Green ArchiTEXT

Work in Progress: Mithun's Pier 56 Office, "a living laboratory for sustainable strategies"

My current article for Eco-Structure Magazine:

In any weather, the views from Seattle’s Pier 56 to the Olympic Mountains are nothing short of spectacular: cruise ships and ferries plying the waters of Elliott Bay, misty islands in the distance, occasionally an orca surfacing, seabirds circling. Home to architectural firm Mithun for the past 10 years, the pier marks the intersection of old and new, of history and a bright green tomorrow.

via www.eco-structure.com

ALL PHOTOS: Dave Macaulay

The Challenge: Building Life Cycle

In "Built to Last: Measuring the Life Cycle of a Facility", Sarah Fister Gale explores the tools and methods used in life cycle assessment (LCA), a holistic approach to new building construction. For the Greener Buildings article, she writes:

"Defining the carbon footprint of a building is an elusive and complex process. Unlike individual products that have well-defined shelf lives and finite ingredients, buildings stand for decades, endure climatic extremes and will be used for multiple purposes.

Every decision that goes into the design, material choice and energy use in a building has a long-term effect. "Buildings are the most long-lived products we make," says Tom Gloria, chief knowledge officer for eQuilibrium Solutions Corporation, a sustainable management services company in Boston.

Their longevity makes getting an accurate life cycle assessment (LCA) complicated. LCA is a method of holistically evaluating the environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle, from the harvesting of raw materials through processing, manufacture, installation, use, and ultimately disposal or recycling or the entire envelope."

Better understanding of a building's life cycle, in fact, is an area gaining greater attention lately. The Lifecycle Building Challenge, which launched last year, just issued a call for entries for its second competition, LBC2: "Submit your innovative project, design, or idea for reducing to conserve construction and demolition materials and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by designing buildings for adaptability and disassembly."

Go here for more information.

ScrapHouse Revisited

PHOTOS: Cesar Rubio Photography, Public Architecture

ScrapHouse gives whole new meaning to the idea of re-use, recycling and sustainability. In preparation for World Environment Day 2005, this temporary demonstration home was designed and blitz-built over two weeks using scrap and salvaged materials for display on Civic Center Plaza next to San Francisco City Hall from June 2 to 5, 2005. It was later featured on the National Geographic Channel (September 2006) and will be on display again at San Francisco’s Econnovation design show later this month.

The project was originally conceived as a documentary film by Emmy award-winner Anna Fitch. She and a team of San Francisco architects, artists, contractors, city officials and engineers wanted to completely rethink the design of a single-family home with elegant solutions inspired by the abundance of scrap material.

IMAGE: Sean Ahlquist

They spent three weeks scouring Bay Area dumps, salvage yards and active construction sites for building materials, furnishings and finishes. In this prototypical design, every material, from the foundation to the front door, was reclaimed and re-used. Walls were sheathed with street signs and shower doors. Solid core doors were repurposed as flooring material. Outdated phone books became a textured insulating wall. Retired fire hoses from the San Francisco Fire Department were deployed as wall paneling.

With sponsorship from the group Public Architecture, ScrapHouse lives on in print, film and online. You can learn more at the ScrapHouse Web site.