The flooding of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was a huge wake-up call: the effects of climate change were at hand and we would need to redesign and rebuild our vulnerable communities accordingly. White House photo by Paul Morse
At the annual Building Energy Conference earlier this month, Alex Wilson gave a terrific talk on a new framework for sustainable design and green building he calls “resilience”. Wilson first began to formulate this framework (which he initially termed “passive survivability”) in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Since then, resilience–or the ability of buildings and communities remain habitable in the event and aftermath of a natural disaster–has only come to seem more urgent (Does anyone need to be reminded that 2011 was a record breaking year for extreme weather?).
But what does resilience have to do with sustainability? What does green have to do with emergency planning? Actually, quite a lot it turns out. Most if not all of the strategies that allow buildings to support life in the event that basic services are disrupted are also strategies that enhance the durability and resource efficiency of buildings–two constitutive ingredients of a “green” or “sustainable” building.
Consider, for example, what happens during the winter in a cold climate when the power goes out. Even homes that are moderately well-insulated can quickly become uncomfortably cold. If you have a generator, then you’re set for a couple of days perhaps. But what if the power stays off for longer? And let’s say the outage was caused by a blizzard that made the roads impassable. After a certain point your fuel will run out, you’ll get really cold–and, oh yeah, your pipes will be at risk of freezing.
So what are some strategies for avoiding a situation like this? There are several (Wilson wrote a great series of blog posts on resilient building strategies for a wide range of emergency situations), but the most fundamental is to air seal and insulate really, really well. Which–as it turns out–is the first principle of energy efficient construction.
But a homeowner or public official doesn’t have to care about energy efficiency, or even “believe” in climate change, to appreciate the value of superinsulation as protection against power outages during a cold snap. A major reason why Wilson is so keen to develop and promote the concept of resilience is that you don’t need to have drunk the kool-aid to see its appeal. You just have to want to make sure your home and your community will be able to withstand a life-threatening emergency.
Wilson, who is as ardent an environmentalist as they come, is betting that he can move sustainable design and green building along farther if he leaves the environment (or at least the environmental argument) out of it. This is somewhat ironic and disheartening but, I think, realistic. As maddening as climate change deniers are, they are the symptom of the underlying disease of complacency. We have been fiddling (and shopping) while Rome burns.
Map of Wildfires in the Southwest in 2011. Image credit: NOAA
If there’s a silver lining to the fact that we are now feeling the effects of climate change, perhaps this is it: we will stop fiddling around. At least I hope so. Was the damage caused last year by Hurricane Irene, wildfires in the Southwest, etc. severe enough to jolt us out of our complacency? The cynic in me is not convinced that it was. Or, perhaps better, the cynic in me doesn’t think that any amount of extreme weather will ever be enough–unless it literally hits home.
But another part of me thinks that resilience can generate broad public support for “green” building standards and techniques. And, in any case, what’s the alternative to developing and promoting ideas, like resilience, that motivate people to address the environmental crises we are facing? We have to give people self-interested reasons to do the right thing–even if we wish they would do it simply because it’s the right thing to do.
Resilience is just such a reason, although it’s not the only one. So I’m not going to listen to my cynical side. And next time I have to convince someone why adding insulation is a good idea, I’ll be able to say something like this: remember the ice storm of 2008 when you lost power for over a week and temperatures inside your house dropped to around freezing? Well if you insulate, that shouldn’t happen again.
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Building Energy keynote experience. Image credit: Matthew Cavanugh Photgraphy
I spent the majority of last week attending Building Energy, an annual conference put on by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA). NESEA is a driving force behind the advancement of sustainable energy and green building in the Northeast, and Building Energy attracts the best and brightest in the field. For three days building science geeks, energy policy wonks, design visionaries and sustainability thought leaders gather together to chart a course to better buildings and a better world. It’s an intense learning experience, especially for a relative neophyte like me.
Part of what makes it so intense is that the broader stakes are everywhere felt. Climate change. Unconventional fossil fuels. Extreme weather. Almost every session I attended and conversation I had was infused with a sense of urgency about the environmental challenges we are facing and the belief that time is running out, both in the building sector and more broadly, to find solutions.
Which isn’t to say that the mood was wholly or even primarily pessimistic. The conference highlighted breakthrough technologies, best practices and broader trends in design and construction that give cause for cautious optimism. For example, just six years ago, the Annual Energy Outlook projected that building sector energy use would climb 45% between 2005 and 2030. But earlier this year, Architecture 2030, a nonprofit group pushing for carbon neutrality in the building sector, announced that the rapid advance and widespread adoption of green building practices have dramatically changed that outlook. According to AEO 2011, the worst case scenario would be a 14% rise in energy use by 2030, while the best case scenario has energy use dropping by 9%. In other words, achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 is not just some crazy pipe dream cooked up by a bunch of fanatics.
On the other hand, there is also uncertainty about whether we, as a society, have the collective will to achieve this best case scenario and, more generally, to live within planetary means. What makes Building Energy intense–and why I like it so much–is that it doesn’t just showcase technical expertise. It also asks participants to confront seriously the barriers to creating a sustainable future.
There are of course as many different types of barriers–economic, political, social-cultural, technical–as there are proposals for surmounting them. In keeping with my interest in personal sustainability, I found myself repeatedly mulling the barrier of complacency and considering how we can better engage the unconverted.
The truth is that most people–almost everyone who lives in, works in, and visits the buildings we are striving to build and retrofit to high(er) performance standards–are unconverted. Of course, there are some conservation-minded folks who beat the modeled energy use of their buildings, and yes, they are inspiring. But most people–even some who invest in the highest performance design standards available–aren’t motivated to conserve.
This house consumed 1,959 kWh — that is, 36% of projected usage and two and a half times less than what the PV array produced. Have you ever known anyone to use so little electricity?
Paul Panish and Mike Duclos, of DEAP Energy Group, provided a striking illustration of this problem in their comparative case study of two single-family homes built to extremely stringent energy standards whose actual energy use varied sevenfold. Yes you read that correctly: one house ended up using 7-times more energy than the other (You can learn more about this case study on Green Building Advisor).
How did this happen? Well, the same way it happens in “standard” homes. One family left their lights on all the time while the other family didn’t. One family plugged in lots of electronic gadgets while the other family didn’t. One family set their heat at 60 and the other ran an electric space heater in one of their bedrooms. And so on.
So why would a family build to stringent standard and then use energy so extravagantly? Panish suspects that a perverse logic may be at work: precisely because the family invested so heavily in the envelope and mechanicals, they felt entitled to leave their lights on all day and all night.
This may be stating the obvious… but cultural norms are working against us here. Which is all the more reason why the green building community needs to get serious about behavior. We need to make it clear early on to our clients that their habits and choices count. And we need to make it much, much easier for them to properly operate and maintain their buildings (let them have manuals!). And, like Panish and Duclos we need to track performance. And if/when we discover that behavior is throwing things off, we need to advise our clients (how) to make changes.
But we can’t stop at behavior. We have to give people a reason to care in the first place. We all know that the moral argument for conservation hasn’t proven all that compelling. The question is what will?
I’m in the camp of those who believe that mainstreaming green building will require bald appeals to self-interest. Also at Building Energy, Alex Wilson presented his latest work on a new conceptual framework for green building: resilience, or the ability of buildings to maintain livable conditions in the event and aftermath of a disaster. Wilson recommends that the green building community move away from talking about “green” or even “sustainability” and instead focus on resilience in large part because he believes it will be more compelling to people, especially after the spate of extreme weather we suffered in 2011.
My next post will explore Wilson’s work on building resilience and consider whether this can (finally) puncture our complacency.
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I’ve long been a fan of Sarah Susanka, author of the Not So Big House series of books and champion of designing homes “for the way we really live.” If you haven’t heard of Susanka, this is her claim in a nutshell: homes should be livable, beautiful, comfortable, and a lot smaller than the McMansions that have sprouted likes weeds across the suburban landscape.
As you may have guessed, this last bit was what first attracted me to the Not So Big House. I’ve written elsewhere (for example here and here) about the environmental burden posed by the upward trend in American home size over the past half century, so I don’t want to belabor the point here. Suffice it to say that home size is a huge driver of residential energy use, and that in order for the residential sector to be part of the solution to the environmental challenges we face, we need to be building smaller, a lot smaller.
But sustainability probably isn’t what attracts most people to Susanka’s books. I would venture that what most people find appealing is the emphasis on livability. Which isn’t to say Susanka is silent on sustainability. She often touches on the environmental benefits of her approach, but what’s front and center is the experience of occupying smaller, more comfortable, functional and thoughtfully designed homes.
In some respects, the Not So Big House is a very simple and intuitive idea. Just consider where you spend your time at home. Where do you eat? Hang out? Entertain? Most people I know, myself included, rarely use their formal rooms. Perhaps the dining room is called into service a handful of times each year for holidays. Perhaps the living room is called into service during large parties (and we all know how often we host large parties). But for everyday living, and even regular entertaining, most people use their comfortable and informal spaces. What Susanka is saying to me (and others like me) is this: Next time you buy or build don’t invest in space that you’ll rarely use. Invest in design details and high quality finishes that will transform all of the house and not just a few select rooms into your home.
She’s convinced a lot of people, including me, that a Not So Big House is a better house. But I’ve started to wonder: is it also, as I initially thought, a more sustainable house? Last week, I received an email newsletter from Susanka announcing the opening of a Not So Big Showhouse in Libertyville, Illinois. While I was impressed by the space plan and design details, I was disappointed by the overall size of the home, which at 2450 square feet is actually larger than the average new American home built in 2010.
I don’t know the myriad factors that informed the overall dimensions of Susanka’s latest showhouse. There are surely constraints and concerns that are not apparent from the outside. But I do know that the message “smaller is better” gets lost if the showhouse isn’t actually smaller. Not to mention that show house will use more energy than it otherwise would have.
Which brings me back to the point I decided not to belabor earlier: the bigger you build a house, the more energy it will use. Unless of course you build the bigger house to higher energy performance standards than you would have if you had built it smaller. But this would never happen, except perhaps in Wonderland.
So what is the right size, not just for livability but sustainability? Well… fortunately there are some proposed answers to this question out there. In fact, there is currently a very lively discussion happening on green building advisor among folks who would like to pin some hard and fast numbers onto the ideal of building smaller (as part of a broader discussion of what makes for a “Pretty Good House”). The numbers proposed, and hotly debated, are 1000-1500-1750-1875 square feet for 1, 2, 3, and 4 occupants respectively. Whatever you think of those particular numbers (I suspect many homeowners would think them too small), it’s really good put them out there and debate them, even if consensus proves elusive.
Is the Not So Big House too big too be sustainable? I would say that as embodied in Susanka’s new showhouse it is. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on the Not So Big concept. On the contrary, I want to refine the concept–and, yes, try to attach some hard(er) and fast(er) numbers to it. The Not So Big House has an incredible amount of potential to help transform the residential landscape, so that our homes are more functional, more enjoyable and part of the solution to the environmental challenges we face. But we can’t realize this potential if we keep building homes that are As Big As the Average American Home.
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What a terrific time I had at Build Boston this year! I attended several extremely thoughtful and thought-provoking presentations and met some of the pioneers in green building and energy efficiency.
Who knew that Massachusetts’ progressive energy policies would make building net-zero homes (homes that produce as much energy as they consume) so affordable? Carter Scott of Transformations, Inc. did! His experience has shown that the simple payback for a photovoltaic system on a home with decent solar orientation is as little as 6-7 years.
Who would have thought occupant choices could have such a large impact on overall energy consumption? Through his thoughtful retrofit of his own home, Marc Rosenbaum of South Mountain Company has shown that small decisions–such as thermostat set points–make a big difference in energy use.
Who would have thought that a simple spreadsheet could do a better job predicting household energy use than a complex modeling program? Michael Blasnick’s work indicates that detailed energy modeling does not have a good track record projecting actual energy consumption, particularly in older homes.
I was also honored to give a talk entitled Green That Means Something with Jonathan Kantar of Sage Builders, LLP. If you weren’t able to attend the talk, you can view our slideshow on slideshare. Of course the slides (of which “A Historic Opportunity” is one example) only tell a small part of the story, so here’s the main gist:
Jonathan and I set an ambitious–and somewhat audacious–agenda for our talk: to provide a set of sustainability goals for single-family homes and a road map for achieving those goals. This agenda grew out of our experiences trying to build and remodel homes that are part of the solution to environmental challenges–challenges such as climate change, water scarcity and indoor pollution.
It also grew out of our awareness that conventional design and building practices often exacerbate these challenges, or at the very least do little to help solve them. Far too many residential building projects miss the boat on durability, energy efficiency, water conservation, and indoor health.
Now, before you protest, try this little thought experiment. How often do you…
- Build an addition only after determining that it isn’t possible to meet functional needs within the existing footprint?
- Factor watering needs into site and landscaping plans?
- Evaluate building materials for potential off-gassing?
- Assess operational energy needs during the design phase of a project?
My guess is that for homeowners and residential building professionals alike, all too often the answer is NEVER. Jonathan and I set out to change this. We were also fortunate to have an engaged audience. I’ve posted several of their questions below along with our responses:
In your opinion are there any materials that are currently being widely used in homes that, in the future, are going to shown to expose occupants to unacceptable health risks?
Rachel: The short answer is yes. The building industry has a long history of relying on materials that, over time, turn out to pose unacceptable health risks to occupants and are eventually abandoned. I think that this problem is trending downward for a couple of reasons. First, the value of ensuring good indoor air quality is gaining broader acceptance. Second, materials are subject to increasingly rigorous emissions standards and testing by both government and third party organizations, and that information is more readily available and accessible than ever. This trend is increasing as market demand for safe products and transparency increases.
Why are you recommending that over the next 20-30 years we transition to using high efficiency air-source heat pumps to meet space conditioning needs?
Jonathan: The technology involved with air-source heat pumps has changed drastically over the past 5-10 years. There are now some units that truly produce three (3) times more energy (heat) than they consume. And several of these units can operate efficiently in temperatures approaching 0 deg. (F). Since these units are powered by electricity, the 3 to 1 ratio of produced to consumed energy is important. This efficiency rate, known as the coefficient of power (COP), represents the minimum amount necessary to offset the amount of energy that is lost in the production and transmission of the electricity to your house. As the COP drops below 3, then there are other heating sources that become more attractive. Of course if you have lots of solar electric power, than there is not much of a “penalty” for using electricity to handle your HVAC needs.
The case studies you shared show pretty impressive reductions in modeled energy use. Have you been able to verify these reductions with actual energy use data?
Rachel: I presented my experience at my house. While this is not always the case, my family has been able to use less energy than our energy model predicted we would. Marc Rosenbaum has also presented data on several similar homes that his company built indicating that actual energy use can differ from projections either way and that occupant behavior can significantly affect results.
As you can see, we got some great questions. And we’d love to continue the conversation! So check out our presentation and post your thoughts. And if you attended the conference: How are you building on Build Boston?
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I’m going to be giving a talk at Build Boston next month with Jonathan Kantar of Sage Builders on Green That Means Something. Yes–the implied subtext is that there’s a whole lot of “green” out there that doesn’t mean all that much. But if you read this blog regularly, you already knew that.
Anyway… one of the problems that we will be addressing is missed opportunities in green building. Homeowners typically get only a small handful of chances to dramatically improve the performance of their homes–say, when we put on a new roof or upgrade mechanicals or finish a basement. But very few of us have the foresight to take full advantage of these, no matter how green-minded we may be. In fact, some of us, present company included, have been known to squander an opportunity and even make it harder to improve performance in the future.
Back in 2003–before I had drunk the sustainability kool-aid–my husband and I were living in an 1800 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath home:
Originally built in 1895, the home had been added onto in the 1980s (the addition is visible on the right hand side of the photo) and the basement had been partially finished. We had lived in the home a couple of years, had our first child, were beginning to feel that we needed “more space” to accommodate our changing needs. Where would the grandparents stay when they came to visit? Where would we put all the toys? Where would we eat every day, since the dining room was “too nice” for young kids?
Without giving it much thought, we decided to add on (it never occurred to us that we could do otherwise):
We added on a bathroom, mudroom (with laundry), an office/guest bedroom, and a kitchen, bringing our total square footage up to 2400. We turned our old kitchen in a family room and opened it up to the kitchen to create a combined cooking, eating, playing and casual gathering space:
As much as we have enjoyed our new space, from a sustainability perspective, the addition was not a good move. This is largely because of the energy penalty of those additional 600 square feet–space that would need to be heated, cooled and electrified for the rest of the home’s lifespan.
Could we have mitigated the damage somewhat if we had upgraded our insulation at the same time? Perhaps. But the effectiveness of any “damage control” would have been undermined by the design, which took a home with some complicated geometry and made it that much more so. A bump-out here, dormers there, varied roof lines–all these architecturally interesting forms make it harder and more expensive to air seal and insulate properly.
Finally we missed an opportunity to fix our basement space, which we were already using as living space but wasn’t insulated, sealed and ventilated properly. If we had not done an addition, we could have conditioned our basement properly and used this space to meet our changing needs (if done right a basement can be comfortable, beautiful and have excellent indoor air quality).
But we didn’t do this. We did the addition, increased our energy footprint, and made it much harder to reduce this footprint in the future. No matter how “green” the choices are that we’ve made since then–from installing a high efficiency boiler to changing out light bulbs to using fans for summertime cooling as much as possible–they won’t be able to make up for this missed opportunity.
Which isn’t to say that we haven’t tried or won’t keep trying. In fact, we have made good progress towards reducing our energy use since 2004. But we were starting much further back than we would have been if we’d made different choices back in 2003.
One good thing that has come out of this is my commitment to help others avoid the mistakes I made. At my Build Boston talk, I’ll be using my own home as an example of green that means something and green that, well, doesn’t mean a whole lot; and my own remodeling experiences (including but not limited to the infamous addition) as a template for how to and how not to advance along the path to a sustainable future. I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes. They’ve become the basis for the standards, goals and tools I’m developing to help others–homeowners, architects and contractors alike–make sure that their projects truly are part of the solution to our environmental challenges.
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Four plumes of smoke from Texas wildfires are visible in the lower left quadrant of this NASA satellite image
When someone says green building what’s the first word or phrase that comes to mind? Perhaps its energy efficiency or natural materials or indoor air quality. Whatever you think of, it probably isn’t bad weather. What on earth does weather have to do with green building?
The spate of horrific weather we’ve had over the past couple of weeks–Hurricane Irene followed in short order by Tropical Storm Lee along with wildfires in Texas–has got me thinking a lot about this question. Of course, none of these or any other severe weather events can be directly attributed to–or blamed on–climate change. However, there is widespread agreement among climatologists that global warming already is and will continue to have a dramatic impact on global weather patterns, often with destructive consequences. As we face more and more severe weather, we will need to adapt our infrastructure, including our buildings.
It may not be widely known, but building resilience has emerged as a key tenet of the green building movement. Last year, Alex Wilson, Executive Director of Building Green, published an influential series of articles on his top green building priorities, and building resilient homes made his top ten list.
Resilience requires improving the capacity of homes not only to withstand storm damage but also to remain livable in the event of extended power outages, loss of heating fuel, and water shortages. While for some buildings, such as hospitals, active systems such as generators have a crucial role to play in maintaining livability, Wilson argues that passive systems should be the top priority for most buildings because of expense, safety risks and logistical problems associated with generators.
What would these passive systems look like? While some systems would be the same in different climates, there would also be some differences. In a cold climate like Boston, building for passive survivability could include (but isn’t limited to) features such as:
- enough insulation to keep indoor temperatures above 50-55 without additional heat
- sufficient natural ventilation and daylighting to provide fresh air and light without electricity
- solar systems that could provide hot water and electricity for at least part of each day
- onsite water storage and filtration
- composting toilets
For me, what immediately stands out about this list are two things. First, what makes a building livable during service disruptions is also what makes it energy efficient and environmentally responsible. In short, resilient buildings are green buildings and vice versa. Second, the vast majority of existing buildings–including our homes–are nowhere even close to meeting even a low threshold of passive survivability.
My limited personal experience with critical service disruptions, including loss of power during Hurricane Irene, illustrates this second point extremely well. When I lose power during the winter, my home–despite the significant investments we have made in insulation and air sealing–quickly becomes intolerably cold. When I lose power during the summer, the heat and humidity can overwhelm the ability of windows and doors to cool the house. If we were to ever lose water we would have to rely on bottled water. If we ever lost sewer, I’m not sure what we’d do.
The long and short of it is this: the livability my home–like most homes in this country–is extremely vulnerable to disruptions caused by bad weather. Which is yet another good argument for building green.
Image Credit
NASA JPL, Ed Olsen
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Does an ipad make you green with envy? Do you salivate just walking by an apple store? I know I do. I just bought a new macbook to replace my failing 2007 model (only 2007!) and I could barely restrain myself from buying an ipad also.
An ipad would be soooo convenient when I’m on the go: I could take it to meetings and when I travel. It would be so much easier for email than my iphone (yup, I’ve got an iphone too). And all those apps! There’s so much I could do with an ipad that I can’t do–or at least do as well–with my iphone or my macbook. Perhaps I’d even become an ereader. Since I’m trying to wean myself off buying books, I might as well… It would be a green choice, right?
Or so I was imagining as I sat there waiting for a “genius” to bring out my new macbook.
According to an increasingly influential school of thought in the sustainability movement I was actually on to something here. Dematerialization, which at its most basic level simply means using less material to make products, is a hot topic in sustainable design these days. Dematerialized design can encompass everything from making smaller products to eliminating packaging to replacing products with services (a la Zipcar).
There is a great deal of excitement about the type of dematerialization embodied in the ipad: an innovation that doesn’t just use less material, but actually replaces material altogether. The music revolution catalyzed by the ipod (and itunes) is a classic and well-known example of this type of dematerialization: by allowing us to scratch our consumption itch without buying any stuff, such gadgets are supposedly also better for the earth.
But what about the resources that facilitate these so-called dematerialized design innovations? Perhaps on an individual level buying an ipad and no longer buying books would have a net positive impact on my personal environmental footprint. But what’s the bigger picture? What is the overall and long-term impact of our proliferating gadgets?
Proponents of dematerialization point to the declining material and energy intensity of our economy as evidence that we can continue to grow and protect the environment at the same time. Whether it’s foodstuffs or forestry products or power generation, technological innovations are allowing us to make more with less than we were a generation ago. And if we just let innovators keep innovating, dematerialization will solve our environmental problems for us.
The problem with this line of thought is that a reduction in the intensity of consumption is not the same as an overall reduction in consumption. Dematerialization doesn’t stop, let alone reverse, the trend line of increased consumption. At its best, it only allows consumption to rise more slowly. At its worst, it actually facilitates increases in overall consumption.
Take the case of… you guessed it, electronic gadgets. When I was a kid we had one TV and, when I got to high school, one computer. My family now has three computers and two TVs. Not to mention two cable boxes, a blue ray player, wii, apple TV, ipod, itouch and two iphones.
My new macbook uses way less material and energy than the clunky pc my family shared growing up. But efficiency gains haven’t been able to make up for the increases in overall residential electricity consumption, which in a single generation has nearly doubled.
Then there is the energy needed to run the data centers that support our dematerialized consumption (as well as other economic activity such as online banking). By 2030 electricity consumption for IT centers is projected to rise from near 0 to over 500 billion kwh annually.
And then there is the problem of ewaste. We aren’t just buying more gadgets we are also junking more gadgets. Increasing media attention has made us more aware of the costs associated with ewaste, particularly in developing countries which have become dumping grounds for our outdated and broken machines, where children harvest scrap metal for resale by melting away the plastic and foam that encases it.
Now that brings new and perverse meaning to dematerialization.
Would the world be better off without ipads? I would wager that, yes, it would. Does that mean I won’t buy one? Well…
Image Credits:
Apple (Chestnut Hill Apple Store)
Maria Tama/Getty Images (Zipcar)
Madhusudan Iyengar and Roger Schmidt/Energy Consumption of Information Technology Centers (chart)
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Thank you for this post! I was similarly struck by the great and important conversations and work folks are doing to address serious challenges around energy use and climate change- and simultaneously noted the lack of an effective framework for including human beings. So inconvenient, those humans. Messing up our nice systems. :) I came away from BE 12 with a passionate commitment to continue being a part of this community of great thinkers and innovative builders and designers. And a part of that commitment, for me, is to help be a part of dialogues to create new ways to conceptualize, language, and hence work with PEOPLE in our models. We must consider human beings, all of their messiness and loveliness, in our systems, or how useful are they anyway. A holistic, green, abundant, functional new world for me is inherently created WITH people, not in spite of them. I urge us to consider language like “occupants” and labels like “complacent” for people as distancing, and negative. We must connect with other people, find out who they are, what motivates them. Be a part of building relationships as much as building energy efficient systems. I see this as an integral strategy in our work of creating a built environment (and beyond) that is truly resilient. People are one of our best hopes for resiliency and innovation.
Comment by Ace McArleton — March 15, 2012 @ 10:20 am
Thank you for your thoughtful and inspiring words. I couldn’t agree more with your sentiment that a “holistic, green, abundant, functional new world for me is inherently created WITH people, not in spite of them.” And I’m so appreciative of your challenge (to me and others) to consider our words carefully. Is a person an object to be fixed or another soul to whom we can relate if we open ourselves to the possibility?
I would argue that in can be necessary and helpful to speak about “occupancy” and “complacency” for practical purposes (like research). But we must bear in mind that however useful such language may sometimes be, it always does an injustice to the humanity of our subjects and does not reflect the world we seek to create.
Comment by Rachel White — March 15, 2012 @ 10:53 am