A Beautiful City

I recently discovered a great site with these beautiful 360 degree panoramic images. Enjoy.

Minnehaha Falls

Hennepin Avenue Bridge

Sunrise on the Stone Arch Bridge

Fireworks on the Stone Arch Bridge

Weisman Art Center

Minneapolis Public Library

May 16th Open House at RoehrSchmitt Architecture

Join us for an Open House at RoehrSchmitt Architecture Friday May 16th * Six to Midnight * 201 Sixth Street SE, Suite 210, Minneapolis, MN 55414 * 612.216.4191

Map to RoehrSchmitt Architecture

In Conjunction with the 2008 Art-A-Whirl Studio and Gallery Tour * Presenting an art installation by Minnesota and International Artist Todd Severson * Drinks, Food and Promotional Trinkets while they last!

"It's MDF" and other questions answered...

We had about a thousand people come through the Juliet House last weekend oohing and ahhing in mostly all the right places. It was great to be able to share our work with so many enthusiastic people...along with the handful of skeptical ones as well. Even those who might have been put off by the non-traditional exterior expression of the house were generally won over once they got inside and experienced the expansive and light-filled spaces. At that point most people generally got it. And if they could get beyond the idea of carrying groceries up the stairs (!), the advantages of having the main living spaces up on the second level became obvious. While our conversations with visitors were all quite varied, a couple questions seemed to pop up repeatedly -- the number one being: What is this floor? Generally followed up by: so...what do the neighbors think? We joked afterwards about having t-shirts made next time that said "MDF" on the front, and "some of them like it, and some of them don't" on the back. Most were content with a brief explanation of particle board used as a finish material, and a little peroration on how we feel the neighborhoods need to allow for change and innovation, and not be treated as precious dioramas from the nineteenth century. Most of the folks who were interested in looking at our house in the first place understood this and sympathized.

The other question that we heard repeatedly was whether we considered the house to be sustainable. Obviously something that's on many peoples' minds, and rightly so. Unfortunately it's a word that's very quickly been commodified and rendered almost meaningless by its appropriation by everyone for virtually everything that could be remotely construed as such. What does it even mean anymore? Michael Pollen defines it nicely in a recent article in the New York Times Magazine:

To call a practice or system unsustainable is not just to lodge an objection based on aesthetics, say, or fairness or some ideal of environmental rectitude. What it means is that the practice or process can’t go on indefinitely because it is destroying the very conditions on which it depends. (emphasis mine)

What I like about this definition is that it takes us back to the notion that sustainability is not about things or products but rather about a practice or process -- i.e. behavior rather than stuff. Sustainability is thus not so much about the stuff you surround yourself with but rather about a way of life. As such we believe that a "sustainable" house is therefore one that helps to make possible a certain way of life. You can incorporate all the latest trends in energy efficient devices and systems you want, but if you insist on living LARGE and taking up more than your fair share of space on this crowded planet then it doesn't matter how many Priuses you've got in your sprawling garage. And we generally take up way too much space and consume way too many resources already. A typical westerner uses something like 200 times the energy as a typical hunter/gatherer - which is what we all were until some 10,000 years ago. So each of us, as animals, consumes and produces the waste equivalent of an entire prehistoric village. That is clearly unsustainable. Especially given that the rest of the world aspires to and is very quickly catching us with our "western" standard of living. As such sustainability is fundamentally a question of reduction - and most likely rather extreme reduction - in how much we consume. So before we even get into specifics of systems and materials, we need to understand that most of sustainability is common sense: building just enough, with simple durable materials, in a place that requires as little travel as possible. It's not just consuming differently, but consuming less -- much less. That raises questions such as: what is a reasonably sized house for a family of 4? 2000 square feet? Perhaps 3000? By world standards a house this size is already a palatial. Clearly then anything much beyond that is extravagant and wasteful, and regardless of solar panels, a gray water retrieval system, and a couple hybrids in the garage, could not seriously be considered "sustainable." (to say nothing of this travesty!) A serious consideration of sustainability is going to require a complete re-evaluation of how we live, and how our entire economy and way of life is dependent upon incessant consumption. It will not be easy or painless, and the resulting world will look nothing like our current world - with solar panels on top.

So are we "sustainable" architects? We would like to think that helping people create dwellings that allow them to live more sustainably is not something separable from just being a good architect. And we're always trying to become better architects -- that never stops.