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It's the month of reckoning in the USA: taxes, filings and that great exchange between citizens and their local financial and accounting professionals. The only sure thing in life, death and taxes. And yet another element of coming to account has been laid on the table: a unified building code for sustainable practices in the USA and its properties and projects abroad, the 2012 International Green Construction Code. This is a mandatory model code which will be adopted throughout the country that supersedes a myriad collection of voluntary and local "green" standards, including the LEED standard. This overlay code came about because of the need for a common standard that complies with the requirements in the US and abroad for a means of requiring energy and water conservation and carbon reduction. As the American Institute of Architects puts it, this is a game-changer for the USA and the global community.
The International Code Council is an industry organization that writes and establishes the model codes (IBC) adopted in 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, NYC, Guam, and the Northern Marianas Islands. It has just issued the new IgCC for adoption by all jurisdictions. It's the response by the building industry to create a common groundwork that attempts to reduce the impact of the built environment on ecosystems by requiring green strategies to be implemented throughout the country.
The IgCC is the first model code that includes sustainability measures for the entire construction project and its site from design through construction, certificate of occupancy and beyond. The new code is expected to make buildings more efficient, reduce waste, and have a positive impact on health, safety and community welfare. The IgCC creates a regulatory framework for new and existing buildings, establishing minimum green requirements for buildings and complementing voluntary rating systems which may extend beyond the customizable baseline of the IgCC. The code acts as an overlay to the existing set of International Codes, including provisions of the International Energy Conservation Code and ICC-700, the National Green Building Standard, and incorporates ASHRAE Standard 189.1 as an alternate path to compliance. Adoption of this code is already going forward in jurisdictions that want to benchmark the attributes of sustainable construction, rather than trying to cope with many kinds of certifications, products and processes.
The new code also tackles water reduction and grey water, ventilation system design, and most importantly, it tracks measures which improve a building’s thermal envelope. Some LEED buildings have missed their energy goals, and a big reason is because neither LEED nor code looked closely at wall assemblies, windows, and doors. HVAC equipment efficiency is also boosted, which also now includes a section on evaporative coolers.
This model code is the new consensus measure of sustainability throughout the USA, and is another step forward in the recognition that the entire industry must be responsible in the development of the built environment and focus on preservation of natural resources and processes, as opposed to the old dinosaur model of burning up our resources beyond the planet's ability to support human activities.
California population 2010..........37,253,956California population 2000..........33,871,648California population 1990..........29,760,021
That's about 4 million more people every decade. So we're looking at a minimum of around 41 million people in 2020, more if you follow the "official" population projections from Sacramento. For which we don't even have the resources now, notably water. Not to mention the impact of climate change, which produces more extremes of heat and shifts in water patterns because of the climate change we're experiencing. So how is it possible to plan ahead for the world we're going to be living in over the next century?
These issues are raised on a map site for California provided by a joint effort by California Universities, the California Energy Commission and Google. It's an interactive tool at the website Cal-Adapt.org, which allows people to use climate prediction tools for themselves and use this for planning issues. The site encourages community involvement and local solutions from people.
An example and summary of making local use of the site is posted at Mother Jones.
Following the example of this exercise, I checked my local Southern California area and was distressed to find that that it's all just hotter and more vulnerable to wildfires and thus pollution. Add to this the very likely water shortages and one begins to wonder how any population increase is feasible at all, particularly given the challenges in our urban areas at the moment.
It's not just the physical and resource limitations. We're facing infrastructure degradation due to lack of maintenance, particularly the watershed and open spaces that provide what little relief we have now from the eroded urban landscape that has sprawled across the Southern California basin. The strategies discussed by public officials and planners, which involve greater densities and lower consumption of all resources, appears to be a dodge to the real issue of, can this continue? How do we repair the ecological damage and provide for the regeneration of natural processes? Where does the money come from now if we couldn't afford to maintain what we had even during the good times?
Clearly a major shift in priorities is called for, and one that will require a different kind of economic approach to business, lifestyles, quality of life issues and community. This shift will necessarily arise from a new frugality and economy of means that this situation is going to force upon us. If the natural environment can't support the scale of human encroachment that is occurring, we have a serious set of choices ahead of us, hopefully ones that won't be made by lurching from climate crisis to food crisis to energy crisis to water crisis. It will most likely mean coming to grips with population impacts and not trying to dodge the bullet with more "transit oriented development". More effective human habitation and less resource demand can only be managed by controlling the numbers, which means that a "market economy" will have to dramatically reconfigure to succeed in a shrinking market scenario.
These answers will arise, no doubt, from a younger generation that will respond to this bleak future with a new value system and new answers that potentially reject all the assumptions that the current leadership is operating from. Is Green Revolutionary?
It's certainly political.
More action on the Hahamongna front right now. Last Tuesday night, there was a meeting of the Hahamongna Watershed Park Advisory Committee at La Casita on Arroyo Boulevard about the HWP Annex and Environmental Education Center Planning. The attending public was asked to participate in a Vision and Mission statement for the Annex project, facilitated by Cyndee Whitney, City of Pasadena Dept. of Human Resources. A bit curious, since the facility has already been the subject of a long debate on its size and purpose, as a replacement for the existing structure.
All public input since 2008, including the Visioning exercise last Tuesday night, has emphasized restoring the natural character of the site and incorporating natural materials into a minimal building footprint in the reuse scenario that has become somewhat of a compromise. On this round, it appears that the HWPAC is searching for metaphors to put into writing a desire for a structure that goes beyond the usual parks facility barn typology and potentially could be a demonstration facility that addresses the watershed and riparian habitat realities of managing human presence in a dynamic natural space. It could demonstrate, by its design, how watershed management starts with a structure that flows with the watershed contours, opens to the sun and seeks views of the forest and ridgelines to the north from an earth berm roof, for example. The desire is there to instill a closeness to natural environments and show by example what this means for sustainable process to produce a unique place for education and appreciation of Pasadena's largest natural asset, the Arroyo Seco.
The issue of sediment removal behind Devil's Gate dam and its use to infill Hahamongna is still ongoing. The County is currently considering ways to remove sediment from the dam; the presentation made by the County to the HWPAC last November is here. The plan is to remove about 15 acres of willow trees in order to clear sediment around Devil’s Gate Dam in September. A report on this part of the meeting is from Petrea.
There's also a meeting this Saturday at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center for the growing pushback on the silt and infill issues at the Arcadia Woodlands site that disastrously resulted in destruction of natural riparian habitat near the Santa Anita Dam, to be used as infill for silt. The Santa Anita Dam Riser Modification and Reservoir Sediment Removal Project was based upon an emergency presumably created by the Station Fire of 2009. Activists are hoping to form a committee that will have timely input into County sediment projects in the future, due to the lack of notice in the Arcadia situation.
This Saturday's meeting is a serious development in local environmental circles, and the hope is that it will force responsible watershed management at the regional level in the future through public pressure and activist support for sustainable practices in these areas adjacent to natural ecological systems. The Arcadia Woodlands and Hahamongna Watershed issues are flashpoints that illuminate the need to temper regional human encroachment and live within the means of the local watersheds and ecosystems.
This architectural mantra of the late '70's was an early definition of sustainability. Integrate flexibility and adaptability to future unknown uses; provide long span, high-load capacity structures, allow freedom of internal configuration within a passive envelope approach. This passive solar approach was one of form and orientation, much like the historical homes and structures that have evolved in different countries and cultures as a response to climate. Sustainability as defined by the Bruntland Commission in 1987: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." A site called Original Green goes into other attributes of "true sustainability", which emphasizes the sustainability of place and the notion of flexibility as the grounds for being sustainable.
This is fundamentally different than the "green" approach as codified by building codes and standards; the presupposition being that it relies on machines to reduce energy consumption. The LEED standards, in particular, are a system of counting up "green" points for certain products and systems that take into account the energy to produce and transport these products. There are points for site location and rehabilitation of existing structures, but again, a formula that may or may not generate good results.
This approach is being studied extensively by the building industry.There's a demonstration project by NASA that will take the extreme measure of an operating facility to see what the "green building" approach can be capable of. The National Audubon Society has built a prototype nature center structure in Los Angeles, and plans to build a thousand urban facilities around the country by 2020.
While the building industry is examining technological methods for energy conservation and reuse which has become the de facto code and LEED approach to the problem of consumption and energy use, there remains a more fundamental path towards sustainable habitation of the land. That has to do with the actual regenerative natural systems that we find in undisturbed ecosystems, which we're beginning to investigate more deeply. This approach is known as biomimicry in many fields, but in architecture it means adapting the strategies and structures of nature and using organic processes to develop and support habitable structures. The Biomimicry Institute in Missoula, Montana is promoting this approach, and has a network of resources and case studies.
In the meantime, as the photo above shows (click to read about collecting rainwater through a "skin"), there are all kinds of creative design experiments going on in form generation that are exploring these more nuanced approaches to sustainability that get to building form as a functioning biological system that integrates with the local site characteristics and consumes very little energy and water. While they're not scientific per se, they open many new possibilities that leave the code-generated "green" structures way behind their exploration of process.
A firm that is taking this process seriously by integrating management change of the design process is DLR Group. Exhibiting leadership in the adoption of the AIA's 2030 Plan addressing global challenges in the built environment, they are adapting their firm's core values to address all aspects of sustainable practice. Part of this approach involves pushing the envelope on digital communications and design technologies in order to manage the massive amounts of data needed to solve complex and knowledge-based design solutions.
The proliferation and power of technology tools, used in concert with building information modeling and other modeling platforms, are crucial to pushing the boundaries of sustainable design. Today, 3-D models created in BIM tools can collect information and accurately analyze the built environment to validate design ideas. Powerful analysis engines such as IES-VE, GBS, and Ecotect energy modeling software can quickly produce meaningful results including energy analysis, daylighting and lighting studies, utility costs, code analysis, and life cycle cost studies.
Sometimes the sheer audacity of something, which leaps over the boundaries of the standard-issue responses to habitation issues, can become an agent of needed shift, or change. Here's an example of this in Bergamo, in northern Italy. This project is a structure made out of living trees, a cathedral form that will grow into form and shape.
It's a collaborative effort between government, artists, community, and businesses. The result will be a living cathedral, recently consecrated by the Church and standing as a message about the relationship between humanity and nature. It has a similar site response as other small "spiritual" cathedrals have had in natural settings, such as the Swedenborgian Wayfarers Chapel by Lloyd Wright in Palos Verdes, and Thorncrown Chapel by E. Fay Jones in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
To quote Gadling:
The man behind the work is the recently deceased Giuliano Mauri, an Italian artist who was commissioned as part of a project for the UN's International Year of Biodiversity. The frame of the building will initially be made up of more than 1,800 fir tree poles, 600 chestnut branches, and 6000 meters of hazel branch, planted in-between with growths of live Beech trees. As the Beeches grow, the wood frame will decompose, allowing the living trees to take over the structure.According to the italian site CATTEDRALE VEGETALE DI OLTRE IL COLLEOriginally the idea of President Park Orobie Franco Grassi, to erect one of the first green cathedrals in Italy, could not find an outlet in its practical implementation because of the unavailability of a place to realize it here in Over the Hill - with the mayor Manenti Rosanna and her team - immediately found enthusiasm and what was missing.
No funds or funding for the work, of course, but a location with environmental certification, well fit for purpose, and most importantly the ongoing revaluation and the full cooperation of the Municipality and local associations and with which there excellent value. In a few months, we could see materialize in our area starting this realization "of art and nature" (better defined the term land art or earth art), which will include more than ten years to complete, and then the maintenance will require the involvement and participation not only institutions but also the volunteers, fans and experts, not always in reality, having the knowledge of the art of constructing Roccoli.
I am convinced that one day we will all be even more proud to include amongst the beauties which attract the attention of visitors in our concerts, this "Cathedral plant" that nature and human intervention make over the years a true work monumental art.
Claudio Massimo Leoni
Tourist President Pro Loco Over the Hill
July 2008Inaugurated Sept 4, 2010 Video (Italian) interview with Grassi, with documentation of the design and drawings.
From the CNN report: Green buildings won't save the planet.
The United States has the third largest ecological footprint per capita, behind only the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. We face an extraordinary challenge in overcoming our environmental deficit.
Here's an outstanding video and report via TED in a special report from CNN about how the entire process has to change, and how the focus must move off of buildings as static objects. The Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre in Dallas is shown as an example of how the process ends up in an unexpected place after exploring all dimensions of the problem, especially the existing footprint of the old building. It ends up being kind of a hypercube floating in space, a tesseract, that unfolds internally to meet the various demands of the space.
The fundamental aspect of "going green" is to create a huge shift in how our behavior impacts planetary ecosystems. It's going to create some large disruptions as the price increases kick in due to the costs of burning oil and coal, the shifts in employment and business practices move faster, and the reversal of living patterns that change the underpinnings of global economics. Climate change and its impact on resources, such as food and water, will bring hefty price tags and create unpredictable events that threaten the stability that financial investments and transactions rely on. So we're in for a wild ride.
The application of technology to solve some of these issues rests in not just the ability to creatively disrupt business and industry and generate new solutions to this problem, but to change the game, and change it rapidly. The speed at which these adaptations to a changing environment move is astonishing, and with these changes riding the whipsaw of social networking we're going to see very dynamic cultural changes in short order. Problem-solving solutions will emerge quickly as the old order falls away, and people's lives shift from physical accretion to information accretion.
Technology can help with this transition if it's used appropriately to create better connections, human environments, and behavioral shifts that are constructive with respect to the human footprint on this planet. It's not just on the ground. NASA earth satellites and other technologies allow us to see our planet and manage our impact on it at a large scale. There's nothing like seeing those images of massive fires, pollution plumes in estuaries, migrating oil slicks, changes in snow and ice packs, the shifting of deserts, to see quickly and accurately how our collective behavior is impacting the planet. This allows us to make effective decisions about how we have to change so as not to decimate the planetary ecosystems as we are doing now.
Most importantly, if we can see, we can achieve consensus far more quickly than the old corrupt political structures could by leveraging the influence of power, religion and money in order to preserve the status quo. The issues will necessarily have to be solved in a global fashion, with the traditional forum structures opened to allow those to sit at the table who did not have a voice before.
Here's an example of local preservation of historic architecture, the old Vista del Arroyo Hotel, now the home of the Ninth Circuit Court. I worked on it in 1985 to finish out some of the chambers and offices of the judges while working at NTD in Pasadena, a very interesting project. This work did not include the historic bungalows which were restored as part of a later, very controversial project. The hotel was listed in the National Register of Historic Places since April 02, 1981.
This is one of the most visible landmarks in Pasadena, especially as you enter from the west, perched in the hill overlooking the Arroyo Seco. The structure was built in 1920-1937 by architects Marston Van Pelt & Maybury when earlier wooden structures were demolished. It was once commandeered as a WWII Army hospital, and eventually was purchased by the Federal Government for use as a courthouse. A more complete history is here.
The structure was adapted to courthouse standards of the time, with separate circulation for the judges, the public, and the defendants facing trial, usually handled with a separate circulation and holding system. The old rooms and corridors were remodeled for the offices of the judges, and a new "en banque" central courtroom was designed, along with a research library and a commissary. All at the same time that the basic historic features were being preserved. This kind of preservation and adaptive reuse goes a long way towards conservation of embodied energy and also demonstrates the efficiencies of upgrading the mechanical and electrical systems to save power and water.
Is Historic Preservation "Green"? It can be one of the best ways to go if it's done right and the new use of the structure is compatible with its configuration, scale and design.
"Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." in Atlanta on August 16, 1967
The peace and justice movement has long been associated with race, class, social justice and poverty issues. The nonviolent resistance movement, beginning with Mahatma Gandhi in India, then on to Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Alabama, has seen a long, slow progression towards a measure of equality for minority groups. Equality and reparations have also come about for the Japanese citizens interred during World War II, as a result of consistent social pressure. The evolution of global human rights through the UN Charter and implemented through the International Criminal Court demonstrates how human society is moving forward in common cause.
While these movements are bringing about social changes to be celebrated, there remains the vast undertaking of the balancing of the worlds' resources with its people in a sustainable way. This translates to consumption, population, and the huge divide between those of great wealth who produce the largest CO2 footprint, and those who are at a bare subsistence level that perpetuates ecological destruction. Both extremes are unsustainable, hence the need to use social network development to solve these problems at the global scale in a way that preserves and enhances natural systems, and balances our whole way of existence.
Our unique human ability to communicate with each other and overcome seemingly intractable territorial and racial issues has not been used as well as it could be. This gift of self-awareness that we have is now being harnessed with technology and social networking in a creative fulcrum that has the capability to produce enormous "jumps" in problem-solving as it concerns energy and resources, and scaling down our need to consume planetary resources. We are developing methodologies to solve the resource issues that are the ancient grounds of war and crusade. The themes of the financial system collapse and the cybertechnology battles that are moving massive amounts of "paper money" digitally around the globe exhibit the growing disconnect between the old ways of grasping at "stuff" and the new vision of the value found in the natural environment and in the extension of the helping hand to each other as natural disasters- now in Haiti, and in 2004's Tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka - take their course.
Have you noticed that everything is green now? Not black, white, brown or red.
This quaintly humorous map of the USA in 1998 was rather a harbinger of things to come. It showed quite accurately where the political battlefields were to be with respect to the "Green" movement, which became crucial factors in the elections which led to an administration that undermined environmental regulations for the sake of the "old oil" business bottom line. It also points out that California is a Republican state despite its liberal-progressive bent.
Remember the election of 2000 that the Florida Supreme Court's order for a recount of the disputed Florida vote was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in a politicized 5-4 decision, of which dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens remarked: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."
Remember the election of 2004 in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency.
So Al Gore never had a chance to save the polar ice cap, or the bears. Unfortunately, this also allowed the entrenched power structure to craft structures that kept old, polluting industries and development in place and force the expansion of more pollution and carbon into the environment. Under the guise of "green". So, of course, the politics of Green are even more powerful than its so-called socialist or revolutionary components. This "manifest destiny" continues as the driver for the consumption of more and more resources, having transmutated from a vision of freedom and liberty to the ethos of marketing and consumption.
This is surprising, given that the true vibrancy and creativity in new enterprises is at the forefront of science and innovation, which is what built this country into a global power during World War II. That character of "yankee ingenuity" and "can-do" has been smothered by the old power base in order to protect its earning power and enhance its assets. These early signs of decrepitude don't bode well for green industries here in the USA, so be on the lookout for new initiatives elsewhere on the globe. The next power structure will be...?
The “dead peasant insurance” recently exposed in Michael Moore's movie has been around for decades, in a different form, known as COLI. In 2006, it was supposedly amended to require knowledge and consent of the insured. To quote:
Notice and Consent Requirements. The Employee must :
1. Be notified in writing that the employer intends to insure the employee’s life and the maximum face amount for which the employee could be insured at the time the contract is issued.
2. Provide written consent to be insured under the contract during and after active employment.
3. Be informed in writing that the employer will be the beneficiary of any death benefits.
What we're seeing now is Wall Street's move to collateralize and make a profit on COLI bundled policies, the exact same fiscal nuclear waste typology that created the mortgage meltdown in this country and abroad. In order to feed it, same thing, the companies are vastly increasing their use of this to all levels of employees, no longer just in the executive suite. So investors are waiting for workers to die, which apparently the health insurance industry doesn't seem to mind facilitating through their withdrawals, denials and their recission policies.
Given that our entire financial system is being run by folks who've hit the jackpot and use all means to continue to scale the great wealth divide, it's time to fully hold corporations accountable in their acts against not only most of the citizens of this country and the globe, but also force accountability for the environmental impacts of their behavior. The abuse of a small "privileged" group of the far larger population has led to disastrous events of chaos throughout history, and it's now leading to the unraveling of natural systems and processes as well. No pulling up the drawbridge on this issue, there's no place to run.
So guess what the revolution's going to be about.
Causes of the French Revolution include the following (substitute "environmentalism" for "Enlightenment Ideals")
A poor economic situation and an unmanageable national debt were both caused and exacerbated by the burden of a grossly inequitable system of taxation, the massive spending of Louis XVI and the many wars of the 18th century;
A resentment of royal absolutism;
An aspiration for liberty and republicanism;
A resentment of manorialism (seigneurialism) by peasants, wage-earners, and, to a lesser extent, the bourgeoisie;
The rise of Enlightenment ideals;
Food scarcity in the months immediately before the revolution;
High unemployment and high bread prices resulting in the inability to purchase food;
A resentment of noble privilege and dominance in public life by the ambitious professional classes;
A resentment of religious intolerance;
The failure of Louis XVI to deal effectively with these problems.
The epithets thrown at Obama at this time for being "socialist" is classic baiting by a far right fringe in an attempt to undermine public dialogue on sustainable practices and governance from the center. The same problem exists with the issues that experience a tension between old-line capitalists and the newly Gore-invigorated environmental movement. Polarizing the public dialogue is poisoning the ability of the public to participate in a rational discussion; there's a huge political spectrum that's excluded from the table, to the detriment of fresh ideas and real consensus in solving the massive problems we're facing. These discussions require a creative, progressive approach done in a collaborative fashion. That's being cat-called from the far right, which needs to preserve the status quo, fearing change.
A (very long) article in DSP (in Australia) provides a discussion of the roots of the history of environmental politics and traces its evolution as a political philosophy:
In principle, of course, all agree that "the polluter pays", but if ever there was a principle more honoured in the breach than the observance, this surely is it. For instance, in 1993 the then-new Clinton administration, with Al Gore (author of the "visionary" Earth in the Balance) as vice-president, tried to pass a very mild tax on non-renewable forms of energy, only to be smashed into line by the fossil-fuel lobby. And as Saul Landau comments on another flagrant example: We punish sinners like Exxon, whose oiler [the Exxon Valdez] did not have proper safety equipment, by making it pay for the cleanup and fining it. But modern corporations have delay experts, called corporate lawyers, who find loopholes to forestall both the cleanup and the penalty procedures. Indeed, Exxon has barely felt the cruel lash of justice as it offers $80 billion to buy oil giant Mobil.
Where do these "green" policies fall today? We could map it like Paulitics does, taking all aspects of its ideology and plotting it somewhere onto the social liberal and economic left quadrant, probably to the right of the Dali Lama, since green has become mainstream economics, of late. It has to, in order to be acceptable to industry and commerce and lay the groundwork for a new approach to economics and profit in a sustainable way.
Politically, we have an interesting moment of "rapprochement" coming up in February of 2010. Sponsored by Westfield - a major commercial developer - former Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush are slated to appear together at the American Jewish University Series, tickets available here. These former Presidents, each of whom faced attacks from the other party's extreme fringe, are going to calmly discuss a loaded topic like the policies of Israel? On a platform provided by a Jewish University?
The pro-zionists have found some strange bedfellows, indeed. Stay tuned.
Okay. It's huge. The environmental movement comes into its own at last. Everything is green, except when it isn't. A case study is called for, this one's Kaiser Permanente's "Thrive" campaign. From Kaiser:
‘Emerald Cities,’ is a 30-second spot that conveys how Kaiser Permanente's use of advanced technology benefits Kaiser Permanente's health care delivery system by saving lives, managing chronic conditions and making medical breakthroughs. The ad also communicates Kaiser Permanente's focus on sustainability - by using electronic health records the amount of paper used within the organization is drastically decreased - saving thousands of trees annually. To date, Kaiser Permanente members have completed 6 million doctor's visits without using one gallon of gasoline. Simply put in the spot's opening line: "By putting an end to paper medical records, we have ushered health into the digital age."
The video is here, it runs to the tune of "Clair De Lune" by Debussy, who wrote it with Paul Verlaine's poem in mind.
This campaign is brilliantly produced by the very capable firm of Campbell-Ewald Advertising, which is no stranger to controversy in its manipulation of image content and product marketing.
The sub-genre created in reaction to this campaign as well as Kaiser's well-known control of services and products, and its arbitration clause that its policies are built on shows how public reaction can be carried out in counter-moves in the press and online. What's fascinating is the imagery used by Campbell-Ewald to create the "soft-touch hi-tech green" imagery in a perfect world of health and service to its members. Which of course it limits to protect its profits. Public health option, anyone?
But the bait. It's so pastoral, even Bambi is in there. Our global environment reduced to a marketing gimmick? It's just about on life support right now, so maybe it's appropriate that the metaphor works both ways.
Clair De Lune, indeed.
In today's world of high costs for construction and facility operation, it makes sense to strive for public use of buildings that would otherwise be single-purpose. Given this rationale, one of the early successful integrations of this for a nature-focused organization is the Natural Resources Defense Council headquarters in Santa Monica which achieved a Platnimum LEED rating in about 2004, the first public museum to achieve this rating (photo above). It's close to public transportation and has other "New Urbanist" qualities, since it was adapted from an existing building in the heart of downtown. That's the kind of green building that should be most encouraged, not new construction buildings in far-flung, transit-unfriendly, pedestrian-unfriendly areas.
The "museum as boardroom" idea caught on, and the MWD found it to be a useful strategy for its own purposes. The recent Center for Water Education in Hemet, also billed as the "first LEED Platinum Museum" was constructed as part of the MWD water storage facility for its headquarters use, then expanded to include a non-profit museum, which has become problematic. It is also far away from any transit, urban centers, commercial activity, and has to expend additional energy and money to bus visitors in from the LA region. It would seem to be counter to the philosophy of LEED that large structures can justify isolated project locations by attempting to shrink the footprint. The pioneering retrofit of its existing facilities by the NRDC for its New York offices provided the cutting-edge rationale for "in-place greening" in 1989.
Now another attempt to impose large "nature museum" structures in green clothing is being objected to by the public, to be located in the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary. A proposed $30 million nature museum in Whittier Narrows moves forward in public hearing. According to the Star-News, "The project has now grown into this enormous museum for the entire watershed, and the actual nature center part of it is completely gone. The entire building is a showplace for the water districts. Why should that be put in a bird sanctuary?" said Grace Allen, lead docent at the nature center and member of Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area - the group formed to oppose the project. They have offered alternatives to a large, environmentally destructive project.Thus "public education" can be transformed into a form of greenwash using public dollars to create bureaucratic edifices. At least the MTA Headquarters building made no such pretense of its gilded palace, with its immense scale in contrast to all the transit facilities around it.
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