Design News

As promised in my In Studio blog, Building in the Midwest: Where Do We Go From Here?, the topics discussed at the Inside Out: Transforming the Built Environment symposium offered insights into small town economic and architectural development that can be put into practice throughout the Midwest. In fact, some of the revitalization efforts that have taken place in South Dakota have earned national attention.

The lion’s share of green building advancements takes place along the West Coast, the nation’s economic centers pioneer the greatest number of new building techniques, and areas that are already economically thriving have the most funding to direct toward urban development. But what is going on in the vast stretch of America that lies between the coasts? The Midwest does its own planning and pioneering, and develops its own green strategies, but many of its rural communities are dealing with issues that are far different from those being profiled in more visible regions.

Passive solar is a green concept after my own heart because its principles reduce energy consumption without adding additional cost to a project. Of course, if a building is not originally designed to capture the sun's heat by day, store it, and release it at night, then active technologies must be used to help offset our consumption of natural resources. Thankfully, photovoltaic solar panels are much more effective and, frankly, more useable than they were even 10 years ago.

Corporate social responsibility is a revived buzz concept. Businesses are taking an inward look at how their actions are affecting their world at large; i.e. the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders, and all other members of the public sphere. Google is becoming one of those businesses who is a leader in forming their company based on socially responsible principles. The other thing about Google is that we can often look to them to come up with the most cutting edge technologies; in some ways they always seem to be one step ahead of the curve. Do you agree?

In 1962, Milton Friedman published the book Capitalism and Freedom in which he states that corporations do not need to worry about "social responsibility" because they end up using other people's money to do what those other people could do themselves. I think we have come to understand, after years of mulling over his opinions, that it doesn't really make sense to spend our earth's resources heedlessly. We can design products of the future that make a wiser use of recycled materials and materials that have a lower embodied energy, etc. Once again I ask, do you agree?

Vancouver models much of its urban planning on the principle of eco-density, a term developed largely by City Councillor Suzanne Anton. There was no better place for us to interview Suzanne than at the Coopers Pointe on the waterfront looking across toward the Olympic Village. While in Vancouver, we wanted not only to cover the Olympic architecture but to grasp the essence of a city which is reputed for its very low ecological footprint per capita. It is no coincidence, I believe, that William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel developed the concept of an ecological footprint at The University of British Columbia.

The Opening Ceremony of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics evoked a sense of awe in Carla D'Errico, freelance writer of travel and architecture, who gives her response to the ceremony in an interview below. In short, the artistic directors David Atkins and Ignatius Jones deserve the highest esteem for their spectacular video arts show. In addition, while the Olympic torch may seem to be of little consequence when it comes to sustainability, the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Torch that kicked off the ceremonies on Friday night is actually a remarkable example of green ingenuity.