JAMES WINES ON SUSTAINABLE DESIGN AND ESTHETICS
"My take on esthetics is that if it isn't interesting, nobody's going to keep the building around anyway. So what's the point of the sustainable movement?" So says James Wines, whose New York City-based architectural firm SITE is known for its iconoclastic 1970s designs for Best company showrooms. Now he's writing a book about the environmental design movement called Architecture in the Age of Ecology that Taschen will publish this fall. "The point of the book," Wines says, "is to get the green movement off this finger-wagging, to get away from that reprimanding tone... I'm challenging those awful buildings done by most of the 'greenies'. It's bad, uninteresting design. That's the point of the book: Philosophy, esthetics, and technology go together... While there's brilliant work being done today that qualifies as sustainable, most architects' choices of visual interpretation are still locked into time- warped, 20th-century stylistic idioms, which tend to confuse rather than reinforce progressive images of earth-friendly architecture. On the other hand... a good portion of the architecture profession has remained oblivious to the magnitude of its irresponsible assaults on resources and the land... [The book is] part apology and part getting ourselves to think about being responsible... Our [firm's] designs are not prescriptive or formulaic. We're trying to give an esthetic dimension to environmental issues by expressing technological functions. For example, at Chattanooga's Ross's Landing park (1992), we designed buildings sheltered with earth. The US pavilion for the Seville World's Fair (1992) was a big piece of bioclimatic art: The columns were framed in wire, filled with earth, and seeded with plants. These projects express environmental innovation and say something about their context." - Architecture, May 98, p 77.

SCRAP-GLASS CONSTRUCTION AGGREGATE
Commingled recycling collection programs generate a significant amount of mixed color, broken glass that has little value. The Clean Washington Center in Seattle hopes its new Tool Kit for the Use of Post-Consumer Glass as a Construction Aggregate will satisfy skeptics on its use as general fill, drainage aggregate, wall backfill, and under-slab fill. The Tool Kit consolidates technical studies on this topic and adds case studies of ten well-documented installations ranging in size from 34 tons to over 12,000 tons of glass. Each two-page case study includes background, location, material source, quantity, cost, gradation, engineering contacts, specifications, safety measures, advantages, cost savings, problems, as-built status, and photos. The Tool Kit offers lessons learned in drainage and moisture sensitivity, compaction, handling and placement, gradation specifications, regulations, and availability of the aggregate. For more information, visit <http://www.cwc.org> or email CWC project engineer Bob Kirby, bkirby@scn.org. To order a copy of the Tool Kit (report GL97-5, $40), call the CWC report order line at 206 587 5520. - Resource Recycling, May 98, p 48, by Bob Kirby.

SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE DEGREES IN THE UK
The University of Huddersfield is among at least eight universities in the UK that offer advanced degrees in sustainable architecture and related courses of study. Huddersfield offers a 120-credit MSc in Sustainable Architecture, a 70-credit Postgraduate Diploma, and a 40-credit Postgraduate Certificate, each made up of modules worth 10 credits each. Framing the program is a Sustainable Architecture module that discusses the theoretical and ethical basis of sustainability. A Buildings and Health module covers infection and allergy, radon gas, electromagnetic fields, toxins, and general comfort and psychology of the workplace. A Buildings and the Global Environment module focuses on global warming, acid rain, resource depletion, and waste generation. Huddersfield's program gives equal weight to energy issues and other areas of sustainability like health and materials. It also links academic content to real-world buildings by considering case studies of sustainable buildings. Some of the 40-credit dissertations are collaborations with local environmental agencies, industry, or professions. [For more information on the Huddersfield program, visit <http://www.hud.ac.uk/mast/desig/mscsa.htm>.] Related programs are offered by DeMontfort University [<http://www.dmu.ac.uk/Prospectus/Postgraduate98/Research/iesd.html>], Cardiff University [<http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/uwcc/archi/courses/msc/mscindex.html>], and the University of Nottingham [<http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe/courses/PGCourses.html>]. - Building for a Future, Spring 98, p 31, by Richard Nicholls.

BAMBOO, AN OBJECT OF DESIRE
New York City architect and designer Michael McDonough is finding new ways to use the grass that's stronger than steel. Bamboo appeals to McDonough's social consciousness since it's a renewable material whose cultivation can help control erosion, clean the air, and provide income to impoverished populations. And since it's light enough for furniture and strong enough for architecture, it also appeals to his technological and aesthetic curiosity. "Bamboo is stronger than steel in tension," he says. Summit Design Studio offers McDonough's first bamboo furniture, a table and chair, which it introduced last year at Interplan, the annual contract furniture trade show in New York City. Both pieces demonstrate bamboo's shapely, sculptural qualities. "One of my goals," says McDonough, "was to sort of make this material an object of desire, to revalue it as a sophisticated material, and to re-export it back to the Southern Hemisphere, or back to the cultures where it's not valued." By reclaiming and innovating ways to manipulate bamboo, he hopes the developed world will recognize it as a high-tech design material. [For more information, call Georgia Davis at Summit Design Studio, 310 659 9134.] - Metropolis, Jun 98, p 90, by Andrea Moed.

ECOTEL CERTIFIES ASIAN HOTEL
Not only is Kamat Hotels' The Orchid the first five-star hotel built in Bombay in ten years, but it's also the first in Asia to receive Ecotel certification. On the bedside control panel is an Ecobutton that lets guests save electricity by turning down the air conditioning two degrees. In its first three months, 120 guests have used the button. Triple glazed windows and energy efficient fluorescent tubes also conserve energy. Heat from air conditioning warms water for the laundry and kitchen. Aerators, flow restrictors, cisterns, flush valves, and drip irrigation all save water. Ozone treatment purifies the water, including the swimming pool's. Though The Orchid's plush rooms look no different from any other well-appointed hotel's, its partitions are blocks made of fertilizer waste and its furniture is made of processed wood waste and rubber wood. For more information about the hotel, email info@orchidhotel.com. [For more information on Ecotel certification, visit <http://www.hvs- intl.com/ecotel/welcome.htm>.] - Green Hotelier, Apr 98, p 31.

MEADOWOOD OFFERS ALTERNATIVE TO PLYWOOD
At his one-man factory in Oregon's Willamette Valley, Leonard Opel has made the four-foot by eight-foot ryegrass straw sheets he calls Meadowood for twenty years. His tree-free alternative to wood - used for interior paneling, furniture, cabinets, and bulletin boards - sells for $20 a sheet, the same as plywood. Opel and his development partner Dale Rose tinkered with straw boards made by Oregon State University researchers in the 1970s. In 1977 the partners settled on a formula of chopped ryegrass straw and a resin that doesn't emit formaldehyde or urea gas. Willamette Valley farmers would once have burned this straw, a by-product of their 360,000-acre harvest of lawn seed. "Quality material is the secret," Opel says. "You have to get the straw right behind the harvest." After chopping, drying, and cleaning the straw, he adds the resin and presses the mixture into panels or three-dimensional shapes. Because his process also works with other straw, Opel may soon open a factory in California's Central Valley where rice farmers are now required to phase out field burning. [For more information, call Meadowood Industries Inc., Albany, Oregon, 541 259 1303, or email Leonard Opel at strawboard@proaxis.com.] - Metropolis, Jun 98, p 42, by Craig Kellogg.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

GreenClips is free of charge thanks to these sponsors -

INTERFACE, INC.
http://www.ifsia.com

ENERGY RESOURCE CENTER
http://www.socalgas.com/erc The Energy Resource Center, a unit of the Southern California Gas Company in Downey, California, is a one-stop energy resource and conference center for business and industry.

WSU ENERGY PROGRAM
http://www.energy.wsu.edu Providing objective research, information and solutions. Washington State University Cooperative Extension Energy Program in Olympia, Washington. To subscribe to GreenClips and/or other mailing lists related to energy and the environment, go to <http://listserv.energy.wsu.edu/guest/RemoteAvailableLists>.