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Keith Baltimore of Baltimore Design Group created this comfortable family room for environmentally conscious homeowners Michelle and Michael Walrath. Ph

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APRIL 2008 $3.95

www.distinctionmagazine.com

Ah, Spring!

Semi-Annual Design Issue

VisitMassapequa

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You don’t have to wear Birkenstocks to be

part of the green movement these days.

Environmentalists today are just as likely

to wear Jimmy Choo and Armani as t-shirts and denim.

And those earth-friendly products once equated with a

rugged, back-to-basics lifestyle? They’ve moved uptown,

finding a welcome home in upscale design showrooms.

Today green design can be great design, with no

aesthetic compromises, according to Cheryl Terrace, founder

of Manhattan-based Vital Design Ltd., who describes herself

as the New York metro area’s premier green designer. “I’ve

been in interior design for a long time,” she says, “and I’ve

always been an environmentalist. I don’t call what I do

green design, I call what I do thoughtful design. For me, it’s

important to show people that you don’t have to sacrifice

beauty and luxury in order to be green. I do beautiful

designs and I just happen to do it in a healthy manner.”

Eco-friendly meets high style in today’s

health- and earth-conscious interiors.

By Mary Stipe

Going Green

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Keith Baltimore of Baltimore Design Group in Port Washington seconds that notion. A somewhat newer convert to the environmental mindset, Baltimore is in the process of putting his money where his heart is by building and outfitting an eco-friendly design store adjacent to his current showroom. Baltimore Green is expected to open early this summer.

“It’s going to be a high-end design store,” explains Baltimore. “The only difference between this and my existing store is that almost everything will be sustainable, recyclable, eco-friendly — right down to the paper clips.” By using energy-conserving techniques and materials, such as insulation made from recycled denim, Baltimore expects the store to obtain a high LEED rating. “Because of the existing building situation I can’t make the showroom totally green,” he says, “But there are shades of green.”

Both Baltimore and Terrace agree that increased consumer demand is needed to bring the cost of green design into parity with traditional materials. Although it can often cost 10 to 25 percent more to go green, for clients who seek out eco-conscious design, the higher cost is worth it.

Health was uppermost in the mind of Michelle Walrath when

Green design brings a new vocabulary of terms, two of which are defined here.

LEED RatingsThe Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ is a nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings that was developed in 2000 by the U.S. Green Building Council. Projects earn points based on six LEED categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation in design. The number of points determines the LEED certification level a project receives — Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum (the highest level). www.usgbc.org.

VOCsVolatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are hazardous chemicals that release vapors at room temperature. “The distinctive smell of a newly remodeled home is primarily composed of offgasing toxic volatile organic compounds,” writes David Johnston in Green Remodeling — Changing the World One Room at a Time. Typical VOCs found in the home are formaldehyde, benzene, xylenes, toluene and ethanol. Hence the growing demand for no- or low-VOC paints, which are now offered by several manufacturers including Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams and Mythic Paint (one of the pioneers of non-toxic paint).

In a corner of the Walraths’ family room a new sofa is clad in wool and built from the frame up using green materials. The side chairs are stand-ins for custom chairs that had yet to arrive. They’ll be upholstered in the same gray wool as the pillows on the sofa.

Photograph by Elizabeth Glasgow

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she decided to redecorate her family room. Both Michelle and her husband, Michael, grew up in families that were conscious of the environment, but she credits Patti Wood, founder of Long Island-based Grassroots Environmental Education, with alerting her to hidden health hazards in the home. “As soon as I heard Patti speak about the VOCs in paints and that there was an alternative,” says Walrath, “I jumped right in. As a person who is at home all the time with the kids, I felt our house should be the safest spot for all of us.”

The Walraths began experimenting with eco-materials when they redecorated the dining room of the North Shore home they bought two years ago. But when it came to designing a family room that would function well for both children and adults, they realized they needed the help of an interior designer. Michelle Walrath had seen and liked some of Keith Baltimore’s work, so she

visited his showroom, describing the project she had in mind and adding one caveat: she wanted to do the room “as purely green as possible.”

When Walrath learned about Baltimore Green, she knew she had come to the right place. “The new green showroom will be a big help,” she says, noting that during her recent family-room project she seldom had anything to put her hands on. “I just had to imagine that it would work. It’s hard not knowing what a wood finish or a fabric is actually going to look like on the finished product,” she says. “With the new storefront, people will be able to see how beautiful it really is.”

The Walraths’ newly renovated space has become the cozy haven they envisioned. The walls are covered in 18-inch squares of handmade rice paper. Semi-sheer draperies are done in a linen-rich horizontal stripe produced with non-toxic, heavy-metal-free dyes. The

Alchemy Glass & Light’s Celestial Series of heirloom sinks turn spherical and geometric fragments of glass intoone-of-a-kind works of art. “When a piece of glass broke in the studio, I decided to reclaim the fragments and

experiment with them in my designs,” says artist and company-owner Steve Weinstock. “What is so intriguing about the composition is that every time you look at the design you see something new.” www.alchemy-glass.com

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sofa, upholstered in wool, features “inside green” construction, meaning all the materials are eco-friendly and from sustainable sources. End tables are constructed from recycled wine barrels. “We had to ship them from California,” says Walrath. “I hated to do that, but at least I wasn’t responsible for chopping down a new tree to make them.”

Walrath’s concerns about the energy and pollution costs of long-distance shipping point to the complexities inherent in going green.

“It’s not easy being green,” says Cheryl Terrace with a chuckle, quoting Kermit the Frog. “I always start a project by asking my clients about their point of view. I have mommies who just want pure and organic, anything that’s non-toxic for their families. They don’t necessarily care where it comes from or where it’s going after its life cycle,” she says. “I have other clients who are hard-core environmentalists who say it negates the green factor if something is shipped from across the country or from another part of the world.”

Still other clients just want a beautiful design and if it happens to be green, it’s a nice

Cheryl Terrace of Vital Design Ltd. designed this table of reclaimed wood beams topped with a round of glass in an area adjacent to the kitchen shown on page 70. “Everything was so linear in the space that I wanted to create something more organic,” she says.

Photograph by Donovan

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In this kitchen designed by Cheryl Terrace, the custom cabinets were built in an Amish workshop in Pennsylvania using sustainably harvested woods and non-toxic glues and finishes. Other green elements include recycled glass tiles and an island topped with CaesarStone.www.vitaldesignltd.com.

Photograph by Donovan

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bonus. Terrace recalls “a big beautiful kitchen in TriBeCa” where the owners didn’t really care about environmental issues. The kitchen featured linoleum floors and custom cabinets from an Amish workshop in Pennsylvania. “Although all they really wanted was a beautiful product, everything was super green,” she says. “But when they went to sell, the green kitchen became a big selling point.”

With so much media attention being paid to green design, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of issues such as the health risks posed by off-gases from toxic chemicals used in the production of fabrics and surface finishes, the global impact of deforestation related to the manufacture of building materials and furniture, and excessive energy consumption from our electronics-centered lives. At the same time, there is a rush among manufacturers and retailers to jump on the green wagon.

“Everything is supply and demand,” says Terrace. “Every single paint company now has a no- or low-VOC paint, whereas years ago there were only one or two companies. But on the other side of the coin, there is a lot of ‘green-washing.’ For example, I went to buy copy paper recently and the package said it was recycled paper. But when I looked at the fine print, it only contained two-percent post-consumer recycled material. So you have to look at the fine print.”

There is help available for making sense of the seeming mountains of environmental information bombarding us today, from Al Gore’s book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth, to HGTV’s first Green Home, which, like the television network’s popular Dream Home, will be given away with all its furnishings. Many industry groups are promoting sustainable production and processes, and creating meaningful certification standards. (See the list of websites at the end of this article.)

A spate of new books is arriving in stores with titles like Green Remodeling — Changing the

World One Room at a Time, by David Johnston and Kim Master, and Green Housekeeping (originally published as Organic Housekeeping) by Ellen Sandbeck. Magazines such as Natural Home & Garden, which has been around for seven years, are being joined by upstarts like National Geographic’s Green Guide, a quarterly whose first issue just hit the newstands. And there are also new stores opening up — both

The EcoSmart Fireplace collection is an Australian import designed to be environmentally friendly as well as stylish. The Vision, shown here, is a freestanding piece of furniture that, like all EcoSmart fireplaces, burns non-polluting denatured alcohol. The versatile double-sided design has a toughened glass back so the fireplace can be displayed against a wall or used as a room divider. www.ecosmartfire.com.

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Red is the color du jour in thiskitchen, which features Trend Q,an engineered stone surface material from Trend USA composed of up to 72 percent post-consumer recycled content. The recycled glass and quartzite particles are suspended in a pigmented polymer base creatingsaturated color. www.trendgroup-usa.com.

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brick-and-mortar and online.Susan Bloom of Susan

Bloom Interiors in Locust Valley recently designed Brú na Bó, a home furnishings and design store located in what was once a mechanic’s garage on Scudder Avenue in Northport. Bloom, who has long been involved with green design, chose to leave the brick walls and concrete floor exposed, keeping the history of the space in plain view. The store’s inventory is a mix of antiques — possibly the ultimate in high-end recycling — and furniture and accessories, most from manufacturers and artisans dedicated to sustainable, earth-friendly practices.

Perhaps homeowner Michelle Walrath sums up the reasons for adopting green design best. “Nature is not going to be here anymore if we keep abusing it,” she says. “All human beings are guilty of causing damage [to the earth], but if you can minimize your impact and still get a great result, why not?” &

Want to learn more about green design? Begin by checking outthese websites:Abundant Forest Alliance; abundantforests.org

Energy Star (products and programs); energystar.gov

Grassroots Environmental Education; grassrootsinfo.org

Sustainable Furniture Council; sustainablefurniturecouncil.org

U.S. Green Building Council (LEED certification); usgbc.org

U.S. GBC-Long Island Chapter; buildinggreenli.com

The Series 2 CD Cabinet from Green Design Furniture is handcrafted of sustainably harvested solid American black cherry in the company’s small artisan workshop in Portland, Maine. “We don’t use fasteners or glues of any kind to make structure. We eschew the screw,” says founder Douglas Green, who invented the patented process used in the furniture’s

construction. www.greendesigns.com.