Green Building | Sustainable Architecture [Part 1]

How about a I kick this off with a little background on how I even came to be interested in these concepts...

When I was about half way through high school, I was thinking that I might want to go to college to study architecture. There's a lot about it that still really appeals to me today... but long story, short I didn't study architecture. I studied music and then global business... go figure. No regrets, though.

So, fast-forward (or rewind, depending on where you are in this boring story so far) to the end of 2005, and I'm sitting (as a real estate developer) at this fancy-schmancy economic forecast luncheon in Phoenix where there were three main speakers for the morning. The first two were your typical, run-of-the-mill high-octane economists from some big investment banks, which is the type of person that you expect to hear pontificate at these events. But the third guy was different... his name is Wellington Reiter. I felt sort of bad for him because when it came to his turn, droves of round men in business suits were already filing out of the ballroom, indirectly writing-off anything he was about to say as irrelevant to their future. But as soon as he launched into his presentation, I was locked-in (for the first time all morning). Reiter's talk simply offered a vision for what the future of urban planning & design COULD look like (specifically in Phoenix) both in commercial and residential applications. Concept sketches of high-density yet comfortable housing... urban landscapes that leverage design and solar power to energize the city and create natural oasis-like parks... mass transit networks that would actually integrate the sprawling suburbs. An entirely different [read: sustainable] direction, and I loved it. But nobody else seemed to get into it. The whole experience really got me thinking... but unfortunately it didn't get me thinking in a self-reflective way. That came later.

Now fast-forward to the end of 2006, and HEY, Tara's pregnant! Whoa, awesome! Whoa, scary. Just the reality of the pregnancy significantly changed the way I perceived the whole world. My priorities were instantly rearranged (and have been ever since;-) In that time, Tara started reading up on a lot of different aspects to being pregnant, many of which dealt with how healthy living makes for a healthy baby. And she would draw me into the things she was learning about... like harmful chemicals in foods & plastics, the ecological benefits of cloth diapering, indoor air-quality, etc. And it seemed like over the months spanning the birth of our daughter, we both started to get a glimpse of how truly interconnected the world is. We were beginning to see that a healthy life for us and for our children requires mindful actions and a healthy earth. You may also recall that we read Sleeth's Serve God Save the Planet, which despite its rather stark title had a strong impact on our worldview (see more of my thoughts here and here). And this was also about the time that, despite the political polarization of the global warming issue, the general consensus coming from experts around the globe was that the physical planet is, in fact, not in good shape, and that a lot of the research data points to humanity playing a significant role in the problems.

So, here we are halfway through 2008... I'm still involved with the family biz, these sustainable design concepts excite me more than ever, yet my path towards implementing them in the future is a bit uncertain. Towards the end of last year, I led a look at a potential business venture, which involved building a spec home in one of our developments. I set a target to build a LEED certified finished product in a native desert setting, and the process of walking through the details of the LEED requirements, researching different design aspects, and learning more about photovolatic solar energy was a blast! Unfortunately, we've tabled this venture at the moment while the market drains into a black hole;-)

So that's how I became interested in this stuff. And, this post has (as usual) gotten kind of long, so I'll hold it there for tonight...

UP NEXT TIME:

• I'll run down some of the key tenets and techniques of sustainable building that I've learned
• I will take a closer look at how far pre-fab homes have come in recent years
• I'll offer some resources (web, book, and local) for your own exploration if you're interested.

*Photo credit: LivingHomes

The Backyard [A Pictoral Journey]...

Hey folks! Yeah, yeah... weeks have passed since the last post, I know. A lot's been goin' on (took that weekend trip to LA, been working on Shea's "sleeping" habits, work's been hittin'-the-fan, etc.) More on all of that later...

But for now, I'd like to take you on (what I consider) an amusing tour of our backyard through the years...

Seeing that Tara and I bought the house in which I happened to grow up from my parents after we moved to AZ following college, our backyard is the setting for a lot of my childhood memories: over the years my brother and I played hours of catch, smear-the-[guy-with-the-ball:], & homerun derby; my dad put in a tetherball pole on the sideyard for my 10th birthday; and on an early-release school day back in 1991, I got my first kiss back there... coincidentally from a girl named Tara, HA! (Just for the [wife] record, SHE kissed me! I was defenseless, disoriented, befuddled, bewildered!;-) Anyway...

Given the modest size of the house, the backyard is on the larger side of things. And as time wore on since we first moved-in in 1986, the yard had lost much of its pizazz by the time Tara and I took over.

A shot from the patio looking out shortly after we moved-in (2004).

So, after we took the first year to get settled inside the house as newly-weds (read: paint EVERY interior wall surface, replace light-fixtures, fans, hardware, etc.), I set my sights on the backyard. I was born into a family that always seems to minimize the amount of work involved in the projects that lay before us... the logic goes something like this, "eh, that shouldn't be too bad... I'll just do it myself." :) Thus begins the backyard saga...

As I set out to start the work, I happened to also be starting grad school at the time. I like to spend a decent amount of time creating and designing, so this project was hardly a chore... but, to put it plainly, it. took. for. ever. for me to finish. I used my time in the yard as a release of sorts from the mind-numbing study sessions and stressful days at work... so I'd get an hour here, an evening there... and fortunately I have a very patient wife (when she wants to be;-)

I basically wanted to start from scratch with a clean canvas back there, so I went crazy on whatever was left of that wiry old lawn and KILLED IT ALL, BWAH HAHAHAHA!!-- sorry, got carried away there...

The yard with grass annihilated and the patio extension excavated and formed.

After working out the details of the new design, I decided that a larger patio would make a big difference, so I hired a concrete guy to do the new patio that Tara helped design. While that work was being done, I embarked on another self-imposed side-project of larger than anticipated proportions: a house for Charlie... our bizarre pet.

This dog is 100% weird.

I had this grand idea that I would convert the side yard into a dreamy dog-run for Chuck. A fenced space just for him with his own stretch of grass and a custom-built doghouse. So I installed a wrought-iron fence & gate, and I launched into my doghouse design that I (of course) spent way too much time on...

Ya' darn right I framed-out the doghouse and installed carpet!

So, after killing the old lawn, removing the old tetherball pole that my dad set in FOUR FEET OF CEMENT, digging-up & relocating countless sprinkler heads/zones (kill me), having the new patio built, having the curbing run, relocating the existing walkway pavers, planting four trees, building the doghouse, installing the fence & gate, planting shrubs and flowers galore, spreading 15 tons of decorative rock, spreading new topsoil, and laying 1,800 sq ft of Mid-Iron sod... voila... no big deal, right?... pshhhh.

Everybody loves Before-&-After pictures....

Before


After


Before


After

So, Charlie got his luxurious dogrun, and what does he do??? REJECT IT!

I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen him actually lay down in that blasted doghouse. When we first shut him in the dogrun, he learned that he could use his mad-hops to jump the six-foot gate to the front yard and go cruisin' the neighborhood. Puh... ungrateful mutt.

Which brings me to today. I find myself over there in the dogrun this afternoon with a shovel. And I'm digging up the pristine lawn that I've maintained for Charlie that he never uses (my first tinge of rejection as a father ::sniffle::). Why would I do that, you ask? Because rather than simply growing flowers, grass, and shrubs, we're gonna try our hand at raising food, my friends!

In recent months, we've been helping build a community garden with a bunch of friends, and a number of our friends also have some sweet gardening going on at their homes. And as Tara and I have learned more about the environmental, community, & health benefits to eating locally grown, organic foods, we've got the bug, too.
So, instead of watering & mowing Charlie's stupid patch of grass which he snuffs at with disdain (which makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE), I dug it up today. I'll be relocating his house to the main yard (maybe he'll like it out there, HA!), and building a raised-bed vegetable garden in the side yard.

Thus begins the garden saga... we're a little late to the dance in terms of the planting season this spring, but Tara's got some seedlings growing in a tray right now, so we're goin' for it! Updates and pictures to come as things progress...

The Story of Stuff.

I know what you're thinking: "Wow, two posts in two days!?" Amazing, right?

Actually, I just came across this short film earlier today, and I was very impressed & encouraged... so I had to tell the five of you about it, too!! It's called The Story of Stuff, and I cannot recommend it enough. It is a very important, fast-paced, cleverly-delivered 20 minute experience. (Maybe this film is old news, but it's fresh to me... I really hope it has a viral spread). It really resonated with me because Annie Leonard (in conjunction with Free Range Studios) has been so successful in reframing the current reality of the developed world in a concise, factual, and unpretentious way.

Check it out!

The End of Suburbia.

I love movies (just had to get that out there). I love the motion-picture medium, I love transcendent acting, I love the special effects, I love the wide range of audioscapes, on and on. And yet, when I look at my Netflix queue and history, it’s completely dominated by DOCUMENTARIES. If that makes me a GEEK, well then give me the pocket-protector because the wedgie fits! Documentaries are rockin’. Oftentimes biased towards a particular viewpoint, yes, but a great source of new perspectives nonetheless.

Accordingly, I’ve experienced a number of impactful documentaries lately. One of which deserves a separate post (which I plan to give) and another that I’ll talk about now...

It’s called The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream. I watched it a few weeks ago and when it finished, I just sat silently... and thought... and worried (a little). Okay, I’m not gonna lie to you: it pretty much freaked me out for the evening. Yet given a few weeks to reflect on the topics, I’m not freaked out anymore, but instead I’ve been downgraded to simply “soberly concerned.” ;-)

The premise of the film centers upon the concept of Peak Oil (yes, despite the inherent downfalls of Wikipedia, this link offers some decent info on this concept). And while certain people interviewed come across as “alarmists” foretelling a Malthusian catastrophe, the science underlying their theories pretty much stands alone.

At Thunderbird, we were consistently guided to keep the concept of Risk Management in the forefront of our sights as business managers. And this film profoundly touched the risk management nerve in me. I’m increasingly convinced of the unavoidable problems of American suburbanism (both from a land-developer’s perspective and from a spiritual perspective). Obviously, this view is in direct opposition to what I currently do for a living, but the intricacies of that situation and my plans for the future aren't something I'm going to divulge on a public blog [but feel free to ask me about it all if we're ever hanging-out in person:-]. Anyway, without fleshing out anymore of the details of the film, how about I just pose some of the questions that have been rolling around my skull as a result?

- What if the suburban lifestyle (which America promotes and accelerates) that thrives on consumption, individualism, and driving becomes virtually unworkable in the not-too-distant future due to oil production issues?

- What will the economic & social transition period look like? How devastating will it be?

- Could the transition effectively eliminate the “middle class” (for some amount of time)?

- Is New-Urbanism the only solution? If not, then what else?

- America looks to be, hands-down, the most ill-prepared for this new world economy... could this “event” effectively end the six to seven decade reign of U.S. geopolitical dominance?

And more personally…

- What does this mean for my family?

- What sort of actions should I take right now to prepare/safeguard?

I really do have quite a bit of confidence in the entrepreneurial zeal and innovation that is a hallmark of American culture, but there’s definitely a rub here, in my mind. While my parents’ generation (the Baby-Boomers) will likely live almost their entire lives in a world that operates under U.S. hegemony, I feel fairly comfortable saying that my generation will see these circumstances unexpectedly change. And it’s kind of uncomfortable to think about: because, as Americans, we’re used to calling the shots in a lot of ways... we’re used to having numerous currencies pegged to our dollar... we’re used to countries importing our entertainment, our culture... we’re used to foreigners speaking “our” language in THEIR land rather vice versa. Even I, someone who dislikes many of these aspects of the U.S., am instinctively unnerved by the thought of living under a different regime.

So, there it is. Sorry for the wordy post... (why do my ramblings end up being so wordy??) I’ve formulated some responses to the above questions, but nothing of much worth. I’d be very interested to hear anybody else’s thoughts on these matters.

(And we haven’t even touched on the spiritual implications of all of this! Oy… must lie down:-)

*Photo Credit: SingInYourSleep

Serve God, Save the Planet (Part II)

My lovely wife recently finished this book and wrote out her resulting thoughts, and this reminded me that I never wrote the Part II of my review that would logically follow my Part I (uh, duh). So, in contrast to Part I which was mostly transcribed statistics, I’m going to throw out some more intangible thoughts that I’ve been rolling around as a result of this book lately.

Just to clarify, I never want to come across as claiming to be an expert in these matters. That’s certainly not the case (which is a notion that you should feel comfortable applying to pretty much anything I write about on this blog!:-). While I often enjoy getting into the science and tedious details of some of these complicated issues, I’m very certain that I’m only getting a glimpse of the larger realities, and thus I feel most comfortable simply talking about these matters from my perspective as a regular guy with a family in America who’s trying to pursue Jesus.

And it’s at this level of interaction where the author, J. Matthew Sleeth, connected with me. I don’t think everything he writes in this book is gold-plated truth or wisdom. But the framework that he proposes ideas within is what resonated with me. Instead of touting from a soapbox about how the sky is falling and that there’s a toasty place in hell for all of us who are contributing to the problems, Sleeth speaks plainly to our humanity... to the systemic mindsets that are manifested in problems of our physical world. Let me give you an example:

“The content mind is one of the greatest obstacles to a rich spiritual life. The content mind is a proud mind. It has nothing to learn; it has an answer to everything and no more questions to ask” (62).

The motivation of the book is not to persuade readers to be “treehuggers.” Rather, Sleeth is challenging all of us to strive for a proper sense-of-self... to view our actions within a global reality... to live radically and counter-culturally because this is what Jesus incited his followers to do. And when this is done, it just may end up looking treehugger-y... and it can be transforming & divinely beautiful.

While I’ve read some reviews from other folks who felt that Sleeth comes across as judgmental and preachy, I didn’t get that sense. While he does speak about some very specific lifestyle issues (e.g., electricity use, parenting, food, Sabbath observance, consumerism, etc.), I never perceived his statements as black-and-white declarations. I just took them as really challenging observations/propositions on his part. The fact that I felt stung a few times points only to my personal conviction, not a superiority complex of Sleeth. And that’s because, above all, he speaks to the condition of our hearts:

“It is not our possessions or our homes that will keep us out of heaven, but our unwillingness to set them aside in service of the Lord” (142).

So, yes, I highly recommend the book because it really stirs up some motivation to actually make some changes in my lifestyle (rather than just stirring up a bunch of head-nods and thoughtful “hmmms…”)

Hmmm.

Enough on that.

(I was now going to transition to talking about a film I recently viewed, but this is long enough... so come back in a couple days and I’ll post my film thoughts then. Thanks for reading!)

*Photo Credit: Forestgladesiwander

Degrees of Separation (Thorns). [Part 1]

And we're baaaaack. (sorry folks, I'll try to be a bit more regular at the blogging here... maybe somebody makes metamucil wafers for blogging, hmm:)


True to form, I've got more swirling around in my hat-rack than I know how to articulate, so I'm going to try my best to flesh out a concept that I've been grappling with over the past weeks (and, as it turns out, my entire life! duh duh duuuuh): degrees of separation.

>>Somewhat Unnecessary Disclaimer: Chances are that if you're reading this, then you know me personally. If you know me personally AND you know that I have a blog, then the chances are fairly high that you are in one of the following categories: a) a Christian; b) at one time were a "believer" and/or are currently investigating spiritual elements. [If you do not fall into either category a) or b), then you should leave. JOKE! Please stay and bear with me. Hopefully these ideas apply generally to the human experience...]

So, degrees of separation. A number of messages and written words that I've been exposed to recently (mostly from Rob Bell and Matthew Sleeth) have planted a new perspective within me. The more I roll it around, the more I realize the breadth and depth of the concept. At face value, it's very simple and logical... yet when I choose to take my personal life down the rabbit hole, I'm confronted with a mosaic of mirrors and pathways.

Here's the simple version:

The world (and more specifically, culture) in which we live can subtly impose degrees of separation between God and ourselves.

Simple enough. Most of us can probably jive with that at some level. Yet it's the personal application that opens things up for me...

In the "God is Green" series that Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan recently walked through, Rob offered the thought that so much of our "advanced" lifestyle, while admittedly adding "comfort," has simultaneously pumped degrees of separation into our day-to-day. For instance, so many of us feel distant from God's natural creation, yet we go from our garage to our car to the office to our car to the garage (or better yet, if you live in suburban Phoenix, it seems everywhere you look is fully comprised of something manmade or manipulated landscape). We aren't even compelled to think about the origins of our food because it's always right there in the supermarket (nevermind if that particular fruit's in season right now or the distance it traveled to get there). Our beef comes butchered and ground, and our chicken breast comes cleaned and skinless in a shrink-wrapped bag. Our water comes out of a faucet with the turn of a little knob. We get as much electricity as our appliances desire from those plugs in the wall. Our trash disappears in seconds when that truck swings by. Our gasoline always comes out of those filling-stations if we give them enough money.

Point being, as advanced as all of this is, one might argue that these conveniences have profoundly distanced us from God. If we want to actually learn about the implications of our beef's origins, or what kind of power plant shoots electricity to our house, or where our trash goes after it has "disappeared," then we've got to intentionally seek out, read, probe, investigate... or in other words, we have to chop through the degrees of separation. And I am increasingly convinced that to passionately pursue God in the U.S. necessitates an awareness of these separating elements. Notice I say awareness rather than avoidance. I'm not advocating that we all start our own farms while living off of the grid and jogging everywhere we need to be. But I also wouldn't rule any of that out either;-) In my mind, it's the awareness that sets up change... that pricks our heart in a Godward manner. As Rob said in one of his sermons, "Removing degrees of separation brings us closer to God."

We all have our specific situations where radical, counter-cultural changes may be opened up to us... and a willingness to enact these changes in our lives is what I'm advocating. The prevalent temptation that we face is to mold our faith to our lifestyle, rather than our lifestyle to our faith. Maybe this sounds sort of fundamentalist... or hippy...

Anywho, this is getting long, so I'm going to make this a two-part post. In the next installment, I'm going to bounce another notch deeper into the rabbit hole and offer some more personal insights into this concept, as well as expand on these thoughts:

degrees of separation = pride

degrees of separation = thorns

Serve God, Save the Planet (Part I)

Tara recently got me reading a book that we picked up for her birthday titled, Serve God, Save the Planet by J. Matthew Sleeth, MD. You may recall back in this post where I began describing some of our journey towards intentionally respecting the earth that God so amazingly created. Seeing that today is Blog Action Day, I thought I'd pass on some ecological/lifestyle stats from Sleeth's book that jumped out at me. I've decided not to comment on them much at this point because they paint a fascinating & jolting picture all in their own right:

• Rate of forest destruction worldwide = 1 acre per second


• Number of species going extinct = more than 100 per day


• The U.S. uses more natural resources than any country in history

• In the next ten years, 20 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer (1 out of every 15)

• Currently, more than 700 man-made toxins can be found in human tissues

• If every household changed its five most used light bulbs to compact fluorescents, the country could take 21 coal-fired power plants off-line tomorrow
• "This would keep one trillion pounds of poisonous gases and soot out of the air we breathe and would have the same beneficial impact as taking eight million cars off the road" (Sleeth 66).
  

• Approximately 64,000 Americans die annually as a result of soot in the air

• One power plant in Massachusetts was alone found to cause 1,200 ER visits, 3,000 asthma attacks, 110 deaths annually

• The average American watches 1,700 hours of television annually
• The average school-age child attends 900 hours of classes a year

• By the time a typical American reaches age 71, they will have spent a solid 10 waking years in front of a TV

• There are 300 million television sets in America, which consume five times more energy than is produced by all the geothermal, biomass, solar, & wind sources in the U.S. combined

• Ten times more energy, water, & grain is needed to produce a pound of beef or pork than to produce a pound of milk or cheese

• The loss of rain forests in South America means that the clouds they once made no longer blow across the Atlantic to drop their water on Africa
• As a result the Sahara grows by thousands of acres per year

• Nearly a billion people live in chronic hunger

• Every 10 days, a quarter of a million people die from starvation (25,000 every day)

• Haiti's forests have been cut down and shipped to the U.S. As a result, Haiti has lost 90% of its topsoil

• In America, junk mail fills 340,000 garbage trucks per year all bound for landfills
• 4 out of 5 pieces of junk mail aren't recycled

• About 70% of U.S. electricity is generated by fossil fuels, 20% nuclear, 9% hydropower
• Solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and methane combine for the remaining 1%
• We have been developing these alternative sources for three decades

This is a lot to take in at once, but my goal in relaying this info is to drive at a major theme: an element of interconnectedness defines these statistics. Nearly ALL of us in America play a role in the problems, and ALL of us have the option sitting right in front of us to play a role in the solutions...


*Note: While I haven't taken the time to research and provide cited references, I have a reasonably high degree of confidence in validity of each of the above statistics. Of course, I'm completely willing to be persuaded otherwise if contradictory data is out there... but I haven't seen any.

Decisions While Standing at a Crossroad...

Welp, it's an important time in history to be a human being (some may say). From the range of views pumping out of pop culture/the mass media, I hear one side claiming that this generation (OUR generation) is staring global problems AND global solutions in the face like no people group to come before us. On the other side, I sometimes hear voices saying that to agree with this notion that we are a "generation standing at a crossroad" is incredibly self-absorbed, and that to fill our heads with these shallow, bandwagon-joining ideas of "saving the world" is little more than idyllic fantasy. I think I see where each side is coming from, but I definitely tend to side much more with the former than the latter.

Never before in history has so much wealth existed on this earth... so much mass production of goods... so much excess. Never before has digital information touched every country on the globe... tools of empowerment becoming so readily available. Technology continues to plow forward with innovation, systematically uncovering information and solutions to long-standing problems. And yet the problems are of unprecedented proportions as well: never before has humanity seen so much material disparity between haves and have-nots, such massive and multiplying populations, such uncontrollable pandemics, such irreparable damage to our environment, etc.

These circumstances demand intervention on a grand scale, and human intervention can always be simplified to one origin: individual decisions to act. If we sympathize with the dying poor in the developing world, yet our sympathy ends at sentimentality... the poor still needlessly die. If we are concerned about the increasing pollution in our cities and with the mounting data that points to human-caused climate change, yet our frustration isn't powerful enough to change our very lifestyle which is contributing to the problems... then how can we characterize certain decisions we make as anything other than selfish or lazy?

These are realizations that I've been rolling around in recent months, and I think they apply to so many aspects of our daily lives. The challenge is finding the proper balance of learning, realizing, taking action, and being realistic.

Along these lines, there's a "green" movement gaining momentum in our country and among pursuers of Jesus who are trying to build God's Kingdom on this earth. Tara and I are trying to learn more about what we can do to reduce our impact and embark on some new lifestyle adventures along the way. We've got a looooong way to go, but the path certainly looks intriguing. Tara's really been guiding us in new directions at home, and I've recently had some exciting ideas come along in this realm as well, but this post is now far too long... so I'll save the idea-sharing for another post:-)

*Photo Credit - "Marc:" on Flickr