In Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, an urban residential retrofit shall rise from a former taqueria and demonstrate that a Passive House is possible on a tight city lot… and a tight budget in this collaboration with Richard Avery.

In a nutshell, Passive House is great energy-efficiency standard for buildings (not just homes) of all types and sizes, including schools and community centers, even retrofits in some cases.

As data continues to come online, we’re getting a better understanding of how buildings old and new perform in terms of energy-efficiency.

Got permanence? Ample natural light, high ceilings, strong walls and floors, and open plan layouts allow the former Main Chicago Public Library (now Chicago Cultural Center) to function perfectly as an art gallery with little adaptation.

A reporter recently asked me “where do you think Chicago is headed in term of sustainable design in the next five years?”

I thought about it for a while, and, thankfully, I got to write it and not just blurt something out.

Hope it’s worth reading.
This is my response:

Dwight D. Eisenhower by C. Harrison Conroy. Image source: Eisenhower Presidential Library

On a recent, fascinating Chicago Public Radio Worldview program which explored the possibility of a space-based arms race and the wisdom of starting yet another potential conflict.

Why would this be of concern to an architect?

The restored Jefferson Reading Room of the Library of Congress

The name game

Anyone tired of the term ‘green’ as applied to buildings?
Of course, plenty of us are – whether design professionals, clients, contractors, or the average citizen. This much-touted, highly questionable, vague, and uncritical term attempts to describe a search for something larger and more relevant that is, by its nature, difficult to describe succinctly.

Remember the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?
It was a little while ago - maybe you were filing your taxes or something at the time.

Left: Leonard Bernstein leads the nascent Israel Philharmonic from the piano during “Rhapsody in Blue” in the Negev Desert during wartime, 1948. Right: Eugene Ormandy of the Philadelphia Orchestra walks with Chinese officials at the Great Wall of China, 1973.

The New York Philharmonic, the oldest orchestra in the, United States, has announced plans to play U.S.-themed music in North Korea.

Chicago Public Radio’s Worldview featured a segment on Gary Lawrence, the Urban Strategies Leader for Arup, a global consulting and engineering firm designing the world’s first eco-city outside of Shanghai, China.

Writing a piece for the biggest, coolest percussion instrument I can think of right now.

Thanks to Jim Montes for suggesting this article.

To open the Sustainable Cities, Healthy Watersheds 2007 Great Lakes Biennial Meeting and Conference, author, futurist, and cyberculturalist Stewart Brand touched on many serious environmental challenges in his talk on “ecopragmatism,” but among them were a few solutions.

Photographer Chris Jordan makes the waste in our society all too apparent (and strangely beautiful) in Running the Numbers, his stunning series of images based on statistics of usage in the United States.