Park(ing) Day Portland Maine 2013

Once a year in September in cities around the world Park(ing) Day is held to celebrate alternatives to automobile centered urban living. From the parkingday.org website: 

"PARK(ing) Day is a annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places. The project began in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in downtown San Francisco. Since 2005, PARK(ing) Day has evolved into a global movement, with organizations and individuals (operating independently of Rebar but following an established set of guidelines) creating new forms of temporary public space in urban contexts around the world.

The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat … at least until the meter runs out!"

I designed and built an installation in a parking spot in front of the building my office is in. As our public spaces are teetering on irrelevance due to the domination of the automobile for mobility and the television and computer screens for public forums, there is certainly a need to promote urban spaces. 

My installation titled, "Piazza", creates a scaled down urban space of the sort common in medieval city centers. Buildings with no gaps between them form blocks which create streets and plazas in the space between them. My installation creates benches as blocks which are free to be moved about as they interlock to a piazza flat surface where your feet rest. This micro urban experience is a great instructional tool for children and adults who may not have lived in Venice or the Old Port.

Together we can promote these urban spaces and raise the quality of our Maine living experience and the health, community and sustainable benefits which go along with these environments.

EnerPHit Good For Maine

The German Passive House standard for creating energy efficient buildings is not just for new buildings. This standard (which can lower heating by 85% to allow you to heat your home with equivalent of hair dryer on very cold day) can also be used on existing buildings to effectively eliminate a heating bill (extremely small bill- essentially eliminated) and remove your home from fossil fuel use.

Maine is one of our countries worst offenders when it comes to using oil to heat our buildings. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, EIA, "About four-fifths of Maine households use fuel oil as their primary energy source for home heating, a higher share than in any other State." The Northeast Biomass Working Group commissioned an analysis by Futuremetrics showing Maine as the fourth most petroleum state in the country with 70% of buildings heated with oil costing a billion dollars a year in exported spending shown here.

But the Passive House organization, Passivhaus Institut, has created a category for existing buildings called EnerPHit which adjusts the requirements for new building certification to account for the difficulty involved in renovating. Thus the air infiltration requirement for a new Passive House is maximum .6 air changes per hour but the retrofit standard is maximum 1.0. And the requirement for heating energy demand goes from 4.75 kBTU/ft2yr to around 8.

Most of the work to achieve the retrofit standard involves superinsulating the building shell. Replacing the usually energy inefficient windows with Passive House certified triple glazed ones with better thermal bridge free installation details is fairly straightforward compared to tackling the whole shell. Usually a combination of insulation methods is used specific to existing conditions. For instance it may be a good idea to spray foam insulate between studs or rafters or to add another row of studs to create a double wall and fill it with cellulose, etc. Some situations may be easier tackled by placing 8 inches of rigid insulation over the exterior walls and using the existing stud wall as a service cavity.

The important thing is for us to begin the process of eliminating fossil fuel use in this state and EnerPHit provides us with a metric to approach this problem with. PassivhausMaine will be holding an EnerPHit forum this September 27th in the morning at the Portland Public Library.

Creating a Peaceful Home

When I design a client's home new or renovation, I always work on clearing away the impediments to their relaxation. Eliminating barriers to peace and enjoyment are part of my work in this modern world of swirling information. I'm a minimalist in that I like to create spaces in which owners can naturally enjoy nature and light and materials without clutter. Everyday chores are exciting opportunities for the architect to celebrate living. The photo above is of a kitchen in a new home I designed in a neighborhood of small houses. By constructing a balanced, peaceful composition of utilitarian objects like counters and cabinets, fireplaces, floors and roofs and rooms, a calm atmosphere can occur.

I always strive for a dialogue with nature so that the act of living involves at least visual contact with the world outside. Materials can play a part by allowing feet and hands to touch natural objects and surfaces.

Knowing how to edit what is seen outside and what is not is a very important part of place creating and a peaceful home. This is why an architect can help you radically improve your sense of peace with careful cutting and pasting of walls and windows to bring out the best in your property.

Passive-Agressive House

Our current global crisis is based on the rise in CO2 levels. This rise is primarily a result of burning fossil fuels, mostly oil and coal. After Al Gore's movie in 2008, the green building movement took off and government officials and the private sector looked for a metric to mandate in order to reduce CO2 levels. They both found the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) system easy to mandate.

Standards like LEED helped start a wave of certified buildings that shifted our attention from construction efficiency to environmental impact. Government agencies in the USA now require many new construction projects to be LEED certified. While these buildings are a little more energy efficient and certainly more responsible with water efficiency, toxicity and some materials embodied energy use, they do not exactly drastically reduce our use of fossil fuels.

I like to think of the Prius as an example of a lot of embodied energy (the energy used to make the car) in an energy efficient product that ends up using more energy total (embodied and life time of low gas use) than buying a used car of medium size would (no new embodied energy as the car already exists). And buying renewable bamboo flooring from China shipped halfway across the world (high embodied energy in fuel used in shipping) is questionable. Embodied energy is a more realistic way to look at the impact of building material choices on CO2 levels.

Another embodied energy involves planning and how much energy people use driving to the building. It costs an additional 30-50% of the buildings active energy use to commute. Here is a good article on this embodied energy as well as the benefits of existing buildings.

So you could have the newest LEED building but located such that everyone commutes far and end up worse off than rehabbing an existing building in town.

But embodied energy, the energy it takes to make stuff and move it, is only a small part of the energy use problem. A better start to lowering CO2 emissions is to focus on fossil fuel use to create energy used to heat and cool buildings which accounts for almost 50% of our energy use. I try to think of what we can do to stop more coal plants coming on line in the US, China and India. In other words the forest-for-the-trees concept leads us to focus on cutting back our use of fossil fuels to heat and cool our buildings if you are an architect.

A popular metric for energy efficiency in building is the "Passivhaus" (passive house) certification. This rigorous standard developed in Germany focuses on reducing energy demand. Reducing energy demand implies not using a lot of energy to do this, hence, using "passive" methods rather than "active"(requiring energy) ones. The Passive House standard does this by addressing three definitions of energy efficiency: First, a building must be air tight so heat or cool is not lost or gained. Second, the building must have a very high level of insulation in the exterior envelope including windows, etc. so that heat or cool is not lost or gained and thus it has a very low heating energy use. And third, the amount of energy used for primary functions as in that used for the electricity must be very low as well.

This Passive House standard as it's called in the US is growing in use by governments in Europe to regulate energy use because that is precisely what it focuses on instead of everything as LEED type metrics do. Here, the use is growing especially at the green building house level.

Back in the 70's an energy crisis in the US led to a ton of experimentation with energy efficiency building design. Many architects created buildings with solar panels, passive solar heating through orientation and glass amounts, tromb walls, earth berming for insulation, solariums for circulating warmed air, and superinsulating or insulating the exterior building shell with much more insulation value than normal.

When Swede Bo Adamson and German Wolfgang Feist decided to create a very energy efficient standard for building in the late 80's they drew upon the work of the American pioneers of the 70's. Here is the wikipedia entry.

I worked for one of those American 70's architects here in Maine, Bill Sepe, who continues to build superinsulated buildings with air to air heat exchangers to provide fresh air to the super tight spaces. Passive house buildings are very healthy because of this constant air movement. As buildings became more air tight, we have not added the requirement for fresh air circulation and with the Passive House standard of .6 ACH 50 air tightness, the spaces require air circulation to be healthy. This requirement then makes a Passive House even more healthy than other buildings.

I'm a certified Passive House Designer through the Passive House Academy, based in Ireland affiliated with the international Passivhaus Institute in Germany PHI. The first Passive House in the US was built by Katrin Klingenberg in Urbana Illinois. She founded the Passive House Institute US, PHIUS, and became certified to train others to become certified. Unfortunately she wanted to be the only one in US allowed to train and a schism developed between the parent organization and hers. This has resulted in two certification possibilities here and I took the international one as best choice for long term. The PHIUS organization meanwhile has done fantastic work on moving passive house forward in the US so one can use resources from both organizations to get your Passivhaus project done.

Maine is a great place to build new or renovate to eliminate the need for almost all heating and thus, Passive House is a great metric to address this issue.

High School in Maine Creates Spatial Experiences: 3

The endless high school hallway. It's even shown up in my dreams. At the end is doors to gym; turn left and up a few stairs and down more hallway to doors to the parking lot. Most kids in Maine grow up with this space as a dominant experience in their lives. Every weekday life's most intense moments may happen in such a space. Monotonous for the most part, hermetic and claustrophobic, moving through such a space can imprint a linear, film-like space/time memory of planning.

They're so introverted.

Such stale experience could stifle the creativity of our future planners. The double loaded corridor is always forcing it's super efficient layout on design. In the photo above, the lucky students actually get light at the end of the tunnel. Like the train tracks of the Industrial Revolution, we are forced to take only one path submissively. The same attitude led to the elevated highways crashing through our delicate pedestrian fabric and Jacobs battling Moses.

But in a true village there would be one library for everyone in town and students in all grades, and you would walk to it from a classroom building. Spatial experience would vary moving from place to place in the course of a day. Performances would take place in which ever size auditorium in the center that was the right size for the event whether it was a grade school day time event or a community night time one. This is not to say grade schools would not have their own dedicated spaces, just that buildings in town would be shared by all and not wasted, lying empty at times and built cheap because they are not important to all.

Our Maine towns should slice and dice this endless hallway by building separate buildings like a village with connected covered walkways where used often creating courtyards, town squares and landscapes for yankee pedestrian delight.

Downeast Architect

When we 'downeasters' think of architecture we usually think of different styles such as “shingle style”, or “50’s modern”. Artists are often taught that in order to reach their ultimate potential, they must find their muse leading he or she to develop their own voice, or style, and fame and fortune will soon follow. But ‘style’ denotes a method and look which must suppress the individuality of the client and the particular circumstances.

As a Maine architect I have come to discover that notions of style can limit our buildings to functioning as misplaced postcards instead of celebrations of family and community.

We may create great buildings without catering to our preconceptions. These buildings may involve linking the various client needs in ways particular to them. I see architecture as a vehicle for the client to reach their ultimate potential and inner peace. And in Maine, that means my self-actualization may not be part of the puzzle. Nor will it be necessarily true that a client will make requests based on their need to achieve their ultimate potential.

In the harsh climate and harsh economy of our state we quickly develop interpersonal relationships that work to sustain our lives. Inner peace in Maine comes from a warm fire and good conversation. A Yankee mentality delves into areas where the 20^th century notion of, “avant-garde”, has limited use and conversely, notions of historical style can cause us to miss the forest for the trees. Our serenity is more complex and psychologically based than a goal such as, “always new”, or, “always old”, can resolve.

When I played basketball at Orono High School in Maine every player had different strengths and weaknesses. And these changed during the course of even one game. As coaches we use the phrase, “smart choice”, when talking to our players about the hundreds of decisions they make every game. The same holds true in architecture.

Every client is different. Here are some examples of buildings for folks here in Maine, many within a few blocks of each other, who’s needs turn out to be more than just the image of Yankee regionalism we picture in our minds:

Kids Hugging Mom Addition/Renovation:

The Willard Beach area of South Portland consists of small houses on small lots on small streets. One couple came to me requesting an addition to their hip roofed, vinyl sided 2-story cube of a house. The sunny side of the house was in back so we oriented all our new work to capture this sun. Included in this was renovating the existing house to replace an almost non-existent kitchen with a sun filled useful one. Thus, pieces were added to the back and sides, some on piers to save a gorgeous willow tree. These new pieces took the form of simple gabled forms in the New England tradition. The idea of the addition acting like children hugging their mother who was holding up the fort, so to speak, would make a happy place. These angled forms and spaces solved the psychological need for more relaxing places to balance out the overall house. There is no style to the house, only the realization of practical needs such as light and space as well as psychological needs such as, ‘friendly’.

Maison Haus:

Another couple with 2 young children had relocated from NYC and bought a lot close to Willard Beach. After investigating the possibility of saving any part of the small, dilapidated cottage on the lot, we decided it would be more economical to tear it down and build a new house. The owners, who were European, wanted a clean open modern home but to have a gable-roofed exterior, double hung windows and faded wood siding to evoke barn qualities. The result is simple, minimalist, within budget, and without any identifiable ‘style’.

D.I.Y. House:

This next project was also located in the Willard Beach area and involves a young couple building the house themselves. After analyzing their site, I made study models to determine the best use of the lot. The result is a series of boxes, two of which are mostly built now, which create and focus views on 3 very different outdoor spaces. The front yard is spatially connected to the living room; the courtyard is spatially connected to the dining table; and the woods out back are practically part of the kitchen. Their desire for an environmentally friendly home resulted in our use of non-toxic materials, super insulation, a wood stove, and a full roof deck designed to handle planting vegetables and lounging. As one of them felt symptoms of SAD, we used large picture windows to fill each space with natural light. The siding is hand-troweled stucco, an affordable sustainable material, and the details are boat-like as the client is a boat builder/ inventor. I was fortunate to actually build the house with the owners. Functional and psychological needs are met within very tight budget. The result is particular to the client and the site.

Shingle Style Garage:

In counterpoint to that project, I was commissioned to design a garage for a couple who needed to store their vehicles and boats as well as have a home office space and play room. Here there existing house was shingle style of sorts and they had a strong psychological need for a garage which would be visually compatible with the existing house. In this case I created a shingle style garage to meet their psychological needs and it blends in very nicely. So, I am not advocating a deliberate avoidance of any style, but merely that each project is unique and no formula should be used to obfuscate this uniqueness.

Airport Fire Station:

For instance, I designed a fire station while employed by Harriman Associates (Erik Greven, principal in charge) that could only fit on it’s site. That site was midpoint of the runway at Bangor International Airport. The most important requirement was a three-minute response time to either end of the runway. All requirements regarding number and type of particular fire trucks, sleeping, etc. guided all design decisions. However, the ‘look’ of the building is a reflection of the surrounding large airplanes. This fire station would not fit in a town center. And a village fire station would seem very out of place beside the runway.

In conclusion, in Maine we can build with our own Yankee sensibility as our guide. Each building decision can be about the link between the buildings and the town and the users and less about a particular style. This pragmatism along with our sometimes unexpressed psychological needs can help keep Maine, Maine.

Eyes On The Prize

Just received this cute video by the Cohen Bros. on misrepresentation of "clean coal technology": http://action.thisisreality.org/cleancoalclean. As mentioned in an earlier post, we have a lot of information now on how to build more sustainably but the big picture is to shut down polluting energy sources. While it's good to use recyclable materials and drive a high mpg car, we should focus on not using energy from coal plants; not use oil for heating; and to walk, or drive a car which does not use oil. These simple steps will vastly change our carbon footprint. And these changes are first steps towards a sustainable planet.

Now catching and eliminating existing green house gases- that's a challenge we need to work on while the previous mentioned steps are implemented.   

Real 'Green'.

In the rush to get on the 'green' bandwagon, many are unclear regarding what effort pays the greatest dividend. The biggest concern to the planet is the use of coal fired generation plants as I understand it. This means any effort to reduce the amount of energy we derive from coal fired plants goes directly to reducing green house gasses. The most common explanation of this idea is that buying a used car is better for the environment than buying a Prius. Meaning that the amount of energy used to make the new parts and assembly of the Prius is more than the amount of energy wasted in the higher gas mileage of a used car. In building this means reusing building materials is very important. Also important is reducing the amount of electricity a building uses. Super insulating reduces oil dependency and therefore the emissions from burning oil and the dependency on foreign oil countries whimsy. But, reducing the amount of electricity used through low energy lights and appliances and using solar panels and wind generation is critical.

Let's keep our eye on the target and focus on reducing coal fired plants and oil usage.