GreenClips.219 07.16.03 ARCHITECT AND CLIENT SHARE ENTHUSIASM FOR INDUSTRIAL LEFTOVERS Jennifer Siegal, an architect who specializes in buildings on wheels, met developer Richard Carlson while leading students on a tour of his old shipping containers at the Brewery, a former Pabst Blue Ribbon building in Los Angeles that he upgraded in 1981 into live-and-work lofts. He later commissioned her to build a house across the street using containers as the basic structure. His enthusiasm for industrial leftovers equals her own. "The 40-footers have been obsolete since the 70's," Mr. Carlson said. "They litter the byways like used soda cans." His 3,000-square-foot house is conceptually ambitious but easy to construct and inexpensive for its size. Mr. Carlson said he spent $150,000 after salvaging materials like the solid wood ceiling beams recovered from a Burbank manufacturing plant. Ms. Siegal estimated that it would cost $300,000 to replicate the house. Ms. Siegal's firm, the Office of Mobile Design, in Los Angeles, is founded on proving that serious attention to transience in design can be environmentally responsible, inexpensive and stylish. Before taking on the Carlson house, she invented mobile units customized with flair, including the Eco Lab, a former furniture-moving truck turned roving classroom. Most recently, Ms. Siegal completed a prototype for a portable house: a shipping container with insulated plastic walls and recyclable bamboo-ply floors. [More: http://www.designmobile.com ] The New York Times. 17 July 2003, p D1, by Julie V. Iovine. SYNERGIES ABOUND BETWEEN HISTORIC PRESERVATION AND GREEN DESIGN For decades, there has been an underlying tension between historic preservation and environmental design, but there's growing realization that the ties that bind them are much greater than their differences. The preservation of existing structures typically has several inherent sustainable benefits, including reusing an existing shell and interior components, and reducing pressure to build on undeveloped sites. "There are many synergies between historic preservation and environmental design," says Carl Elefante of Quinn Evans Architects in Washington, D.C., "and few problems with resolving conflicts -- no big issues, just red herrings." Reuse was one of the priorities in the renovation of the S.T. Dana Building, which houses the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Built in 1903, the masonry structure was recently renovated by Quinn Evans in collaboration with William McDonough + Partners, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Elefante calculated that, in terms of embodied energy, the building's bricks alone represent about 135 gasoline tanker trucks of energy. A fourth floor was inserted on top, beyond the sight lines. A railing in the new atrium was made from recycled glass. The team also salvaged material from one part of the building for another: Old-growth pine timbers that were removed from a portion of the roof were refashioned into railings and other interior details. Architectural Record, July 2003, p 155, by Nancy B. Solomon, and University of Michigan website. [More: http://www.snre.umich.edu/greendana ] TIMBER EXPORTS FUEL BLOODY CONFLICT IN WEST AFRICA On Nov. 18, a ship pulled into the port of Philadelphia and unloaded cargo that included 16 crates of plywood worth $76,463, destined for a small importing company in Raleigh, N.C. The shipment originated in the war-torn West African country of Liberia, and the shipper was the Oriental Timber Co., an Asian firm linked to international arms traffickers and to Liberian President Charles Taylor. The shipment is rare proof that U.S. consumers are buying wood products that originated in a country repeatedly sanctioned because of its illegal arms trade and where logging is devastating fragile rain forests. Exploitation of natural resources, particularly the lucrative trade in so-called blood diamonds, has long fueled conflict in West Africa. But in recent years, as international efforts have begun to stem trade in illegal diamonds, another valuable resource -- timber -- has become linked to regional violence. Last week the United Nations imposed a temporary ban on Liberian timber exports. But despite the sanction, there is no U.S. law prohibiting imports of timber from Liberia. And products made from Liberian wood reach the United States indirectly, as furniture imported from countries including China, Greece, Denmark and the Netherlands. No one knows how much ends up in the United States, and consumers have no way of knowing whether their purchases are supporting bloody conflict in West Africa. Philadelphia Inquirer, 13 July 2003, by William Kistner. RAISED FLOOR VENTILATION CATCHING ON IN U.S. OFFICE BUILDINGS A collection of large, new office projects around the country are using raised floors, which create a 12-inch to 18-inch high chamber beneath people's feet through which hot and cold air is pumped. Adjustable vents in each workspace allow workers to tweak their microclimate. Among some projects greater than one million square feet that use or plan to use raised floors: Bank One's new offices in Chicago; Union Pacific Corp.'s headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska; and New York Times Co.'s new headquarters near Times Square. Developers are installing raised-floor air as a way to attract tenants. MC Lioness Realty Group, a developer and office manager in the Kansas City area with 12 million square feet of office space, says its buildings with raised-floor air generate fewer complaints. It receives 12 "hot and cold" calls a month at a 90,000-square-foot facility with ceiling air, and only two calls a month at a comparable building with raised-floor air. Raised floor systems are less expensive to reconfigure when tenants alter workspace, and they're more energy efficient. But they've been slow to catch on in the United States, in part because of upfront costs. Most raised-floor air projects add $1 to $3 a square foot during construction compared with ceiling systems. Supporters argue, however, that the cost is less than that because raised-floor air requires no sheet-metal ductwork and also allows for smaller air conditioners and fans. The Wall Street Journal, 9 July 2003, p B8, by Alex Frangos. NEW TOOL TO HELP DESIGNERS NAVIGATE GREEN RESOURCES Ratcliff, a design firm in Emeryville, California, has developed a tool to help designers integrate sustainability with their design process. Ratcliff found that designers felt overwhelmed by the ever-increasing amount of information about sustainable design, so they created Green Matrix CD-ROM (GRNMTRX) to help navigate the world of green design resources. GRNMTRX, which is now in beta testing, cross-references five sustainability topics (site, water, energy, materials and indoor environment) with seven design phases (pro-forma, master planning, pre-design, schematic design, design development, construction documents, and construction/post-occupancy). At the intersection of topics and phases lies the design strategies particular to that condition. The user clicks a particular intersection and is led to more specific information on the strategies and further resource links. For a free copy of the beta version of GRNMTRX 2.0, email grnmtrx@ratcliffarch.com . Interiors and Sources, June 2003, p 20, by Dan Meza. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GreenClips is free of charge thanks to individual members and these sponsors: BUILDINGGREEN, INC. Providing authoritative, unbiased information to help you improve the environmental performance of buildings and the surrounding landscapes. Now featuring the new, updated 3rd edition of GreenSpec Directory with more than 1650 listings of green building products. Please visit http://www.buildinggreen.com/ecommerce/ C&A FLOORCOVERINGS We choose not to just make carpet but to also make a difference. 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