A Carbon Footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases we produce. It is measured in units of carbon dioxide. Here is a carbon footprint calculator from the Nature Conservancy.
Indirect sources, fuel burned to produce goods far away from the final consumer, accounts for most of the average U.S. households. A direct source on the other hand are the emissions coming from use of a car for instance. One strategy for reducing your carbon footprint is to buy locally made products that use locally harvested materials to create. The main influences on carbon footprints include population, economic output, and energy and carbon intensity of the economy.
In order to reduce your carbon footprint, you could reduce your usage of carbon emitting fuels.
Some strategies include:
Walk or ride a bike instead of driving.
Drive a high-efficiency car.
Properly maintain your car and keep your tires inflated right.
Avoid air travel.
Instead of a long distance vacation, try a staycation.
Use Skype or video-conferencing instead of driving to a meeting.
Thank you all for your support in the first round. This contest is strictly done based on internet voting and you helped me advance to be 1 of the 25 best Marvin® Windows and Doors projects in the country. There are a lot of great projects included in the top 25. The Shenandoah Farmhouse is the only one located in Virginia! Support your local architect by voting please!
Marvin® Windows and Doors hosts an annual Architects Challenge, inviting architects to submit their best projects using Marvin products. This prestigious contest also includes a Showdown event to select a winner by people’s choice. This is a separate award based solely on Internet voting.
You can vote once a day. You can also spread the word by sharing this blog post to your Facebook and Twitter page or share it by email.
If I were selected for top honors, I win a trip to the Greenbuild architecture conference in Washington, D.C. this fall.
As you can see, there are a lot of amazing projects entered. I’d be proud to be selected from this fantastic group.
Building a creative next generation – Check out our Maker Space
It has taken me a while and of course it is not done, but the maker space is now functional.
We have a partial basement in our home that is perfect for a “maker space.” A maker space is a mix between a shop, a craft room, and an art room. The one I created for our girls has been under construction for almost a year (in other words, I started it a year ago and then made no progress). Over the last couple of weeks, I was able to schedule a trip to IKEA to get the tables I needed, found two perfectly durable workbenches, and found some time to dedicated to the construction. I still have big dreams of building in a storage area for our seasonal decorations and other odds and ends that are kept in the space. Once that is done, we will expand the functional area of the space and move in some additional power tools.
Creating a creative space in our home has already inspired several creations. From clay, to wood, to painting, to sewing, all activities now have a place to happen that is out of the central living area – believe me the non-stop hammering needs to be out of the central living area.
As our space grows and evolves, hopefully we can add more and more tools for use in creating projects. Let me know what you think.
Single-stream recycling is a process or system where all paper, plastics, metals, cardboard, glass, and trash goes into the same can and is sorted by the facility into separate commodities. In other words, it takes all the reasons for not recycling everything that is recyclable out of the equation.
Single-stream puts all the work for the recycling process to the facility operator and not the household. This raises the recycling rate per household. The systems were first used in the 1990s in California and now have facilities across the country.
Material recovery facilities (MRFs) continue to evolve and get better efficiency as technology improves. They are not completely automated, but it is getting closer.
Help, I need your votes in the Marvin® Windows and Doors annual Architects Challenge!
Marvin® Windows and Doors hosts an annual Architects Challenge, inviting architects to submit their best projects using Marvin products. This prestigious contest also includes a Showdown event to select a winner by people’s choice. This is a separate award based solely on Internet voting.
You can vote once a day. You can also spread the word by sharing this blog post to your Facebook and Twitter page or share it by email.
If I were selected for top honors, I’d win a trip to the Greenbuild architecture conference in Washington, D.C. this fall.
As you can see, there are a lot of amazing projects entered. I’d be proud to be selected from this fantastic group.
I just returned from the National Cohousing Conference 2015 in Durham, North Carolina. This conference is advertised as an introduction to cohousing basics, sustainability, community building, and the evolving definition of cohousing. There was a deliberate focus on new models of cohousing including urban and senior projects including a tour of an urban project in Durham, North Carolina. The first American cohousing projects were completed in the early 1990’s and more than 135 communities exist across the country. The term cohousing is credited to Charles Durrett and Kathryn McCamant of Nevada City, California who designed the first cohousing community in North America.
The main difference in cohousing from traditional neighborhood development is who has a say in decisions being made while they are being made. Cohousing is an intentional community where the people exist in community to form the design and building of the physical place. This concept of evolution of design through workshops and conversations is not that different from any project an architect may encounter that has a committee (church, industrial facility, school…). The difference is the community does not just give direction and the architect leaves to transform that into the design, the community stays and participates actively during design. They move the buildings around the site, set the goals, brainstorm ideas, shape the place, values, and form. This approach to design brings an active role of each community member and physical buy in to the end result. The architect is able to check their work by looking back at the values and goals established to see if they match.
Durrett breaks his process down with a group as having 6 parts.
1. Design of the site plan
2. design of the common house
3. design of the individual house
4. design closure – architect presents the results to the group
5. selection of materials – countertops, flooring…
6. Values / prioritization – flushing out what is really important to get the budget right to build
The types of questions asked are not different from any other project I have worked on. It is simply the interactive process added to the design that offers added value and texture to these projects. Each decision goes through a process of brainstorming – discussing – decide. The architect is serving more as a facilitator than as the leader of the design process, giving guidance to decisions that impact social aspects of the community or cost implications, asking questions to help flush out design decisions. The architects job is to allow the neighborhood to become what it wants to be.
It is interesting how familiar the process used in cohousing is compared to how I was trained to design. One of the books that informs the cohousing process is Christopher Alexander’s book Pattern Language – one of the books I used heavily in graduate school. It is also a design approach where egos need to be left at the door to be most successful. The more successful projects I heard about this past weekend were led by people who clearly left their ego at the door. If you are interested in cohousing, I encourage you to look at what Schemata Workshop (Grace Kim) is doing at Capital Hill in Seattle and what Harvey Harman is doing at Living Well in North Carolina.
If it sounds interesting to you and you want to find a community, you can visit this website.
If you are in Harrisonburg, check out the Harrisonburg Cohousing group – they are incredible folks trying to build an intentional local community. Facebook page. Website.
