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James Corner: The Long View (Metropolis)

By embracing the city’s industrial past—reclaiming landfills, remediating brownfields, developing neglected waterfronts—James Corner has helped reinvent the field of landscape architecture. (MetropolisMag.com)

(photo by Alessandra Petlin)

As a 20-year-old intern in the London office of Richard Rogers, James Corner could barely contain his frustration. It was the early 1980s, and they were working on the first pieces of the transformation of the London docklands from derelict industrial port to stylish commercial district. But at that scale, on so complex a site, Corner saw only limitations. “All the architects knew how to do was put awnings on existing buildings,” he recalls. “All the landscape architects knew how to do was put trees everywhere. And all the traffic engineer knew how to do was to optimize getting cars in and out of the development.” Over pints at the pub, Rogers and his partners “would complain that they didn’t have the conceptual or imaginative tools or techniques to do the whole thing synthetically.” Corner, who grew up outside of Manchester, left soon afterward to study at the University of Pennsylvania—where he is now head of the landscape-architecture department—but he never let go of the lesson: “There is a desperate need for a different kind of professional who isn’t so Balkan ized, who is capable of seeing a bigger picture and choreographing a bigger team.”

Corner has spent the last 25 years becoming that guy in a deliberate attempt to reinvent the field of landscape architecture by pushing aside its second-fiddle status and antiurban tendencies and claiming a more ambitious agenda: to design the postindustrial city. Rather than wielding bushes and trees—the proverbial parsley around the roast of proper architecture—landscape architects are, as Corner sees it, the best prepared to tackle the complex, large-scale, often environmentally damaged sites that have become the hallmark of urban regeneration. He approaches them with the intellectual assurance of a philosopher and the political bravado of a pow er broker. “I don’t want to be embarrassed to be a landscape architect because we’re thought of as tree people who come in at the end of the day,” he says.

Instant Suburb: Prefabs Hits New York (Wired)

(Wired.com, illustration by Kerry Roper) Tourists press up against the construction fence on the corner of 53rd and Sixth, staring speechless as a giant crane lifts an entire bathroom into the air and deposits it in what will be a master bedroom. Cellophane House is five stories tall, with floor-to-ceiling windows, translucent polycarbonate steps embedded with LEDs, and exterior walls made of NextGen SmartWrap, an experimental plastic laminated with photovoltaic cells. Its aluminum frame was cut from off-the-shelf components in Europe, assembled in New Jersey, then snapped together in 16 days on a vacant lot next to the Museum of Modern Art — joining four other full-size houses onsite through October as part of the exhibit Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. It looks as if a suburban cul-de-sac took a wrong turn at the Holland Tunnel.

Prefab is "modernism's oldest dream," curator Barry Bergdoll says. Since the industrial revolution, architects have been in thrall of the idea that houses could be built in factories, like any kind of widget. But reality hasn't been extremely cooperative. Whether because of conservative public tastes, unachievable economies of scale, or designers' less-than-stellar business acumen, their utopian visions have mostly remained fantasies.

Ocean Current (Wired)

Climb aboard the world's first marine-energy test bed (Wired.com)
Giant whirlpools, 100-knot winds, some of Europe's mightiest tides: The icy waters off Scotland's northern tip are no place for pleasure craft. But they're ideal for power-generation systems that harness the restless fury of the sea — which is why the European Marine Energy Centre has set up shop in the Orkney Islands.

Think of it as the Bonneville Salt Flats of hydrokinetics: EMEC offers companies a place to try out their clean tech. The center's remotely operated vehicles film underwater, and microphones will eventually monitor for noise pollution. First in was Dublin-based OpenHydro, which recently began trials on its second turbine (shown here raised for inspection). Carbon-free hydrokinetic power could ultimately provide up to 20 percent of the UK's electricity needs. But environmental concerns may still sink the effort: Critics warn of industrialized coastlines and harm to sea life. The US faces similar challenges — without a testing facility. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has okayed a pilot marine-power project for Makah Bay, off the Washington coast, but environmental approval is still pending. By the time the inevitable court battles are resolved, the waves may be lapping at our doorsteps.

7 Days Later (Wired)

(Wired.com) Green subdivisions are the vaporware of the home-building industry. But northwest of London, British developers are pulling one off on a scale that Americans are still only mocking up in Photoshop. The site, dubbed Oxley Woods, already features 90 eco-friendly homes, with 55 more planned to fill its seven acres. The factory-made dwellings make good on prefab's promise of low cost and quick construction. They take as little as $118,000 and seven days to erect: five in the plant and a day and a half onsite, where crews slide and screw together the modular pieces. (Electrical, plumbing, and other finishing work takes another four weeks.) Manufacturing the major components offsite reduces waste and makes it easier to use green materials, like insulation from recycled paper and lumber harvested from sustainably managed forests.

But the biggest advantage is improved build quality. The same precision manufacturing that makes an Ikea bookshelf easy to assemble makes the Oxley Woods homes nearly airtight. But that doesn't mean they aren't well-ventilated. Each abode has an environmentally responsible cherry on top: A self-contained unit called an EcoHat controls circulation with a tiny 10-watt fan, pushing out stale air and drawing in fresh stuff, which is then solar-heated to warm the house. Maybe they could ship some of these gems over the pond — the US housing market could use a breath of fresh air.

Saint Brad (Metropolis)

With his Make It Right project in New Orleans, Pitt may be on his way to becoming architecture’s most important patron. Is architecture up for the challenge? (link)

“So you’re a design junkie too?” Brad Pitt said to me, leaning out the door of an RV parked in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans one evening in December. I was his last interview of the day, and the lines around his blue eyes were thick with fatigue. Outside, a street party was starting up, with a zydeco band and a gumbo truck. There were flashbulbs and Angelina Jolie with Maddox, and Jerry Lee Lewis taking a turn at the piano. But the guests of honor were the people from the neighborhood, dispersed by Hurricane Katrina. Pitt’s new nonprofit, Make It Right, wants to help them “get a house” by providing the difference between their assets and the cost of rebuilding. The catch was that they had to choose one of the sustainable designs by 13 different architects—an amazing list that included Thom Mayne, David Adjaye, Shigeru Ban, and Kieran Timberlake.

“Our idea was, OK, these people need help rebuilding, so let’s bring in the great minds that we can find. And that was really exciting for me, being the fan that I am,” Pitt said, perched on the edge of the RV’s banquette. Are you bringing these architects here, I asked, because you enjoy working with them? “That’s one of the benefits certainly, but it’s not the driving factor.” So why do it? Why bring not just architects here but some of the world’s best? “I’ll tell you why,” Pitt said, leaning forward and rubbing his hands together. “Because these people suffered a horrific event, and truthfully great injustice in the aftermath, and they’re still suffering that injustice.

So what are you going to follow that injustice with? Crap houses with toxic materials and appliances that run up their electricity bills and may lead to a foreclosure? I mean, really. This to me is a social-justice issue. And to create something that’s equitable and fair and has respect and provides dignity for the family within is absolutely essential to rebuilding here.”

Since when do movie stars have a better sense of architecture’s possibility than most architects? Post-Katrina New Orleans—like post-9/11 Ground Zero—was supposed to be a moment when architecture would prove its relevance. Instead, architects and planners came in like the cavalry, full of expert opinions about what New Orleans should look like and where it should (or more to the point, shouldn’t) be rebuilt. The result was that rather than providing houses, they seemed—in the name of good planning—to be taking them away. “It felt to me that architecture was trying too hard to make its point,” remembers Steven Bingler, founder of Concordia Architecture & Planning, in New Orleans. And was anyone really surprised? Architecture has always had trouble connecting with the masses. There’s that famous, perhaps apocryphal, statistic—architects design two percent of American homes—and the bald fact of the contemporary American landscape, with its big-box stores, chain restaurants, and bland condominiums.

Carbon Neutral U (Metropolis)

In the age of global warming, the greening of the American college campus is a largely grassroots effort driven by students, faculty, and in-house staff dedicated to sustainable thinking. (link)
In late 2005 Yale University president Richard Levin exercised the considerable prerogative of his office and announced that his institution—with its 5,500 residents, 21,000 commuters, and 1.7 million square feet of office space—would slash its greenhouse-gas emissions. His chosen target seemed attainable enough: a 43 percent reduction by 2020, which would bring the university ten percent below 1990 levels, thereby exceeding Kyoto Protocol goals. More than two years later Yale’s carbon graph is a beautiful site in an otherwise Sisyphean struggle. The university has already cut emissions 17 percent, with projects under way expected to cut another 17 percent by 2009—putting Yale a decade ahead of schedule in reaching its target. The even better news is that Yale is far from alone among universities: nearly 500 schools have signed the American College & University Presidents Cli mate Commitment, which sets them toward climate neu trality by a specified date (although it’s toothier than it sounds).

But Levin isn’t smug. An economist by training, if anything he’s frustrated by the wide view. “We’re showing it can be done, but our carbon savings are miniscule compared to what needs to happen,” he says on the telephone one morning. “And even if you put all the educational institutions in the world together, it still doesn’t add up to much. The answer has to come from governments, and I think the major reason for doing this is to enlighten the public so that ultimately governments will get serious about it.”

Yale and other schools are being spurred to action by a catch-22: the environmental moves they make on campus matter far less than what they teach their students—and what their students teach the world. But presidents and professors realize that the best way to teach students is through what they do on campus. Today’s campus sustainability movement is balanced be-tween nuts and bolts and big ideas. Local action has replaced global symbolism.

The Accidental Environmentalists (Metropolis)

A chronic problem with employee retention led this pragmatic client to building green. (link)

NAVY FEDERAL CREDIT UNION
Pensacola, Florida
Client: Navy Federal Credit Union
Architect: ASD

When Ebb Ebbesen began work six and a half years ago on a call center for 250 telephone operators, he never imagined it would transform into a green corporate campus with 3,000 employees and more than half a million square feet of office space—all of it LEED rated. In fact, he had never even heard of LEED. “There was no sustainability road map at the time,” recalls Ebbesen, senior vice president of construction and process improvements at Navy Federal Credit Union, which is the largest member-owned credit union in the world, with more than $30 billion in assets. “But I knew what we were looking for: a building where employees are pleased to come to work in the morning and still smiling when they leave at night.”

This wasn’t just kindness but corporate necessity. At the time, Navy Federal’s turnover rate for telephone operators surpassed 60 percent annually. Ebbesen’s primary task for the new building was to turn that around. But he had no corporate checklist for environmental happiness—until he realized that LEED would be close enough. “Once we started going down through the point structure, it helped us make decisions that would continually reflect on this idea of ‘employee focus,’” Ebbesen explains. “We used the LEED template for discipline.” Today Navy Federal’s Heritage Oaks campus, in Pensa cola, Florida, has a turnover rate of 17 percent and is expanding so fast that Ebbesen has his superiors eyeing the property next door.

When did this become the story of green? Architects and corporate facilities managers will often look across a table and—garnishing their declarations with an anecdote about a trip to the rain forests or something desperate their teenage daughter said—proclaim that green is the right thing to do, that green will pay for itself in energy savings, that green will serve as a highly visible symbol of their organization’s commitment to an optimistic future (and their shareholders too). All are undoubtedly valid motivations. But the confounding surprise of Navy Federal’s Heritage Oaks campus—designed by Atlanta’s ASD—is that they are saying none of those things while doing all of them.

San Francisco Federal Building (AIASF podcast)

San Francisco Federal Building from AIA San Francisco on Vimeo.

Produced for the exhibition STREET CRED San Francisco: Architecture and the Pedestrian Experience, this podcast features architect Thom Mayne, principal of the Los Angles-based firm Morphosis and designer of the new San Francisco Federal Building, in conversation with Andrew Blum, a Brooklyn-based writer and contributing editor at Metropolis and Wired magazines. Mayne discusses the social implications of his most recently built project—both in terms of how it serves federal employees and the public. Produced and edited by Melanie McGraw, with photography by Keith Baker, Tim Griffith, and an introduction by exhibition co-curator Julie Kim. (link)

Made in the Shade (Wired)

Jeanne Gang Angles for Energy Savings With Tilted-Window Design (link)

Look up at the sun. (Ouch!) Now look down at the ground. (Ahhh.) That pretty much sums up architect Jeanne Gang's breathtakingly simple approach to reducing energy use in Windermere West, a 26-story condominium destined for Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. She tilted two-thirds of the south-facing floor-to-ceiling windows away from the sun, letting the structure make its own shade — no duckbill protrusions required. It's mainly a summertime strategy: The hottest sun of the year is also the highest in the sky — and typically coincides with the most expensive electricity. The sawtooth design creates balconies that block direct midday sun, decreasing the need for power-hungry air-conditioning. In winter, when the sun is lower, rays pass through the windows to warm the interior. Gang worked with engineering powerhouse Arup to calibrate the facade. Using a computer model, they gradually angled the glass until they hit the sweet spot — skewed enough to keep living rooms from baking, but not so much that they feel like the inside of a boat. The magic number for Chicago's latitude? Exactly 71 degrees. Which should also be the temperature inside.

Conspicuous Consumption (Wired)

Pop quiz. How much energy are you using right now? Admit it, you have no idea. Building Dashboard could tell you. Developed by Lucid Design Group, it provides real-time, Web-based feedback on electric, gas, and water usage. “This once-a-month utility bill nonsense isn’t good enough to change behavior,” says Michael Murray of Lucid, which is working to outfit buildings with consumption sensors. The system sends the collected info via the Net to Lucid’s servers, where it’s packaged into a slick, widget-like interface. The hard part is making the data relevant to residents. For instance, students at Oberlin College see their per-person dorm room power consumption expressed not as kilowatt-hours but as the energy needed to produce a veggie burger. Of course, the more literal-minded can get the breakdown in old-fashioned pounds of carbon dioxide. (link)