The Traditional Air Conditioner

Design and Drawing by James Ray Polk, Architect

This week's newspaper column: (Read it in the Hattiesburg American)

In spring, thoughts turn to love. In summer – even for hopeless romantics - thoughts turn to air conditioning.

Nowadays, we Americans have all become accustomed to the expectation that every building must be equipped with air conditioning to mitigate the summer heat. Air conditioning is as ubiquitous as walls, roof, and floor in any modern home. Who could live without it? I’ll tell you who: our ancestors.

Now when I say ancestors, I’m not referring to Ice Age cave painters, I’m talking about our immediate predecessors. The first modern electric air conditioner was invented by Willis Haviland Carrier in 1902, barely over a century ago, and air conditioners did not become “standard equipment” in homes until after World War II.

That means, most likely, everybody reading this article had parents, grandparents, or great grandparents who lived much of their lives in non-air conditioned houses. How did they do it?

In short, houses were built to “be” air conditioners.

You’ve probably noticed that older homes have tall ceilings. Far from being a statement of high style, those ceilings had a purpose. They helped cool a home in the summer by taking advantage of a basic law of physics called convection. Hot air rises and cool air sinks, thus those high ceilings took into consideration the proportions of our human frame distributing the hottest air in the house to the empty space above the heads of its inhabitants.

Look closer at that vintage home and you’ll see transoms above the interior doorways. Again, the origin of this detail had nothing to do with aesthetics. Open the transoms in the summer months and hot air migrated from room to room until it escaped through a high vent. (The most elaborate vents took the form of ornate hat-shaped roof embellishments called cupolas.) And as hot air escaped, the home naturally balanced the air pressure within by drawing cooler air through large low windows under shaded porches.

Presto! - natural air conditioning.

Can we still do this today? Of course! It’s a simple matter of design. It may be a lost art, but consider this: any run-of-the-mill builder a century ago knew how to build a home that conditioned itself. It’s not rocket science. Although our reconstituted sensitivities to summer heat may require that electric air conditioning be utilized in the hottest parts of summer, especially at midday, a modern-day home can be cooled using this principle.

So if you’re planning to build a new home or renovate an existing one, think about the air flow. Use porches or landscaping to shade windows, install operable transoms, and allow the air to escape through a ceiling vent. For added comfort, add a few ceiling fans to keep the air moving.

You may not want to give up your central air, but with a little forethought, you can bring down the temperature and your summer electric bill – naturally.

Commerce Station: A Sustainable Office Park

Image: James Ray Polk, Architect



Too often, office parks are characterized by an ocean of parking, many times without a tree in sight. Not only does that offer up a brutal visual environment for users and passers-by, it's also not very kind to natural earth systems.

In this scheme, the building footprints have been scaled down (allowing for a wide variety of tenant spaces) with natural indigenous landscaping interspersed throughout the site. The green buffers offers a softer, more pleasant work environment while simultaneously creating a more temperate micro-climate, mitigating stormwater run-off, and controlling erosion.

Some people are eager to promote the myth that green design is not business-friendly. Here, the developer - Hub Development LLC of Hattiesburg, Mississippi - frees up capital by building the structure along with adjacent infrastructure when a lease or sale agreement is made with a tenant rather than constructing the entire project at once and servicing the note until spaces are full, or just as bad, putting committed tenants in limbo until a certain percentage of the project is leased. It also allows for maximum flexibility and responsiveness as each space can be custom designed to meet the particular tenant's needs. That gives Hub Development an advantage over their competitors in today's tight commercial leasing environment.

The building on the corner is currently under construction and will be fully complete and ready for its new occupant - ironically, the James Insurance Agency - in a few weeks; stay tuned for photos of the finished building!

The Sustainable Life of Leonardo da Vinci

Today's newspaper column: (Read it in the Hattiesburg American.)

You’ve heard of Leonardo da Vinci; he’s the guy who created the world’s most famous painting: the Mona Lisa.

But did you know that Leonardo embraced what we now consider a green lifestyle? And are you aware that, over five centuries ago, he articulated a way of holistic thinking that matches up perfectly with the principles of sustainability?

Born into the Dark Ages, Leonardo (1452 – 1519) ushered in an age of open-minded thinking that changed the course of history. In the thousand years before Leonardo (with notable exceptions of the windmill and the gothic cathedral) not much happened that was new and innovative. The groupthink of the day was “everything worthwhile had already been thought of or invented; only fools waste time and effort in the pursuit of new ideas.” Leonardo rejected that stagnant way of thinking.

In his day, Leonardo was famous for his amazing strength and dexterity. So extraordinary was his grace and poise, that people would peer out their windows just to watch him walk down the street. Leonardo consciously cultivated total body fitness centered on aerobic conditioning and daily stretching exercises (twenty-first century translation: yoga) along with diet – Leonardo was a strict vegetarian. He ate a high-fiber diet consisting of fresh vegetables, legumes, olive oil, and plenty of water. And lest you think a vegetarian diet results in frailty or weakness, Leonardo was legendary for being able to bend horseshoes with his bare hands and for stopping horses in full gallop by catching hold of their reins.

Leonardo was guided by an insatiable curiosity. Never satisfied with the status quo, he always pushed forward seeking a greater and truer understanding of the issue at hand. Leonardo was an advocate of lifelong learning, asking confounding questions and seeking answers up until the day he died. And learning through demonstration was Leonardo’s highest truth. He didn’t take the word of “experts” as sacrosanct. In Leonardo’s world, personal experience, testing, and a willingness to learn from mistakes trumped established authority.

Leonardo practiced the art of refinement of the senses. To understand something fully, he encouraged others to pay special attention to seeing, touching, hearing, smelling, and tasting to heighten the experience, and thus lead to a greater understanding of how things are and how things work.

Rather than looking at dichotomies (it’s either this or that) Leonardo embraced ambiguity and uncertainty, and he recognized and appreciated the interconnectedness of all things. In the world of sustainability, we call this “systems thinking.”

And finally, Leonardo sought in all things to achieve a balance of art and science, a synthesis of imagination and logic, in an act of whole-brain thinking that allowed him to navigate past prejudices and biases that all too often stand in the way of seeing the world as it is, not just as one wants it to be.

We can’t all be Leonardos, but with a little help from the original “Renaissance Man” we can begin to see the forest AND the trees.

Thomas Friedman: Green the Bailout

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/opinion/28friedman.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

Thomas L. Friedman: The Power of Green

One day Iraq, our post-9/11 trauma and the divisiveness of the Bush years will all be behind us — and America will need, and want, to get its groove back. We will need to find a way to reknit America at home, reconnect America abroad and restore America to its natural place in the global order — as the beacon of progress, hope and inspiration. I have an idea how. It’s called “green.”

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15green.t.html?pagewanted=print

News Flash

The latest newspaper article: Green is the New Green.

http://hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080629/BUSINESS/806290319

The High Price of Doing Nothing

Here on the eve of the Memorial Day weekend, the beginning of summer when people traditionally take long weekend vacations - mostly driving or flying to their destination – and gas prices keep going up and up and up. The whole country is complaining (except for oil and gas companies) because it’s affecting everybody’s bottom line.

I can’t help but wonder what things would be like if we had acted over the past decade to wean ourselves from an oil-based transportation system. But instead of proactive planning, our national leadership took the position that we should let the “market” determine our energy policy. Whenever the idea of raising gas mileage standards on cars was advocated, American automakers fought back and blindly pumped out the SUV’s. And when the notion that the federal government should incentivize the development of alternative energies was presented, oil companies cried foul and Congress caved. Aided and abetted by a backward-looking Administration and a Congress hostile to visionary thinking, no action was taken (until last year’s upping of CAFE standards) to begin lessening this country’s dependence on oil.

As a country, we’ve drifted aimlessly – no rudder, no oar - oblivious to the consequences of our actions. The status quo prevailed as world dynamics changed; and the dynamics changed drastically. Now here we are.

Some say “it was impossible to see this coming.”

Just one problem: we did see this coming.

In the 2000 election, the candidates’ positions were clear. And yet, the issue of energy independence and moving away from an oil- and gas- and coal-based economy was given very little play in the press, and was not taken seriously by the American public.

Al Gore famously went on Saturday Night Live a couple of years ago and opened the show (from an alternative universe) as president addressing the American people from the Oval Office. Among other things, Gore deadpanned about how, because of his insistence on aggressively pursuing alternative energy, there was now a glut of oil and gas prices were at record lows. Gas was 19 cents a gallon, and oil companies were hurting. He urged the public to help out the ailing oil companies because 'if it were the other way around, I'm sure they would help us.'

Hyperbole aside, if indeed we had aggressively pursued a proactive energy policy over the past 8 years rather than leaving things to chance, we would not now be in the grips of a gas crisis. Low mileage vehicles, sprawl, and the lack of alternative energy options have backed us into a corner and, increasingly, is lowering our collective standard of living.

What if in 2000, instead of deriding candidates over how many times someone said “lockbox” (it sounds so silly) or hyperventilating over “exaggerations,” we engaged in a national discussion about the issues that surely would affect our lives in a meaningful way in the years to come. And what if we had considered who best would lead us in the complexities of a changing energy economy?

People said "it’s either jobs or the economy." They have been proven wrong. Turns out green collar jobs expand wildly when the environment is respected and preserved. Alternative energy-related jobs are now expanding as other sectors loose jobs.

This year we have another chance. Will we rise to the occasion, or will we get bogged down in ‘who I’d rather have a beer with’ and risk another national hangover?

Here’s a link to Gore’s satirical opening to SNL. Enjoy!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1164334372751354391

The Green Ethic

Consider How far we've come.

Just a few short years ago, people who used words like 'green, organic, natural' to describe a better way of life were marginalized and dismissed by most of society, big business, the press, and politicians as if they were a hopeless cult of idealists who "just didn't get it." Conspicuous consumption was pitched as the highest moral paradigm, and Americans bought in - literally. While a few dedicated individuals in the green movement worked tirelessly in the trenches over the 70's, 80's, and 90's, people-turned-consumers were consumed by consumerism.

Now, green is the latest national craze.

"Time to jump on the bandwagon - don't be the last person on your block to go green!" "Look at me, I'm greeeeeeeeeen!!!"

What happened?

Well, to be truthful, gluttonous consumerism caught up with us.

Americans bought big gas-guzzling vehicles, trumped up the price of housing (using the home equity loan like an ATM), and maxed out credit cards to buy things we really could do without. We outsourced everything - even the kitchen sink - under the banner of "globalism." Sprawl was crowned king and McMansions became as ubiquitous as Big Macs.

Now as gas prices head towards $4 a gallon, driving that SUV 60 miles to and from work while your spouse chauffeurs kids through traffic jams from this centralized county school to that far-away soccer field just doesn't look like utopia any more.

For the majority of Americans, its now hitting home (especially the one way out in suburbia or even farther out in exurbia). The financial and cultural strain brought about by a consumption-driven ethic has reached a tipping point. Its not just theory any more; our collective blind eye to the idea of sustainability is affecting people's lives in profoundly negative ways. The cost has been exacted in time, money, and culture. In 2008, the consequences of hyper-consumption are painfully obvious to everybody except the ostriches among us.

(Here's where some of you reading this post can mutter a cathartic "I told you so").

With this realization that "green is good," the business community is taking note.

Automobile companies, who for decades fought against raising gas mileage standards, are now trumpeting hybrid vehicles, even though you can't buy them yet. Developers talk up New Urbanist communities as a green living alternative, although most people can't afford to live in one. Oil and chemical companies are even spinning the PR that the only reason they have ever been in the business is to save the planet. All the while their carbon footprints increase.

Has big business now all of a sudden seen the light? Or is this just a new form of consumerism? Is all the clamor a real sea change, or just "greenwashing" - a term defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as 'the dissemination of misleading information by an organization to conceal its abuse of the environment in order to present a positive public image'?

So what's a nascent green enthusiast to believe? How do we define "green"? How can we know which sustainable options enhance our personal well-being and improve the health of the planet, and which choices are just hype?

I submit to you, the "green ethic."

Over the next few days, we will be discussing the meaning of green. Let's dig deeper than "checklists" and PR campaigns - and hopefully we'll cut through the organic bull droppings. Please feel free to join in on the discussion.

America's Greenest Cities

The results are in.

Portland, Oregon is the greenest city in the United States according to a new study by Popular Science.

Portland scored high on its use of renewable energy, public transportation, green space, and for its abundance of green buildings. Walking and biking in Portland is an option to many inhabitants, improving the health and air quality of the region.

The Top 10 Cities:

Portland, OR
San Francisco, CA
Boston, MA
Oakland, CA
Eugene, OR
Cambridge, MA
Berkeley, CA
Seattle, WA
Chicago, IL
Austin, TX

The study rated cities with populations over 100,000 in four categories to compile the rankings:

Electricity : Cities score points for drawing their energy from renewable sources such as wind, solar, biomass and hydroelectric power, as well as for offering incentives for residents to invest in their own power sources, like roof-mounted solar panels.

Transportation : High scores go to cities whose commuters take public transportation or carpool. Air quality also plays a role.

Green living : Cities earn points for the number of buildings certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, as well as for devoting area to green space, such as public parks and nature preserves.

Recycling and green perspective : This measures how comprehensive a city’s recycling program is (if the city collects old electronics, for example) and how important its citizens consider environmental issues.

For a list of the 50 greenest cities in the United States and to find out what cities are doing in the area of environmental responsibility, see the article. Here’s the link.

http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2008-02/americas-50-greenest-cities

This Week: Green Cities.

Living green in an urban environment.

Micheal Berk's GreenMobile

Professor Michael Berk has some innovative ideas.

His GreenMobile concept combines sustainability, energy efficiency, affordability, and mobility for a fresh take on green housing. In one clean stroke, this Architect shatters the myth that green costs more. With prices starting at about $50,000, this green home is affordable by most of the American population.

The GreenMobile draws on modular and manufactured home technologies in to create a handsome structure that can be easily transported and set up on-site in short order. Berk’s design is perfect for emergency housing, and even more perfect for the green-conscious, budget-savvy homeowner.

Designed with solar panels and a rainwater collection system, this new breed of home is no slave to the "grid." The GreenMobile can work independently of infrastructure, or as a hybrid-house attached to local utilities. Homebuyers need not depend on the availability of utilities to dictate their choice of home sites.

And keeping the footprint small (a two-bedroom model is 890 square feet, a one-bedroom is 560 square feet) keeps costs in check; the McMansion may have been the fad in the recent past, but modern-day economics is sending too-big houses the way of the dinosaur.

GreenMobile was awarded an almost $6 million grant recently from FEMA's Alternative Housing Pilot Program (part of Congress' post-Katrina relief funding) in an effort to develop a new generation of disaster-relief housing - a good use of taxpayer money, in my opinion. A prototype is currently under development to replace some of the FEMA trailers on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Approximately 80 units are expected to be produced later on this year.

Check out the poster of the GreenMobile’s winning entry in last year’s Lifecycle Building Challenge:

http://www.lifecyclebuilding.org/files/poster-GreenMobile.pdf

And for more information on Professor Michael Berk and GreenMobile development, go to his web site:

http://www.caad.msstate.edu/mberk

Green is the new Green

Many still buy into the myth that "building green" means a building project has to cost more. Conventional wisdom has been telling us for years that respecting and protecting the natural environment is at odds with healthy economic development.

Conventional wisdom lied.

Let's look at the developer's first "touch" of the land - site work - as an example. Does it cost more to use green building principles in site development?

Consider this.

Clear-cutting and flattening a wooded site, while expeditious for the developer and engineer - it just takes one note on a drawing to "clear all vegetation" - has numerous hidden and direct costs.

Every time you see men and machines moving dirt on a clear-cut site, somebody is paying the tab. Erosion becomes an issue where it was not before, and costs are incurred mitigating the manufactured problem. Additional engineering fees come about because the site's storm water drainage system, which worked perfectly before the site was touched, must now be outfitted with large, buried concrete culverts or an open man-made ditch or stream. Here again, we're adding money on top of money.

Heavy intervention on a building site always costs more than working with the natural elements. Leaving lowlands natural allows for denser development in the highlands with net equality in the development potential while keeping the natural drainage system (provided free by Mother Nature) in tact.

And then there are the hidden costs. A neighborhood with mature trees is more beautiful and more temperate than a clear-cut site. Shade in the summer cuts cooling costs, and natural vegetation cuts the bitter wind in the winter. Ignoring these "comfort" issues by heavy-handed development diminishes the quality of life of the inhabitants, the users, and the public at large.

A few dollars of fast cash to the developer from selling the trees does not even begin to make up for the lack of them. You can wait 30 years for the ecosystem to replenish itself, or you can spend a hansom sum on landscaping (and still wait 10 years) to reclaim the quality of life resulting from leaving well enough alone.

So building green, when done with creative planning and forethought, adds value and contributes to the bottom line of a building project. Sometimes dramatically.

Green is now the new Green.