livagreen » Housing

Design for the Digital Age?

admin — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 05:56:18 +0000

“Mr. Gehry’s design is about bringing that same sensibility — the focus on refined textures, the cultivation of a sense that something has been shaped by a human hand — to the digital age.”

So the New York Times reviews the new building at 8 Spruce Street designed by star-chitect Frank Gehry — the tallest luxury residential tower in New York City. And it appears to be true from the inside and out – a beautiful and sculptural exterior with a function, cozy interior based on Mr. Ouroussoff’s assessment. Many of the architects earlier buildings had beautiful exteriors but poorly thought out interiors, “criticized for creating wildly sculptural forms that are nothing more than masks.” But this building appears not to do that and, if so it is likely to be some of Gehry’s best work.

But given the beauty of this facade as it reaches from Gotham to the sky — one has to wonder if the beauty is skin deep. Nothing is mentioned in the review about the building’s performance. Gehry is not known for producing the most green, high performing buildings, but one has to wonder — if this building is to provide a reference point for design for the digital age, then how does it speak about sustainability. Does it make any kind of statement other than reinforcing the consumption of the “pampered young professionals” who will reside there?

Greening Suburbia

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:19:02 +0000

In the SF Bay Area over the past few weeks we’ve seen the FTA take a very tough stance on transit in favor of smart growth with two projects: 1) potentially removing funds from the Oakland Airport Connector; and 2) not allowing AC Transit to backfill operational budgets with money intended for Bus Rapid Transit. It seems the fed is taking on a proactive land use perspective which leads me to a recent thought-provoking article from the Journal of the American Enterprise Institute. It frames Obama-Admin policies as being hostile to suburbia and proposes that:

Given these realities, it seems more practical not to work against such aspirations (of greening suburbia) but instead to evolve intelligent policies that would reconcile them with our long-term environmental needs. Suburbanites like their suburbs but would also like to find a way to make them greener as well as more economically and socially viable. Right now neither party has developed such an agenda, and so the suburbs, now clearly leaning right, remain up to grabs. To win suburbanites over, politicians first have to respect the basic preferences while offering a realistic program for improvement. This remains a key to building a sustainable electoral majority, not just for the next election, but for the decades to come.

So what is your opinion? Are we not working enough to retrofit and green suburban communities? How we might work with the suburban landscape to make it greener? Suggestions?

Livable and Unaffordable Cities

admin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:47:00 +0000

The Economist magazine has provided a nice little paradox for urbanistas. Apparently most of the most livable cities in the world, are not unaffordable to live in. Painfully ironic and solifying theories that residential choice within livable, healthy and walkable neighborhoods, is not a truly equitable factor.

Climate Evil: Cars vs. Houses

admin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:58:00 +0000

Here’s a good article about the impact of Cars vs. Houses on the environment which mainly gets at the energy and resource-use side of the issues. However from a planning standpoint it overlooks the critical issue that every real estate professional knows – “location, location, location”! Proximity of housing to jobs, jobs to housing balance these do more to influence the transportation sector that many people give credit to and are quite possible the most important (and toughest) thing to target in addressing VMT and emissions reduction.

Growing Smarter

admin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:56:00 +0000

“What we see here is a chance to turn the Bay Area into a model metropolis, so that in 30 years when we do this show, you [Michael Krasny] don’t introduce this as ‘this is what they do in the Netherlands,’ instead, it’s ‘this is what they do in the San Francisco Bay Area.’”

–Greenbelt Alliance Executive Director Jeremy Madsen on KQED’s FORUM with Michael Krasny, 8 June 2009

Let’s just hope there is an equity component and that our ‘smart growth’ is not smart for minority and dumb for a majority…. See two Rolf Pendall articles: