Physical body : Nutrition | Life Force body : Therapeutics
Emotional body : Movement | Mental body : Meditation

Health care is an institution, just like education, government, and religion. Modern medicine is sterile and white and loaded with tests and medications that diagnose and treat the symptoms of our illness. Medical science has come up with miraculous procedures and life saving techniques, but societally we are overwhelmingly ill and consuming ever increasing amounts of pharmaceuticals as a “remedy”. We are heavily medicated as though to disguise our disease, but we are not getting better. Many of us are uninsured, costs are hyper inflated, and medicines are made from petroleum. Is this a prescription for wellness or a recipe for ill health?

Just like any other urban system, if the institution we have for human care is not working, then it is our responsibility to change it, at least on an individual level, which will in turn and in time catalyze change on a systemic level. Seeking to do just that, doctor Thomas Cowan M.D., founder of the Fourfold Healing Clinic in San Francisco, offers a course of human wellness that is helping heal people from a unique whole systems perspective.

Based on the work of Rudolf Steiner, Dr. Cowan, says that a human being has four “bodies”, each of which need nourishment and each deriving that care differently, yet all inextricably linked to the others. A human, in his view, has not only a physical body but also a life-force (energetic), an emotional, and a mental body. Rather than kill disease, as is the intent of modern medicine, Dr. Cowan's practice aims to nurture life, by cultivating harmony between the patient's component bodies. His book The Fourfold Path to Healing, outlines this theory of the four elements of being and how they collaborate in sustaining the whole health of an individual.

The physical body describes just that, the actual structure of your organism. Dr. Cowan believes the key to healing the physical body is nutrition and bases his nutritional philosophy on a “nutrient dense” diet that includes equal parts animal protein (which can be derived from raw dairy products and farmed eggs), sprouted whole grain, and vegetables. Of course, the quality of the food you eat is of utmost importance and locally sourced, organic, unprocessed foods and local pastured, humanely raised animal products are of essence. While modern medicine focuses only on the physical body, it pays little attention to what patients are feeding themselves. In contrast, the Fourfold Healing philosophy emphasizes nutrition as the foundation to health and integral to the healing of the “other” bodies.

Scientific studies have shown that all living things, plant and animal emit an energy field and according to Dr. Cowan medicine and therapeutics can be used to heal the “life-force” or energetic body. This element relates to the function of the physical body including the circulation of fluids, the rhythm of the heart beat and respiration, and metabolism. The ethereal life-force body consists of poles of activity, which, when in order, result in homeostasis and equilibrium. In contrast, the prolonged imbalance of the body's activity results in “dis-orders” and “dis-ease”. Prescribing high quality, sustainably harvested herbal extracts, homeopathic (tailored to the individual not the illness) medicines, and nutrient dense foods Dr. Cowan helps his clients restore the homeostatic balance of their life-force body. His treatments include alternative healing for cancer patients.

In the Fourfold theory, our emotions and feelings are linked to our external relationships with other people and the planet, and our mobility connects us to the outside world. Following this logic, it is motion or movement that heals our emotional body. It is easy to grasp this connection if we consider how body language is indicative of mood. Sad feelings are represented by slouching and hunching, whereas happiness is indicated by bouncing and attentiveness. Spacial Dynamics, a movement therapy Dr. Cowan recommends for his patients, is a practice that teaches the student to interact with space, with their energetic body and the outside world. The intent is to heal the emotional body by creating a balance between gravity and levity in the physical body. Something as simple as correct posture, therefore, has a considerable impact on our health. Creating harmonious movement, we pave the way for total well being.

The fourth body controls our higher functioning or our thoughts. To heal the mental body we learn to recognize that our feelings are our receptors to the outside world. Instead of stifling or being consumed by emotions, we greet them with joy for the passion they represent. A healthy mind is able to “unfurl the sails, so to speak, and move forward over the sea of emotions to achieve our purpose in life”. Dr. Cowan recommends a simple daily meditation that consists of devoting 5-15 minutes each evening to review the events of the day. Go backward and recall each occurrence of the day and how you felt. Resist the temptation to pass judgement on yourself or others and practice objective, dispassionate thinking. This exercise will strengthen the mental body and allow it to become more readily available during the day, enabling you to own your emotions without them impeding your progress. The practice of Non-Violent Communication is another way to heal the mental body.

While each of the four bodies are cared for by different means, it is important to emphasize the relation of each element to the other. Healing the the function of our body is reliant on a healthy physical structure, which is dependent on emotional wellness, which fosters mental focus and all of these are influenced by how we fuel (feed) ourselves. No part of us independent of its relation to the whole.

The Fourfold Healing Clinic, consists of a space where Dr. Cowan and complementary holistic healers offer a whole systems alternative to treating dis-eases and dis-orders by nurturing the mind, the body, and the soul. The ability to express a complete philosophy of wellness, in the familiar form of a book, distinguishes Dr. Cowan from many other practitioners of alternative medicine and healing. For those of us seeking someone to entrust with our well being, the Fourfold Path offers a foundation for being well.

18th Street Before Transformation So often when speaking to urbanites in the Bay Area and beyond about growing food, I hear the resigned, nearly mantric lament, “my apartment does not have any access to any gardening space.” How frustratingly true for so many of us metro dwellers, or, perhaps not. Perhaps there is more space available than is obvious. What may be needed are concrete actions…

18th Street During Transformation

City sidewalks seem to be one of the great overlooked and marginalized opportunities for the Bay Area Sustainability Movement to create immediate impact through direct action.

Transforming concrete, impervious, grossly oversized sidewalks into beautiful, edible “green walks” while maintaining, indeed enhancing, adequate pedestrian pathways might just be the most radical acts any one of us can take while creating a myriad of benefits for the community. 18th Street After Transformation

That’s a bold statement, so I’d like to offer a quick problem/solution analysis, using San Francisco as an example urban environment, and an inspirational story of one of our sustainability heroines, Jane Martin of Plant*SF, to support this possibility.

Some of the problems we hear about in the urban environment:

• Food, health and social justice: Need and public desire for green space in which to grow fresh, organic, healthy food available to all and need for recreation activities accessible to all

• Watershed health: In San Francisco, on average, some 16 billion gallons of rain fall on the city every year and land on some 70% impermeable surfaces (sidewalks, streets, etc. – see http://www.spur.org/documents/110706_report_01.shtm) and run into San Francisco’s combined storm water/sewage system, overflowing it (a few times a year at least on average) wreaking havoc on the homes (flooding), the ocean and bay ecology (fish, birds, other sea life), spreading detritus on our beaches and stressing our aging infrastructure

• Air quality: Fossil fuel car culture and the toxic material built environment pollute the air we urban dwellers breathe to live

• Lack of cohesive community, crime: It seems many individuals in urban environments like San Francisco reportedly do not know any of their neighbors and feel isolated, creating conditions where violent crimes and theft are more likely to occur

• Deficit of green space: Green space has been shown to calm traffic, improve public health and offer opportunities for young and old to learn about and connect to natural ecosystems. Many might say that green spaces also fulfill an aesthetic need for colorful beautification of an, otherwise, drab, concrete infrastructure

• Carbon contributions to erratic climate change: Fossil fuel based automobile use in the city contributes gases to the atmosphere that have been linked to global climate change

Some solutions created when removing extraneous portions of concrete sidewalk:

• Immediately available green space for planting, low maintenance, drought tolerant, delicious perennial polyculture food gardens that provide fresh, local (as local as it gets) organic fruits and vegetables that do not need to be transported (at great cost, incredible produce waste due to spoilage and immense fossil fuel expenditure contributing to climate change), are not produced by industrial agriculture (known for destroying precious top soil, wasting precious water resources pumped at great cost and energy expenditure contributing to climate change and social minority wage slavery) and immediate opportunities for light exercise and outdoor recreation imperative to health

• More beautiful sidewalks by removing uniform (some would say ugly) concrete and increasing green space and vegetation incorporating art and beautiful design

• Improving the ecology of San Francisco by reducing impervious “hardscape” (sidewalks) resulting in re-hydrating the San Francisco aquifers which reduces the potential for costly/ecosystem-destroying/toxic combined storm drain/sewer system overflows

• Create new relationships in the neighborhood by involving local community in designing and implementing the project – resulting in health benefits and increased community well-being (see study from University of Illinois)

• Showcase local culture and create opportunities for community connection through co-created community design – especially through planting plan to include plants of cultural significance to members of the local community

• Reduce crime by improving community vigilance, awareness and ownership (see story documenting evidence in San Francisco Chronicle July 18th, 2006)

• Reduce air pollution through vegetation (see this State of CA resource )

• Increase property values in the area through greening/vegetation (see this State of CA resource )

• Reduce wind speeds to create more comfortable microclimates through increased vegetation (see State of CA resource )

• C02 sequestration through vegetation to reduce impacts of global warming

• Reduction of noise pollution through vegetation (see State of CA resource)

There seems to be compelling case for concrete direct actions to transform excessive sidewalk into gardens, but what can we do about it? This is where I’d like to share the story of Jane Martin, founder of Plant*SF.

Plant*SF is a non-profit dedicated to promoting permeable landscaping by providing information to the public and by partnering with city and neighborhood organizations. Recently I had the opportunity to chat with Jane and hear Plant*SF’s story, her story, and be inspired by the extraordinary accomplishments one person can make with a practical tenacity and a little help from timing.

Jane is “from the Midwest – Iowa, along the Mississippi river” and shares, with understated, subtle sarcasm, that when coming to the city, first New York and then San Francisco, she was struck by “a lot of opportunity for greening.” In 2003 Jane settled into a home in the mission district in San Francisco, a home with, a not too uncommon, “non-existant backyard, a 14 foot wide concrete sidewalk out front and no place to garden.” She explains that she is a “kid from the country and wanted to dig in the dirt” and as a professional architect and designer she saw the “untapped potential of a sidewalk that was acting as a parking lot for cars, was actually four feet wider than standard driving lanes on the street and was flush to the property line.” Moreover, Jane expressed her concern for the 16 or so neighborhood kids, and 350 at a school around the corner who were unsafe on the sidewalks because cars were taking advantage of the excessive sidewalk (the city ordinance for sidewalks in San Francisco is 48 inches).

So in winter of 2002 Jane took it upon herself to wade through the city permitting processes to install a garden in front of her house by applying to remove concrete. What she found was a cumbersome, undue permitting process for sidewalk encroachment for landscaping – possibly a legacy artifact from a time when well-intentioned policy-makers wanted to protect public space from private developers by making it difficult to encroach on sidewalks. But Jane, an architect, “knows how to deal with permits.” And so, her garden came to be. At the time she approached the San Francisco Neighborhood Parks Council about leveraging this permitting process to remove sidewalks to create additional park space and the idea “was received favorably, but went nowhere.” The timing was not yet right.

Then “a year later, in February 2004, the sewer system failed in my neighborhood. I was knee deep in fecal water in my home and had an epiphany as I waded to my door, went outside and saw that the ground was dry.” Jane was not the only victim of flooding on her block. “My neighbor’s car tested positive for eColi. Because of that backup and the extensive repairs and administrative processes involved, I got the attention of the mayor's office. There was high visibility around this problem and I realized that permeability of surfaces was a solution to such storm water, sewer overflow issues. City officials and policy makers were visiting my home and I was able to point out to them how, despite the otherwise invasive destruction of the fecal water, my garden had actually responded well to the backup,” which had, of course, seeped into the soil to recharge San Francisco’s aquifers and reduce the stress on the sewage/storm drain system.

It seems the timing was then right to address the burdensome, then expensive ($800+), process to apply for sidewalk landscaping permits. Greening was beginning to come into vogue. So Jane started Plant*SF with “the main goal of creating an easy mechanism whereby people could just do this [sidewalk landscaping] and the deeper goal making it an expectation and not an exception.”

Thus began a process of working through city policy makers to change the permitting structure on the books. By the spring of 2006 Jane had changed the laws. The new "Permeable Sidewak Landscape Permit" passed through the Board of Supervisors and was signed into law by Mayor Gavin Newsom on June 8, 2006. It is available for use through the Department of Public Works, specifically the Bureau of Urban Forestry. You can find out how to get take action here. Submitting for a permit costs $215 (discounted to $160 if you get neighbors involved) and, with a few reasonable restrictions, almost all the excessive sidewalk in San Francisco could be turned into edible green walks! The city is even beginning to crack down on property owners with sidewalks requiring repair. Jane points out, “many owners do not know that, according to the city, they are accountable for maintaing and repairing the public sidewalk in front of their buildings.” What a great opportunity to more permanently repair the sidewalk by removing hazardous broken concrete and install beautiful foodscapes.

The planting plan must be documented on the permitting application. Selecting multi-functional water conserving plants is imperative for our Bay Area climate, unless the microclimate suggests otherwise. Jane discovered the value of drought tolerant plantings through sheer practicality, “I sometimes traveled and left my garden for up to two weeks without any watering in the summer. I learned from the experience of noting whatever survived." Many choice, low-maintenance edibles are drought tolerant. Jane shares, “edibles I've received permits for so far include meyer lemons, basil, cilantro, fennel, fig, lavender, lemon balm, lemon verbena, mint, parsley, peppers, guava, pomegranate, sage and strawberry.”

Why Jane’s story is so inspiring to the Urban Alliance is her ecological awareness. Removing impervious sidewalk for storm water infiltration is wonderful, but to plant edibles and other useful plants in that space is radical, and of course just practical and sensible. Perhaps more important to some, “the beautification coupled with the sustainability is really hard to resist." By stacking functions, with one effort we get to harvest water into our urban aquifers, grow food, clean the air, beautify the neighborhood and sequester carbon from the atmosphere. This is ecological planning – recognizing the relationship amongst solutions. How much more effective could we be if we approached planning with ecological awareness? Jane laments about current city planning, “there is no comprehensive plan for the local ecology. We need to rethink our cities as natural systems in the urban context.”

The effect of Jane’s heroic effort is inspiring, but not unique. Many neighboring Bay Area cities have such permitting procedures already written in their planning code. I imagine similar concrete actions occurring all over the Bay Area urban and peri-urban landscape - compelling, beautiful foodscapes arising in every neighborhood in every town providing delicious, fresh nourishment and delight. Each one becoming a beacon of hope. Should all the urban environments on Earth begin to cultivate unused impervious space with food and turn their urban park forests into food forests we can begin to imagine the decline of industrial agriculture with its crippling effects on watersheds, soil and wildlife habitats for species proliferation, not extinction. We could envision cutting our fossil fuel bills by requiring less transportation costs for food and pumping of precious water resources for agriculture. The ripple effect of such concrete actions, actions that you can take today, could transform this world into a healthy, joyful, sustainable environment for you and your children and all life.

Replant New OrleansReplant New Orleans has been working on revegetation in the city of New Orleans for the past year, officially launching as a full non-profit organization in September 2006. The need for trees, healthy soil, and education outreach in this re-imagining city is being met through a person-to-person, neighborhood by neighborhood approach, and food is the main focus of Replant’s efforts for Earth Day 2007.

Community activists have been rightly pointing out that many folks in New Orleans feel that rebuilding efforts need to begin in the community, with the people who live in this city, who know their neighbors, and who know what their own needs are. Indeed, this is a groundswell movement. Since bureaucratic systems are quite obviously not going to work in the recreation of New Orleans, what we are seeing is an amazing element of grassroots organization, self sufficiency, cooperation, and community investment, all without any functional government support. It is not often that we are given such an opportunity to work in this fashion, side by side, looking each other in the eye, although it should come as no surprise that smaller-scale, localized organizing by churches, neighborhood associations, social aid clubs, and community groups, around specific issues is often the most effective way to get things done.

Replant’s take on this is to develop the Neighborhood Tree Planting project, in which a block or two blocks of people organize themselves, decide which trees they want and where they want to put them, pick a weekend for planting, and then commit themselves to long term maintenance and care. Replant provides the free trees and volunteer labor, as well as care information and tree planting intensives. Every weekend, after breaking bread together and digging in the earth, we hug the people who plant these trees in their yards. As an added bonus, the trees are destined to be loved and thrive in their new homes, and we have dirt under our fingernails.

For Earth Day, the pot is sweetened by adding food producing trees into the mix. Funded by a grant from Seventh Generation, Replant New Orleans is providing 100+ food producing trees for the residents of Central City, a neighborhood wracked by violence, poverty, disinvestment, and blight. Groups such as the Central City Renaissance Alliance, the Central City Partnership, Café Reconcile, and Ashé Cultural Arts Center lead the way in community organizing, and Central City has been experiencing a cultural, political, and spiritual renaissance post-Katrina through these collaborative efforts. Earth Day represents an opportunity to focus efforts onto revegetation and for Replant New Orleans to help develop food security on a sustainable community-wide level.

On April 22, we will be replicating our Neighborhood Tree Planting model on a huge scale, working in roughly 20 square blocks, directly with the people living in these homes. Food producing trees will be placed in front and back yards as well as the common spaces between sidewalks and streets, known as banquettes. Additionally, we are incorporating 10 food producing trees into an existing community garden on Oretha Castle Haley Blvd- the main thoroughfare of the neighborhood- and building a Peace Park in collaboration with AmeriCorps’ City Year program, on behalf of New Hope Baptist Church, which features 18 food producing trees and an understory of vegetables, wildflowers, 6 blueberry bushes and strawberries. Both of these gardens are used in the community as gathering spaces for parties, churches, community groups, after school programs, and artists, and both spaces are producing or will produce culturally significant foods: okra, tomatoes, mustard and collard greens, peas and beans, sweet potatoes, and peaches, figs, pecans, and citrus. The neighborhood itself becomes a food forest, built by Central City residents with volunteer assistance. We hope that this project will demonstrate a model for non-profits interested in developing true community involvement and investment, as well as create an edible landscape that provides for a large amount of people at any given moment.

Collaborations with the New Orleans Food & Farm Network will bring urban farm training to the city on a large scale, as well as allow us to develop a compost cooperative system. Continued funding from Seventh Generation will also provide for more food forests to be planted around the city throughout the year 2007, indeed to the extent that food security is within reach. In the case of the Lower Ninth Ward, incredibly affected by the storm, the planting focus will be on oak trees. These beauties are essential in this neighborhood, both as a cultural emblem and as a defense against winds and other storm damage during hurricanes.

For more information about Replant New Orleans and our projects, which emphasize grassroots (and tree roots) involvement and equitable distribution of an invaluable resource, please visit www.replantneworleans.org and email us at trees@replantneworleans.org. We love trees in New Orleans!

The fruit of the chicken is its egg, loaded with nutrients, abundant, and delectable. The elusive, ethical egg, however, is a rare specimen and we need now, more than ever, to take action to shift the balance between egg supply and egg demand. We can easily do this by taking eggs into our own hands and gracing our outdoor spaces with fruit bearing birds that contribute to a bountiful, edible ecosystem.

Even co-ops and specialty stores that sell free range, organic eggs, are stocking their shelves with morally questionable wares. Commercial egg production whether organic, free range, cage-free, or all three most often means overcrowding, little outdoor roaming, and an inferior egg.

Chefs and those raised with farm fresh eggs will attest to the quality of a fresh egg, the firm orange yolk that holds its shape, and the incomparable delicious taste. More and more of us have experienced this joy of pure unadulterated, life bearing food because our farmer's markets, co-ops, and CSA's often sell them to us, in the spring and summer seasons, that is.

In the fall and winter, farm eggs are harder to find, a reflection of the hen's slower production in the colder months. As a result, we are waiting in line, at 7:30 on crisp Saturday mornings, for eggs that cost $8/dozen, and that are only available for sale for an hour or two per week, sold out thereafter. Clearly the demand for farm fresh eggs is greater than the supply.

This season many will choose to go egg free and others will compromise for eggs of lesser quality, but I say there is a better way. Our grandparents, and parents, and great grandparents tended chickens and ducks and other egg and dairy bearing animals. They also tended small gardens with diverse food crops and preserved and stored their wares through the cold and barren seasons. They celebrated the abundance of spring and summer. In an urban or suburban household, less than a century ago, we fed the birds our food scraps, fertilized our gardens with their manure, and harvested their eggs for breakfast. There is no reason why we can't do the same thing today.

It may come as a surprise that, as long as you have enough space and don't have any roosters, you can legally keep up to three chickens in San Francisco and in many other cities and urban areas. In San Francisco, the hen house has to be at least 20 feet from any doors or windows. Backyards all over the city, from the Mission to the Marina, can house poultry, so why are we waiting in line for fresh eggs? Some chicken owners even claim they are easier to care for than dogs or cats! What are we waiting for?

San Francisco Egg Laying Ducks Ducks are another egg option. They tend to be more mellow and less destructive than their crazy cousins, the chickens. Ducks like to eat snails and other insects and are a perfect ecosystem addition, providing integrated pest management, organic fertilizer, and bigger, richer eggs. UAS ally Kevin Bayuk and his urban flock of three garden tending Indian Runner Ducks were recently featured in the San Francisco Chronicle. The ducks produce food and live in a food producing garden near Haight Street. The Indian Runner is known to be an even more prolific egg layer than a chicken and this spring Kevin's backyard will yield omelettes, quiches, and custards.

Depending on the breed, diet, and other factors, the average chicken lays from 200-300 eggs a year. If just 10 households were to build chicken or duck houses out of salvage materials, and each to adopt 3 sexed baby girl chicks or ducklings ($90 for 30 chicks), in one year we will have produced 7500 or so “free” eggs. That would feed 20 people one egg a day for the entire year! Clearly a small flock of chickens has the power to sustain a family with eggs and several small flocks to sustain a community.

Now if we imagine 350 households doing the same thing (just one percent of San Francisco households) we will have over a quarter of a million eggs produced in the city next year. That will be a burden off of the sole winter egg vendor at the farmer's market. His demand won't be overwhelming and prices will go down for those of us who still have to buy eggs. More people will be able to afford ethical eggs and there will be more ethical eggs to be had. We will have very easily, and not so subtly, shifted the balance from egg shortage to egg justice.

McMurray Hatchery sells mail order chicks, minimum order 25. You may pick the breed and they are mailed overnight. You can choose the Araucana whose eggs are blue, for example, or bantam breeds which are half the size of a regular chicken. McMurray also sells ducklings and other babies. The Indian Runner Duck can't fly and is well suited for a backyard. No wing clipping for this downy garden baby. If you are interested in starting a small backyard flock of egg laying hens, contact robin@uas.coop, and I will place a group order for spring chickens.

Like any developing nation, China is faced with the challenge of responding to rapid increases in urbanization. Numerous urban agriculture plans have been created and executed by the Chinese government and as a result, many cities in China have fresh and affordable supplies of food and edible urban landscapes.

By encouraging small scale, traditional agriculture, urban and peri-urban farms have developed so that they support the food economy of the nation. Many Chinese cities are self-sufficient and able to generate enough produce and livestock to supply millions of citizens with abundant, inexpensive and accessible supplies of food.

A study conducted in 1953 demonstrates that as early as the 1930s, Shanghai was able to provide nourishment for its 3 million inhabitants with food grown within a 100 kilometer radius. Today, the government controls 300,000 hectares of land for food production and one in six of its citizens is actively involved in production. The result is food equity and edible environments.
Beijing, the capital of the People’s Republic of China, began developing plans for local agriculture in 1994. Over 1200 years ago, ancestors planned to supply water for agriculture in Beijing by building the 1700 kilometer long Grand Canal which connects the Yangtze River to the city. Realizing that with a burgeoning population, it is easier to encourage people to grow their own food than to produce the sheer quantities necessary to feed everyone in an industrial system, the government has decided to promote urban agriculture; to enhance the quality of food, preserve green spaces and efficiently utilize land and water resources.

Throughout China policies have been implemented to create a flow of information about growing food- between governments, local institutions and non-governmental organizations, and citizens. While in the U.S. urban edible landscapes are usually home grown, grassroots efforts, in China citizens have the backing of their federal government and local leaders. There is no need for guerilla gardening and lobbying officials for more green space. Instead the circumstances are reversed and the government encourages the production of edible landscapes.

It used to be that way here before the complete industrialization of our food system. During World War II, Uncle Sam promoted self sufficient food production, or Victory Gardens, to help see the country through the food shortages of war. Since then things have changed, but with a growing sustainability movement we are beginning to see more recognition by local institutions of the need for edible landscapes.

San Francisco artist Amy Franceschini is recreating the V-Gardens in 2007, with an art project that aims to turn San Francisco civic spaces, lawns, rooftops and idle land into food production zones. She was featured in the SF Chronicle and an exhibit of her work is on display at the SF MOMA through April 22. Amy is drawing the attention of local government, institutions, and the public, using City Hall as an example of the many spaces in the city that could be used to produce food.

Another example of urban agriculture moving into public institutions is an upcoming public symposium at UC Berkeley, “Agriculture at the Metropolitan Edge: New Ruralism and Other Strategies for Sustainable Development” on April 5-6.

Recognizing the importance of agriculture to the culture, health, and sustainability of metropolitan regions, the University of California Berkeley this year launched Agriculture at the Metropolitan Edge (AME), a program within the Center for Global Metropolitan Studies.

The importance of localizing food production is gaining political clout, which means that we will see more edible landscapes in our future. Over 100 international policymakers, scholars, farmers, planners and activists have been invited to participate at the symposium. Unite Bay Area!

Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody. -Jane Jacobs

All over the country, in cities designed for cars, people are transforming their neighborhoods, streets, sidewalks and intersections into safe, clean, functional gathering sites. “Placemaking” is quickly becoming a popular antidote to urban sprawl and the isolation of cities.

According to the City Repair Project, “Placemaking means creating a public space based on a community’s needs and assets, culture and history, common interests and shared vision, local climate and topography. It is as much about psychological ownership and reclamation of space as it is about physically building a place.”

Sunnyside Piazza Intersection RepairFor over ten years, the Portland based group headed by Mark Lakeman, has been uniting neighbors around shared interests and inviting them to reclaim the commons in their commun-ities.

Imagine an ordinary intersection transformed into a meeting center, art gallery, garden food stand, cafe or library. City repair facilitates the creation of these kind of places in their “Intersection Repair” projects.

One example is the Sunnyside Piazza, an intersection where neighbors created a public plaza by painting a giant sunflower in the street. They also built an information kiosk , a cob bench, a mosaic art wall, and a solar powered water fountain.

Two years after its creation, the Sunnyside Piazza remains a catalyst of sidewalk conversations, as passersby read the signs about the community project, tourists take photographs, children throw pennies into the wishing pond, joggers run an extra lap around the sunflower, and strangers pause to admire the art. -Jan Semenza

T-Horse Mobile Tea HouseCity Repair also facilitates mobile community projects like the T-Horse, a “magical winged vehicle that travels to and transforms events”, at once a public square, tea-house, and community activator.

Making place is a collective, creative process. People develop relationships as they decide what they want for their community. They unite on common ground and transcend their differences. Neighbors get to know each other and in the style of participatory democracy, discuss their visions for the community.

Then they turn their collective vision into action, creating place: painting the street, planting food gardens, building cob benches and vine trellises. Streets designed as corridors for car traffic are transformed into centers of neighborhood convergence. The projects become permanent sites of interest, function, gathering and community.

They also work as traffic calming mechanisms. Lakeman claims that the lack of diversity in the American cityscape lets it pass by unnoticed. Conversely, drawing attention to place by creating something different makes people and cars stop (or at least slow down) and take note.

A recent study on Interscetion Repair published in the American Journal of Public Health concludes, “If improvements in social networks, community capacity, and well-being can be documented, it can be argued that neighborhood organizing around urban design can improve the health of the public.”

Although it is technically illegal to create public places on public land, in January 2000, the Portland City Council 'established City Ordinance #172207 (pdf file), the first "Intersection Repair" ordinance, which set a precedent of allowing neighborhoods to develop their own public gathering places' under a set of permitting and process rules. According to Lakeman, “as soon as we put these projects on the ground it transformed the bureaucracy and the political leadership”.

Similarly, Plant SF has outlined a process for legally removing sidewalk to create urban landscapes in San Francisco, and East Bay City Repair is conducting intersection interventions on the other side of the Bay.

This month City Repair in Portland will be hosting ten straight days of placemaking, entertainment, and speakers throughout the city at their annual Village Building Convergence. They will be involving people from all over the country in the rare-but-not-forgotten art of placemaking.

In his recent essay the Ecology of Work, Curtis White states, “There is no solution for environmental destruction that isn’t first a healing of the damage that has been done to the human community.” The act of Placemaking is helping heal our society by reinventing community-building as a common skill.

Kristin Miller of Ecocity BuildersLiving in an area as culturally rich, diverse, and green-minded as the SF Bay, it’s often hard to know where to look and who to trust in the growing sector of green business. With venture capital pouring in daily from Silicon Valley, “green” has become the buzzword of the moment, giving many businesses a reason to jump on the bandwagon and others an excuse to spend millions crafting a green public image without acting on it. How can we distinguish between the businesses that are truly eco-friendly and others that are merely putting on a green face to maintain public appeal by satisfying current trends?

To set the record straight, UAS turned to Kirstin Miller of Ecocity Builders, a trusted local source interested in designing urban space for the “health of humans and natural systems,” to discuss the ins and outs of what really makes a business green, and to clarify some other green buzzwords you may have been hearing lately...

UAS: What does the green business model mean to you? What does sustainability in business look and feel like?

KM: From an ecocity perspective, a green businessmodel includes the following five elements:
1. Goods and materials are locally or regionally sourced
2. Employees live within walking or cycling distance of their jobs or can take public transportation
3. The goods produced are used for reuse, remanufacture and recycling
4. The industrial processes involved are geared for reuse of by-products and minimize the movement of goods
5. And the industry or business has a labor intensive rather than a material, energy and water intensive process.

At Ecocity Builders, we always tie the economy and business directly back to the health of the city, its citizens and the environment. For example, cars
destroy the compact and walkable fabric of a city, also adding pollution, visual blight and noise, and contributing to major health problems like obesity and asthma. Car crashes alone account for over 40 thousand deaths per year in the US. So in the ecocity analysis, a car company could never be a green business, no matter how many 'green' brownie points they earn within a typical green business certification program.

UAS: That leads me to my next question. In this era of mainstreaming green trendiness, a lot of companies have used controversial “greenwashing” techniques to slap on self-proclaimed green labels that may not be accurate. How do you define the term greenwashing, and how can we pinpoint and avoid supporting organizations that use disinformation tactics to present a false public image of environmental responsibility?

KM: Greenwashing is how corporations deceive the public into thinking that they are good and caring environmental citizens, when in fact they are not. Car companies love to greenwash their image byunderwriting public television programs on the environment and advertising in National Geographic magazine. In San Francisco, PG&E has launched a perfect example of this with an expensive greenwashing campaign called 'Let's Green This City.'

PG&E is a fossil fuel (45%) and nuclear (24%) energy company. Less than 1% of its supply comes from solar, 2% from wind. At this time, PG&E is building 1,330 MW of gas burning power plants with another 2,300 MW proposed, but from their totally slick greenwashing campaign, you'd think they were environmental angels. In fact, they are far from green. PG&E is busily luring other unsuspecting organizations on board to act as their unpaid promoters. It's not always easy to figure out what's really going on with these greenwashing campaigns, but it's our responsibility to dig deeper and keep asking questions.

In this case, we can help break PG&E’s stranglehold on the electricity market by supporting CCA – Community Choice Aggregation. Under California's 2002 Community Choice law (AB 117, sponsored by Carole Migden), local governments can purchase electricity for power users in their communities. This law provides a public process for a city to solicit a new electric-service provider, set higher goals for green power, and use revenue bonds to finance new solar, wind, hydrogen, and conservation facilities, financed through monthly electric-bill payments made by residents and businesses.

UAS: Finally, we’ve been hearing a lot about the “triple bottom line” in some of the greener business circles. Can you define this term and offer some suggestions as to how we can advocate the simultaneous success of the "people, planet, and profit?"

KM: I'd like to share this slogan from Urban Ecology Australia: "No Ecology, No Economy = No Planet, No Profit." I think that sums it up. But also, we should all stop calling ourselves, and being, consumers. We should instead call ourselves, and be, citizens.

Citizens work for and protect the common good; they are participants in improving the overall quality of life. Consumers don't have responsibilities to anyone but themselves and what they perceive as their needs--which are mostly media driven false needs for lots of useless crap, be it for regular, or "eco" products. The bottom line, I think, is that we in the United States are by far the biggest resource hogs on the planet, and we have to stop, or there will be no more life for anyone to enjoy, profit-hungry people included.

UAS: That reminds me of the Cree prophesy that, “Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.”

KM: It reminds me of something Einstein said: “You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.”
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The Florence and William Tsui House in Berkeley World famous for his structural designs that use nature as a model, Eugene Tsui has become a leader in the biomimicy movement, pioneering uncharted territories with a unique design style based upon the profound study of nature’s design intelligence. Treading lightly on the earth, his designs utilize the sacred geometry and interaction of elemental forces found in nature.

UAS: It’s been a while-- almost a year. What have you been up to with your latest projects?

Eugene Tsui: For the past year I’ve been involved with setting up Telos, which will be an interdisciplinary design school that applies the microcosmic patterns and profound intelligence found in nature. Set on a 170 acre campus at the base of Mount Shasta, in northern California, the massive plan for the school really involves answering the following question: How would nature design a school; and if you were to live lightly on the planet, and design in such a way as to create minimal impact on the natural environment and at the same time create a new paradigm of living that neutralizes the consumer-driven, affluence and growth culture that we are so conditioned to accommodate, how would you go about it and how would you live?

We are currently designing and building the first prototype building for the school in Mt. Shasta based on a spherical dome. It will be completely off the grid with its own constructed wetlands for cleaning and recycling grey water, composting toilet system, photovoltaic and windmill systems, rain catchment devices for cooling and solar ovens for cooking. Eventually we will be developing buildings that open and close, expand and contract according to the climate and their human use.

We are also experimenting with the idea of designing a building as adjustable space by creating an adjustable 2nd floor to suit the needs of the various projects that will evolve there. Additionally, we are testing the strength of various structural systems based on the economies of nature, such as using curved floor beams, which puts wood under tension, allowing us to use less materials with greater strength creating a structure that is lighter and stronger than anything constructed today or in the past.

Currently, the standard residential building weighs at least 140 tons and can’t even support its own weight. Nature’s structures, on the other hand, can often support 80-10,000 times their own weight. And the sphere is the strongest shape in nature. So we are reaching for the strength-to-weight ratios that are inherent to nature but are typically so foreign to human beings. In fact, architecture, to this day, does not even talk about or consider strength-to-weight ratios in design. This concept has never been talked about in schools or in professional offices.

Creating shapes similar way to the way nature builds cells and molecules, we are discovering the strength to weight ratio of the geodesic dome is much stronger than the square box. This is of course dependent on the materials and structural systems used in the construction and design process. Curved buildings, by their very nature, are significantly stronger and more energy efficient than a box building.

The typical building is based on a floor slab and a box on the ground, which essentially suffocates the earth. With Telos, we are experimenting with how to do the opposite—how to minimize the foot print of a building yet maximize the interior usable space.

UAS: Telos sounds amazing. Is there a reason you chose 2012 as the launch date?

ET: 2012 was chosen based on how much time we will need to construct the school. With its seven main buildings and outdoor facilities for athletics, music, horses, swimming, gardens, etc, it’s quite an undertaking. Because we’re experimenting as we go, we can’t rely on the usual construction scheduling systems. We are really all students of design. You might start out one way with a clear plan, but if you’re examining and questioning the design process as you go, you could end up with a completely different design than what you started with. Things can change, and they ought to, because the act of building evolves as your insights evolve and deepen.

UAS: This month the UAS theme is ecological design. Given your unique stance on structurally sound design, what does ecological design mean to you?

ET: Ecological design as it is thought of presently, is not ecological design. We are only fooling ourselves if we think industrial-based and consumer-driven recycled/re-used materials constitute this. Labels like “green architecture” and “green design” are being applied to slightly modified versions of the ubiquitous box. This is not the true study of nature. Not even close to it. True ecological design comes from the profound study of nature—finding out how nature works and why. But we haven’t touched upon that yet in our built environments or in the way architects, builders and planners are trained. Our universities have become ineffectual trade schools of conformity. We are afraid to ask serious questions, because we are afraid to make something that works as nature works; that looks as if it were created by nature. We want boxes because we have been inculcated with the box image and our conditioning is so insidious that we do not even realize that we are absolutely conditioned to the image.

Just think of what our built world would look like if every building had a different and singular persona just like every individual has a different personality. Our built environments should be as unique as we are—as distinctive and diverse as we are.

We also need to start minimizing our impact on the planet and maximizing the renewable energy that is everywhere. And creating sterile, stark, LEED certified steel and glass boxes that still keep us compartmentalized in a prison-cell type of environment is completely contrary to the principles of nature—and to the true meaning of ecological design. We need to start looking at how buildings contribute to dividing humanity, and how they reflect the religious and consumer-driven aspects of alienating people from each other. And then we’ve got to change our whole perspective of what nature-based design is.

In nature, we are dealing with the interaction of forces-- there is no division. If we work as nature works, then we are dealing with the true impacts of wind, climate, transportation, effective ways of bringing in sunlight, and most importantly, how to communicate and relate with each other. Nature is the action and reaction of natural forces—it is the understanding of the truth of things. Truth that has nothing to do with religious belief, social dogma, cultural conditioning and inculcated values and behaviors—all the issues and beliefs that separate us as human beings. These things have driven us far away from the truth and wisdom of nature and its substantive processes and phenomena. How can ecological design be truly understood and applied when we are still enamored with the stylistic images of the past? They might have been appropriate for 1893 but for 2007? It is absolutely absurd and senseless!

UAS: Going with the idea that the design of our buildings reflects our relationship to nature, I’ve heard you also design earthquake and hurricane-proof buildings. What would something like this look like?

ET: Box structures cannot withstand earthquakes unless they are reinforced with an inordinate amount of steel or reinforcing materials. But spheres and conical shaped buildings could—because of their shape—resist tremendous forces. For hurricane-proof housing, we could create waterproof buildings that cut through waves like a giant shark fin, swivel to face the wind and wave straight on and dissipate high winds like buoys in the ocean.

One of my hurricane-proof housing designs consists of two spheres-- one within another. The outer sphere exists within a case that rotates 360 degrees, which would rotate if a huge wave struck it. A living example of this can be seen in some martial arts practices and in the boxing ring, when you spin or dissipate the attacker’s energy away from yourself. Your body has the ability to deflect a straight on attack by twisting and dissipating the energy of a hit. In the same way, a rotating sphere re-directs force away from itself. The inner sphere is the stable one where you live, unaffected by the rotating outer sphere that is interacting with the intensity of the outer elements— in this case, a Tsunami wave, hurricane or tornado.

UAS: So how can we incorporate true ecological design into our lives?

ET: For the school in Mt. Shasta, I’m considering getting some horses as the main transportation option. It’s great exercise, and I think it is a more noble, healthy and majestic way of getting around. I much prefer it to a car, where you are shut in a box void of the sounds and smells around you, polluting the air as you go. And really, what is so bad about returning to the fundamentals of things like riding a horse? It keeps you healthy -- the very act of riding.

We need to start rethinking the whole structure of how we want to live. We’ve become so conditioned by our consumer-driven culture that we no longer value the importance of human life because we are obsessed with money, convenience, comfort, and security. Meanwhile, our health deteriorates, stress increases while restful sleep decreases and we go through life never fully discovering where our passion for life really lies!

It takes a lot of strength to say, maybe I don’t need this ipod, car, computer, TV, cell phone, etc., but this current affluence-growth model is killing our planet. Our “green” ideas are still very much a part of the consumer driven model, which consumes and depletes the natural resources of the planet. This is a diverse problem on several levels and it is global. Now we use “green” to sell more products that we don’t need and complicate our lives. “Green” has become a catch-word for the labeling of products.

The only chance we have is to be educated differently-- we need to educate everyone differently, especially our architects, planners, and designers, and nurture creative problem solving and understanding how nature works. We need architects who are problem solvers rather than image sellers.

This is one of the reasons I’m starting this school in Mt. Shasta. It is probably the first school in the world that is publicly against the affluence-growth-mass consumer driven model.

UAS: In a similar vein, do you have any experience with zero-waste design?

ET: Zero-waste design is exactly what we’re experimenting with in the prototype at Mt. Shasta. How do you create a building that is zero-waste, not only in use, but in the design of the structure itself?

It’s an ongoing experiment, and if we remain dedicated to problem solving, we will continue on the road to minimizing the amount of waste created.

UAS: Do you see biomimicry as revolutionizing the way we understand ourselves in our environments? Where do you see it evolving from here?

ET: Biomimicry is one component that contributes to revolutionizing our understanding if we go back to the genuine study of nature. Culturally, we have such little experience with it-- Nature and design are the two most neglected subjects in education. If we are going to understand biomimicry and ecology, we must change the worldview by changing the availability of information and openly supporting nature-based education. But I must qualify this by underlining the importance of questioning our assumptions. If we study nature to produce countless gadgets for the global market—even if those gadgets may be more energy efficient—we are still consuming our natural resources at a devastating rate. In a sense, biomimicry, ecological design and “green” design severely contribute to the destructive mass-consumption model. This model is destroying us, so we must be very careful about how to study nature. The most important question is; how do we change our lives and our behavior away from the affluence, consumer, growth, globalization model?

At Telos, the idea is to create buildings that can be built at the hands-on level, without huge equipment from far away. True ecological design uses local tools and materials in creative ways, and it’s important that localization is a part of it. We need to get away from globalized mentality that has permeated our entire worldview and way of thinking—an outlook that is eating up our planet and destroying living organisms everywhere. Financial gain has replaced the intrinsic value of living things. When living things become commodities to be bought and sold-- then the end is not far off. Even human beings have become commodities. We have become, “the marketplace”.

UAS: How can people get involved and gain exposure to any part of your construction, your philosophy and design process?

ET: We have an on-going educative program in the office. Internships are available to anyone, regardless of their background, as long as they want to learn. Over a 16-year period we have had over 400 interns from every continent of the world—and they continue to join us. There is a fundamental blind spot in design education and practice that precludes hands-on experience. Anyone can become an architect or engineer without ever having held a hammer or sawed a piece of wood. How can you expect to know how a building goes together when you’ve never built one?

Architects and engineers are constantly criticized by builders because their drawings cannot be built. Is there any wonder that our buildings are ugly, poorly designed and collapse under disaster conditions—killing hundreds of thousands of people annually?

There is much that needs to be changed and I intend to make that change come about! If we do not embrace the study and application of natural principles we will surely be doomed as arrogant profiteers. It is my hope that a few insightful individuals will be enough to bring about human life based upon curiosity, intelligence and peace.

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For more information on Eugene Tsui’s eco-structural/biomimetic designs, please visit www.TDRInc.com. Dr. Tsui will be a keynote speaker at both the West Coast Green Conference and the Green Festival in San Francisco in the Fall of 2007.

Ideal Cycles of Nature and Society
(Courtesy www.zerowaste.org)As the machine paradigm cedes ground to that of nature, so does the integral field of design undergo a seachange. The impetus for a new, ecological design can be found in the burgeoning awareness of the long-ignored consequences of disposible consumer culture and it's counterpart, waste. As the progenitors of the confluence of science and art, designers occupy a critical juncture between past knowledge and future change. Many a worthy endeavor has arisen out of this space, from the Synergetics of Bucky Fuller to the Living Machines of John Todd. However, these ideas have yet to be adopted by merit alone, and until recently were virtually ignored by industry, government and the general public. In the last decade, Zero Waste has has arisen to fill the gap between the promise and the practice of ecological design.

Zero Waste is one of the first tenets of ecological sciences. The absence of waste can be easily observed in ecosystems of all scale. What might appear to be the waste product or "output" of one component of the ecosystem is really just the food source or "input" of another. The shed leaves of a tree in autumn, for example, become the nutrition for soil fauna. Likewise, the oxygen expired as the end product of photosynthesis in the vegetative world is a key ingredient in the respiratory system of vertebrates. What ever the materials being exchanged in natural systems, they form "nutrient cycles", an important concept which is beginning to inform the design of humanity's industrial processes.

(Courtesy www.zerowaste.org)
Not surprisingly, the nutrients used in the production of consumer goods, from cars to cantilevers, are not treated with the wise precision of nature. Let us step back a few decades. Some will argue that the recycling craze of the 70's and 80's has been one of the great environmental achievements of the industrial world. It certainly represented an improvement in industrial nutrient cycling. Prior to that, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring catalyzed awareness necessary to stem the tide of environmental toxification and misuse of industrial nutrients. In both cases, however, the solution only addresses the side affects and symptoms of the root problem of poor design. Much time, money and energy has been expended to only ameliorate the consequences of prodigious industrial waste. Visionary designers William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their pivotal Cradle to Cradle term this strategy "eco-efficiency" -- striving to be "less bad" -- and make a strong argument that it is inherently flawed. Instead, they offer the design philosophy of "eco-effectiveness" in which the "right" products and processes are developed instead of those attempts be less bad. After all, who wants any waste to begin with?

For all of the attention brought to bear on the looming ecological crises -- pick your poision, from extinction to climate change -- our manufacturing, distribution and recovery systems have undergone no fundamental change since the inception of the production line by Ford in the 1930's. Since that time it has been business as usual -- linear systems which extract resources and combine them in potentially lethal ways, in the process creating tons of waste which, cannot be easily repurposed or returned from whence they came. Furthermore, those select materials that can be recycled become less pure -- and hence, less valuable -- with every cycle of reuse, a process known as "downcycling".

(Courtesy www.zerowaste.org)If our production systems create toxic waste and toxic products, and our best efforts at treating the symptons results in increasing less valuable materials, what are we to do? Some are starting to take a page from the original book, that of Nature. In natural systems -- i.e., non-man-made systems -- nothing is downcycled. In fact, nutrients are so effectively reused as to be free for future combinations of products, otherwise known as species. One could consider natural systems as actually creating more than they consume. Post-modern ecological designers like McDonnough have succeeded in creating systems that give more than they take. Many wonderful examples exist which we shall not recount here.

Returning to the design philosophy of Zero Waste, the Zero Waste Alliance (www.zerowaste.org) suggests that the mere concept of waste is outdated and harmful. "Instead, waste should be thought of as a 'residual product' or simply a potential resource to counter our basic acceptance of waste as a normal course of events." But how can the average person tackle the topic of design? Neither you nor I control the production facilities, allocate research and design budgets or sell internationally branded products lines. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) has become an important stepping stone between theory and practice of ecological design, as well as the local individual and the global corporation. EPR evaluates the "lifecycle" of products, from raw materials to end-of-life. Further, and perhaps most importantly, EPR begins to assign responsibilities for the treatment of products once they have fulfilled their "period of service". Since municipalities began to handle solid waste streams as a civic service in the early 20th century, they have shouldered increasing financial burdens as the waste stream has grown. All the while, corporations have profited as single-use products and packaging has filled local landfills and diminished precious resources.

Some local governments are beginning to recognize the need to change this paradigm of corporate welfare. Towards that end, EPR is becoming a new policy tool for local governments to exert leverage on business to embrace ecological design and eliminate waste. In 2002, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors took one of the earliest civic leads by agreeing upon a target date of 2020 for the goal of Zero Waste. Likewise, the Berkeley City Council adopted a Zero Waste ordinance in 2005 to "combine aggressive resource recovery and industrial redesign to eliminate the very concept of waste" (Ecology Center Fall 2005 Newsletter) to reach 100% diversion by 2020. Perhaps the most comprehensive local stance can be found in Oakland's Zero Waste Strategic Plan, adopted in 2006:

"Strategy #4: Advocate for manufacturer responsibility for Product Waste, Ban Problem Materials Description of Strategy: Partner with other Zero Waste and sustainability advocates to pursue and advocate for Extended Producer Responsibility and other 'upstream' materials management and system re-design solutions."

The plan goes on to specify that "these solutions require manufacturers to assume responsibility for managing end-of-life products and materials."

Local governments generally do not have the authority or jurisdiction to require manufacturers to embrace Zero Waste, although they can help to sway public opinion. Acting in concert, purchasing departments of local governments can also comprise a significant market influence. While none of these policies explicitly require changes to institutional purchasing based on EPR, they do represent a strong willingness on the part of these municipalities to advocate for such changes.

As one  individual, you can play an important role in embracing ecological design by vocally supporting concepts such as Zero Waste and EPR. If your local government does not yet have a Zero Waste or EPR policy, let them know they should. As always, your dollar counts. Buy products from companies that are challenging themselves to push the design envelope and embrace Zero Waste. Your imagination counts, too. Design encompasses life systems as well as products and processes. How can you design waste out of your habits and lifestyle? And don't forget to check out our monthly sustainability tips for more ideas!

Photo Credit: ORGANIC architectureFor this month's theme in sustainability, UAS contacted some crucial Bay Area players to get different perspectives on Ecologoical Design and Zero Waste and how we can incorporate these concepts into our lives. The result? UAS found that ecological design is as much about the Cradle-to-Cradle approach as it is about starting out local.

The Bay Area Perspectives:
*Eric Corey Freed, ORGANICarchitect: Reframing the discussion on ecological design with a Cradle-to-Cradle approach

*Diane Loviglio, SPUR Green Roof Task Force Co-Chair: Offering solutions at the local level

UAS: What is ecological design?

Eric Corey Freed: To answer this question, we should look at how the buildings of the world consume:

40% of the world's energy & materials

25% of the wood harvested

17% of our water

The average American house uses:

13,127 board feet of lumber

6,212 square feet of sheathing

2,000 square feet of flooring

In the US, buildings account for:

36% of total electricity consumption

62% of electricity use

30% of greenhouse gas emissions

37% of ozone depletion potential.

And, ironically enough, most of us spend 80% of our time indoors.

Our way of life is killing us. Our buildings consume over 40% of our energy and resources and their use represents 70% of our total consumption. The environmental damage caused in the last hundred years is a direct result from how our buildings are built. Architects, designers, and all building professionals are in a position to affect great change on our environment, more so than any other group, since our buildings are responsible for most of the damage.

“Green Building” (also known as “Sustainable,” “Ecological,” and “Eco” Design) is a way of looking at buildings in terms of reducing energy use, conserving water, improving indoor air quality, and reducing dependence on our natural resources.

Although the basic concepts for green building have been around for decades, it has only been in the last few years that we have seen this explosive growth in the greening of the construction industry. Once only of interest to hard-core environmentalists, the rise in energy prices, our dependence on fossil fuel and growing concerns over the damage done to our planet has boosted green building into the spotlight of mainstream interest.

Today, those in the business of designing and constructing buildings are faced with the new challenge of environmental responsibility. The rise in energy costs, shortage of building materials and growing consumer demands are driving this market to seek out better and more efficient ways to build our buildings.

In addition, new legislation, stricter building codes, and rising health costs are forcing builders to build green whether they want to or not. Research has shown that although an overwhelming majority of designers feel a responsibility to offer green building solutions, only a fraction of them do so. They blame this discrepancy on a “lack of information.”

More important than any statistic however, is the good feeling you have when you know you've done what's right for both your family and your community. Promoting continued health, financial savings, and social responsibility, Green Building is the construction standard for the future, and the smart solution for today.

Diane Loviglio: Eco design is about creating solutions that are inspired by ecology or the natural world. I designed and built an 800 square foot solar powered home with sustainable building materials and techniques to make a lesser footprint than a traditional home, and I also designed a 4,100 square foot living roof to manage storm water in a city that is dealing with combined sewage overflow.

UAS: How do you think we can incorporate ecological design more into our lives?

ECF: We need to start asking the right questions, and re-framing the discussion. Instead of looking at green building as an add-on, and therefore something that could be just as easily taken away; we need to look at green building as an integrated and essential part of the entire design process. For everything we put into the building we ask:

1. Where did this material come from?

2. What are the by-products of its' manufacturer?

3. How is the material delivered and installed? 4. How is the material maintained & operated? 5. How healthy are the materials?

6. What do we do with them once we are done with these materials?

Then we can find ways to mitigate the impact of what we put into the building.

DL: By creatively thinking how we can turn our waste into other people's or other creatures' food. One place to start is by asking yourself "Can I or someone near me use these materials/thoughts/ideas before I retire them?"

UAS: Similarly, what is zero-waste design and do you have any experience with it?

ECF: As the name implies, zero-waste design is an approach to creating zero waste in the construction process. This can be done with careful planning and choice of construction materials.

The real obstacle we face is that we are still stuck on trying to be "less bad." By recycling materials not designed to be recycled, and reducing the use of still toxic materials, we are not solving the real problem. What we need is a radical overhaul of how we design our materials and move to a Cradle-to-Cradle approach, where we design the way nature does.

DL: I'm not quite sure any design is fully zero waste yet. The closest I've come is in my furniture designs in which I use cardboard as the structural element.

UAS: Do you see ecological design as revolutionizing the way we understand ourselves in our environments? Where do you see it evolving from here?

ECF: Just as the Industrial Revolution brought us an innate understanding of the rest of the world, the sustainability revolution will bring us understanding of the systems of nature. Elementary school kids will have a better understanding of the greenhouse cycle than we do today (the same way they understand the planetary system well beyond what their grandparents knew at that age.)

The next stage is for us to stop talking about it and get into the doing of it. We need ambitious plans for how to move towards our sustainable future.