREEN and Being Optimistic
Today, I was waiting for the train reading "Ecocities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature." I looked on the back and noticed that the publishing company was New Society Publishers. Underneath the publishing company's name, it says "Ancient forest friendly: printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper." It made me think of the various author's books I read (or have read) and their publishers. I never see them stating that they print on 100% post-consumer recycled paper. It makes me wonder what they would do, if anything, if I sent them each a letter asking them to consider printing on post-consumer recycled paper. I could even do research on the benefits and costs of using and printing on that kind of paper and send that, as well. What would they do? Would they even respond? Or would they just toss it in the garbage (or recycling bin)? Incremental Change. It's a way of thinking that is something I'm learning more and more about in this class.The awesome thing is that it isn't super difficult to do such things.
Today in class, Professor Goldsmith handed out a flyer for the University of Utah's Innovative Sustainability Symposium on February 21st, 2013. He asked us to tell him what stood out to us after reading over the flyer. I mentioned the bold phrase, "We are scared, yet not paralyzed." When asked why this phrase spoke to me, I mentioned that it is because of the things in the environment that are changing, or depleting negatively and it is frightening, however we are not going to just sit by and be frozen by them. I just really liked how optimistic it is to not focus on the gloom and doom, but through the awareness of it we are not going to be paralyzed or immobilized by it. We are going to take action to combat it and reverse the negative effects of the automobile, sprawl, and many other things. We are going to come up with solutions to the problem and one of the first steps to do this incremental change is the idea and action of this Innovation Symposium the University of Utah is having.
Another student responded to my response to the phrase, or the phrase itself...I'm not particularly sure. But more the less that is beside the point. She said she is NOT AFRAID at all. It doesn't scare her when she hears about climate change and the depletion of fresh water, etc. She knows we are going to get out of it. My thoughtful (not spoken) response was that I'm not scared, but I am aware of these negative changes. I don't cower down in fear. The only thing I fear is God, and I believe God is ultimately in control and He turns everything for the greater good, even things that threaten our every day lives. Ultimately the single phrase "We are scared, yet not paralyzed," is empowering to me. So often we are all caught up in the negatives in this environmental world where we are more and more attempting to "fix" the problems with "being green" and "sustainability." But we focus on the negatives everywhere: school shootings, what's wrong in a relationship, the damages of natural disasters, and other things. We can't be immobilized by these things and we ought to be aware of the good in life and take positive action. In my Design of the Built Environment class my teacher pointed out that as of of around 2008 we are in an ecological overshoot and our ecological footprint has been exceeded - the Earth's Biocapacity. Someone asked him a question about the negative aspects of that observation and his response was compelling. He said that he is not focused on the negative and has a very optimistic point of view on all of this and part of the purpose of this class (The Design of the Built Envrironment) is to observe how we can make positive change and do our part to resolvean issue he believes will ultimately sort itself out. It really gives me a new outlook, perspective, and perception on this whole sustainable thing.
We can influence change. We need to be optimistic.
Today in class, Professor Goldsmith handed out a flyer for the University of Utah's Innovative Sustainability Symposium on February 21st, 2013. He asked us to tell him what stood out to us after reading over the flyer. I mentioned the bold phrase, "We are scared, yet not paralyzed." When asked why this phrase spoke to me, I mentioned that it is because of the things in the environment that are changing, or depleting negatively and it is frightening, however we are not going to just sit by and be frozen by them. I just really liked how optimistic it is to not focus on the gloom and doom, but through the awareness of it we are not going to be paralyzed or immobilized by it. We are going to take action to combat it and reverse the negative effects of the automobile, sprawl, and many other things. We are going to come up with solutions to the problem and one of the first steps to do this incremental change is the idea and action of this Innovation Symposium the University of Utah is having.
Another student responded to my response to the phrase, or the phrase itself...I'm not particularly sure. But more the less that is beside the point. She said she is NOT AFRAID at all. It doesn't scare her when she hears about climate change and the depletion of fresh water, etc. She knows we are going to get out of it. My thoughtful (not spoken) response was that I'm not scared, but I am aware of these negative changes. I don't cower down in fear. The only thing I fear is God, and I believe God is ultimately in control and He turns everything for the greater good, even things that threaten our every day lives. Ultimately the single phrase "We are scared, yet not paralyzed," is empowering to me. So often we are all caught up in the negatives in this environmental world where we are more and more attempting to "fix" the problems with "being green" and "sustainability." But we focus on the negatives everywhere: school shootings, what's wrong in a relationship, the damages of natural disasters, and other things. We can't be immobilized by these things and we ought to be aware of the good in life and take positive action. In my Design of the Built Environment class my teacher pointed out that as of of around 2008 we are in an ecological overshoot and our ecological footprint has been exceeded - the Earth's Biocapacity. Someone asked him a question about the negative aspects of that observation and his response was compelling. He said that he is not focused on the negative and has a very optimistic point of view on all of this and part of the purpose of this class (The Design of the Built Envrironment) is to observe how we can make positive change and do our part to resolvean issue he believes will ultimately sort itself out. It really gives me a new outlook, perspective, and perception on this whole sustainable thing.
We can influence change. We need to be optimistic.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)