THE MAGAZINE FOR TRANSFORMATIVE PEOPLE + DESIGN

TR ANSFORMATIONAL THOUGHT

A REVOLUTIONARy REORDERING OF SOcIETyAnticipating Our Heavy-Near, Light-Far Future

THE JUNE KEy DELTA HOUSE: Vital to theNeighborhood’s Livable Future

TR ANSFORMATIONAL DESIGN

AMbASSADORS Take Action

KATHLEEN O’bRIEN

TR ANSFORMATIONAL AcTION

TR ANSFORMATIONAL PEOPLE

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FALL 2011

Fall 20112

E d i t o r i n C h i E f Jason F. McLennan jason.mclennan@living-future.org

E d i t o r i a l d i r E C t o r Michael D. Berrisford michael.berrisford@living-future.org

s E n i o r E d i t o r Sarah Costello sarah.costello@living-future.org

M a n a g i n g E d i t o r Joanna Gangi joanna.gangi@living-future.org

C r E at i v E d i r E C t o r Erin Gehle ering@softfirmstudios.net

C o p Y E d i t o r Katy Garlington katy.garlington@living-future.org

a d v E r t i s i n g Joanna Gangi joanna.gangi@living-future.org

C o n t r i b u t o r s Jules Bailey, Gina Binole, Ralph DiNola, Jay Kosa, Jason F. McLennan, Briana Meier, Cynthia Moffitt, Patti Southard, Edward Wolf

For editorial inquiries, freelance or photography submissions and advertising, contact Joanna Gangi at joanna.gangi@living-future.org.

Back issues or reprints, contact trimtab@living-future.org

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Trim Tab is a quarterly publication of the International Living Future Institute, a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization. Office locations: 721 NW 9th Ave Suite 195, Portland, OR 97209; 410 Occidental Ave South, Seattle, WA 98104; 1100-111 Dunsmuir Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 6A3; 643 S. Lower Road, Palmer, AK 99645.

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DEPARTMENTS36

TR A NSFORM ATION A L DE SIGNby GINA bINOLE

TR ANSFORMATIONAL DESIGN:

Ultra-Sustainable Community Center Key to Neighborhood’s Livable Futureby GINA bINOLE

The Aging of the Green Movement

TR ANSFORMATIONAL PEOPLE:

Kathleen O’Brienby PATTI SOUTHARD

TR ANSFORMATIONAL THOUGHT:

A Revolutionary Reordering of Societyby JA SON F. McLENNAN

TR ANSFORMATIONAL AcTION:

Ambassadors Take Actionby BRI A N A MEIER A ND JAy KOS A

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TR A NSFORM ATION A L Ac TIONby bRI A N A MEIER & JAy KOS A

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TR A NSFORM ATION A L PEOPLEby PAT TI SOU TH A RD

TR A NSFORM ATION A L THOUGHTby JA SON F. McLENN A N

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contents

FEATURES18

NUTS & BOLTSMoving Upstream: Progress in the

Bioregion and Beyond!

Event Calendar

FWD: Read This!

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Unleashing the Power of Communityby cy NTHI A MOFFIT T

Existing Buildings, The Road Ahead by R A LPH DINOL A

Cascadia’s Seismic Certainty: Putting Earthquake Safety on the Green Schools Agenda by EDwA RD wOLF A ND JULE S bA ILE y

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By GIN A BINOL E

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Ultra-Sustainable Community Center Key to Neighborhood’s Livable Future:20-plus years in the making, the June Key Delta Center was made possible by the people, and for the people

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Chris Poole-Jones is a patient woman. Patient with pit bull-like tenacity, which proved to be a perfect combina-tion to serve as project coordinator for the June Key Delta Community Center, the first African-American-owned building to pursue the Living Building Challengesm.

The Living Building Challenge, the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard, was first launched in 2006 as an enhanced way to ensure projects embody and evangelize both environmental and social equity stewardship. Projects can be certified as “Living” if they prove to meet all of the program requirements after 12 months of continued operations and full occupancy. It is also possible to achieve Petal Recognition, or partial pro-gram certification, for achieving all of the requirements of at least three Petals when at least one of the following is included: Water, Energy and/or Materials.

Poole-Jones’ Delta Sigma Theta Inc. sorority purchased the parcel at the corner of North Albina and North Ain-sworth streets in Portland, Oregon in 1992, with the in-

tention of creating a gathering place for community in-volvement and enrichment. The sorority is comprised of 250 college-educated women committed to public service. Members come from a variety of professions and include teachers, lawyers, administrators, accoun-tants, entrepreneurs, nurses, social workers and engi-neers. The organization focuses on public service and building community projects for the public good. 

In keeping with the tenets of the sorority, Poole-Jones has been in charge of the June Key Delta Communi-ty Center project since 2000 and was overjoyed and nearly uncharacteristically speechless when about 300 people gathered to celebrate the Community Center’s grand opening this past August.

“I’m almost in awe that we got it done. Well, it’s not to-tally done,” Poole-Jones says, as if she’s not quite ready to give birth and referencing some solar panels that still must be funded, purchased and installed, a few other items still on the to-do list and an ambitious Phase

Before

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Three, which could include temporary housing for victims of domestic violence. “But we (members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority) are ready to have our first meeting at the end of the month to explain how every-thing works, and we are already taking requests to use the space. We are getting various requests every day. A healing center wants to do a workshop. And we already have a woman who wants to have her wedding here.

“Everything is coming along nicely. It’s all shaping up according to the plan.”

Yes, there has always been a plan, albeit an ever-evolv-ing one based on time and funds, for the property ad-jacent to the Peninsula Park Rose Garden in the Hum-boldt Neighborhood. When the sorority first bought it, the neighborhood was in transition, and the women promptly erected a fence to discourage graffiti, loiter-ing and other activities.

“It wasn’t pleasant,” Poole-Jones recalls. “But all along, we wanted to show that you could take an ugly site and make it attractive using sustainable resources and recycling re-sources from the area. We wanted this to be a small-scale demonstration project. We always wanted to be different and outstanding. The neighborhood deserves that.”

The June Key Delta Center project expands the ex-isting building —formerly a gas station—for use as a community center. The center will provide activities such as tutoring sessions for school-age children, ac-tivities for seniors and youth, including two youth pro-grams serving girls, Growing and Empowering Myself Successfully (GEMS) and the Betty Shabazz Academy, named after Malcolm X’s wife, and Enabling Males to Build Opportunities for Developing Independence program (EMBODI) for boys age 13 to 18. The soror-ity also intends to host its meetings at the facility each week, with a larger monthly meeting on Saturdays, along with one or two annual events.

To create this community and carry out its plan, the sorority enlisted the help of the now-defunct Sienna Architecture. Mark Nye, who was with Sienna at the time and now spearheads Nye Architecture, has been with the project since its inception.

The development goal, according to Poole-Jones, that emerged from several initial brainstorming sessions was always “green.” Nye, who was in the midst of a Living Building Challenge contest submission at the time, steered the sorority onto the even more sustain-able path. It did not, he recalls, take much persuading.

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Brownfield Remediation

On-Site Composting

Urban Agriculture

Covered Bicycle Parking

Water Catchment

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Water Storage6

Black Water Treatement7

Pervious Pavers

Infiltration Swales

Geothermal Heat Pump

Solar Array

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Highly-Insulated Skin12

Cargo Container Reuse13

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Landfill Diversion-Glass14

Nature & Human Scale15

Brownfield Remediation

On-Site Composting

Urban Agriculture

Covered Bicycle Parking

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Black Water Treatement7

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Infiltration Swales

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“What if we built a movement

at the intersection of the social

justice and ecology movements, of

entrepreneurship and activism, of

inner change and social change?”

— Van Jones

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“I knew that it was a special project from the very begin-ning,” Nye says. “I thought it would be a great oppor-tunity to do a Living Building in this context, meaning small-scale and community-oriented that had a strong social sustainability component. And in the end, con-struction costs were roughly $250 to $300 per square foot. That puts it in the realm of the achievable for peo-ple who didn’t have a large construction budget.”

The project increased the building from its original 1,507 square feet to 2,757 square feet to accommodate a meeting space, two restrooms, accessory office space and a kitchen. The goal for the completed project was for it to contain 50 percent to 70 percent recycled ma-terials. For instance, two shipping containers were purchased for about $2,700, one houses the accessible bathrooms and the other, the kitchen. A mere 1 percent of the project demolition went to the landfill as metals and other materials were recycled and repurposed.

Nye says the container idea came to him when he was involved in his original submission for the Living City Design Competition while at Sienna.

“These containers are all over the place, and the think-ing was that when you drive along I-5 to Jantzen Beach, there’s a giant stack of them just sitting there,” Nye says. “We had been aware of some interesting projects in Britain that repurposed containers, so we started thinking, what if we retooled them for this project. That could work.”

Nye maintains the project has several unique features, but in addition to the containers, he was very enthused to have diverted glass for the windows from the land-fill. The glass was not quite the right color for the University of Washington Library and was headed to the landfill, until it was donated which ultimately im-proved the project aesthetics.

“It makes the project look so great,” he says. “We would not have gone for glass quite that large if it had not been given to us.”

The Community Center project also transformed an existing open space on the east side of the site into a community garden space, where the sorority aims to

CONSTRUCTION TEAM: Chris Poole-Jones, Marian Gilmore , Contractors Hermann Colas and Marc Domond, Architect Mark Nye and Contractor Andrew Colas of Colas Construction.

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Top: The open house ribbon cutting; bottom right: the garden work party kick-off; bottom left: Oregon tradeswomen help with construction

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use it as a tool to teach healthy eating habits, urban agriculture and sustainable living practices. They in-tend for the garden to serve as a demonstration of how African-American communities heavily bur-dened by health disparities such as hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes and obesity can work together. Working together was one of the most rewarding as-pects of being part of the June Key Delta Community Center, says Andrew Colas, president of COLAS Con-struction, and the project contractor.

“We look at sustainability as the wave of the future, and we were so anxious to be involved in a leading project like the June Key Delta Community Center,” Colas says.

The project includes a water reclamation system to cap-ture rain water and reuse it as graywater for the toilets and irrigation system. A ground source heat pump system will be used to heat and cool the building. There are a total of nine ground loops that go more than 100 feet into the core of the earth to draw natural heat from the earth into the building. Recycled materials in addition to the windows and bathrooms include doors, insulation, siding and sinks.

Of course, every project has its challenges, and the June Key Delta Community Center had some unique ones related to meeting the imperatives of the Living Building Challenge, Colas says.

“Tying the different materials together, such as one area where you have a cargo container and the next section you have wood siding, was challenging from an aesthetic and water-proofing standpoint,” he notes. “It wasn’t like there were other projects out there just like it to reference.

“So we worked closely with the architect. We were suc-cessful, but that was an area where we spent extra time. It was simple once we got with it, and we came up with details that allowed us to create a nice seam that we were able to tie together. Working with the architect on this project was really a great experience.”

Also necessitating some worker dialogue and commu-nity finesse was criticial in order to ensure that materials

that are prohibited, or red listed by the Living Building Challenge were not used. Colas recalls that during the pouring of the foundation, they had to stop the concrete contractor from spraying the foam that is generally used to seal the penetration between the storm line and the concrete forms. They also had to politely decline dona-tions of a few items, due to the material make-up.

“That was kind of a balancing act,” Nye also recalls. “Here you have someone who wants to donate and do a good thing, but we had to tell them that we love that you’re donating, but we can’t accept it if we want it to be a Living Building due to the high standard that the Living Building Challenge places on materials.”

The biggest frustration with this project according to Colas? “Oregon weather.” The budget was not large enough to include a temporary roof, and workers were also at the mercy of the rain. One the other hand, one of his proudest achievements was involving more than 60 percent of the workers from minority- and women-owned businesses and small firms.

The Oregon Tradeswomen Inc., a non-profit that works to help women have careers in the construction indus-try, provided two crews and put 633 hours into the Community Center project. They worked on every-thing from sheetrocking to prepping the garden beds.

“It was just a really unique project,” says Dawn Jones, training manager for the Oregon Tradeswomen. “It was inline with our values to be part of the commu-nity. We also teach green building as part of our project curriculum. Ultimately, our goals were similar, to help women become empowered to earn enough to support themselves and their families.”

The Humbolt Neighborhood Association strongly supports this project and has said it thinks the Com-munity Center project is a great use for the site and is very appreciative that the garden space has been opened to the community. Neighbors old and new ex-pressed their enthusiasm at the grand opening, wel-coming the facility and how it will positively affect the neighborhood.

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GINA bINOLE has nearly 20 years in the communications business, first as a government, business and environmental journalist and now as a PR strategist.

PROJECT DETAILS:• Building Area: 2,700 square feet• Start of Occupancy Period: 09/05/11• Owner Occupied: Yes • No. of Occupants: To be determined.

Occupancy is currently 100• No. of Visitors: To be determined. Grand

opening activity, August 10th was 300+• Typical Hours of Operation: Weekend

activities 8:00am to 10:00pm. Week day 8:00am to 9:00pm (dependant on activity)

PROJECT TEAM:• Owner: Portland Alumnae Chapter Delta

Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. • Architect: Nye Architecture• Contractor: Colas Construction• Electric: Oregon Electric Group• Landscape: Verde Landscaping• Apprentice Programs:• Oregon TradesWomen Apprentice

Program• Constructing Hope Pre-Apprenticeship

Program

Regina Hauser, director of The Natural Step Network USA (TNS) praised the project for helping demonstrate that sustainability initiatives are not just for the elite. She also credited it with tackling one of the reasons why, according to TNS principles, we are unsustainable.

“We don’t allow people to meet their needs. This cen-ter really is about meeting human needs in the broad-est sense. It really focuses on the needs we don’t often talk about,” Hauser says. “It’s not a homeless shelter. It’s not a food bank. It’s a social center.

“In North Portland, I think something like that might be thought of as frivolous. But it’s vital that everyone have access to nice places to celebrate the things in life that matter. Who knew that a former gas station could turn into those things?”

Apparently, Chris Poole-Jones and her fellow Delta Sigma Theta sorority members knew just that. Poole-Jones says they hope the Community Center project will keep on giving.

Poole-Jones says they have applied for a City of Port-land Green Street, which uses plants and other veg-etation to manage stormwater run-off. They also are working to secure funding sources to meet the net zero water and power requirements required by the Living Building Challenge. The building has been designed for efficient resource use so that power generation and water treatment can be plugged in once funding has been obtained.

“Sustainability should be accessible, and it shouldn’t be daunting. If these women can have the vision and make that mandate to their professionals, then other people should be able to do it too,” Nye says. “It can be done.”

“Oh, it will be done,” Poole-Jones concurs. “We will get it done.”

June Key Delta Community Center officials have entered into a fundraising campaign to raise $100,000 to assist with the development of com-munity based programming and to help retire the construction debt at JKDCC. The first fundraiser was scheduled on September 24. The second will be held on Sunday, October 2 as the First Annual Fall Fundraiser. Join them for an early evening af-fair with music, cocktails, and hors d’oeurves.

See www.key-delta-living-building.com for details and to RSVP.

The Ecotone bookstore will have the leading publications on sustainability, featuring Jason F. McLennan’s latest, Zugunruhe.

Attend these educational sessions to learn more about the Living Building Challenge:

ConnECT wiTh us AT greenbuild

The International Living Future Institute’s Ecotone Publishing is the first book publisher to focus solely on green architecture and design. We are dedicated to meeting the growing demand for authoritative and educational books on sustainable design, materials selection and building techniques in North America and beyond.

THE POwEr OF STOryTELLING…Ecotone tells the story, creating synergies between people and the sustainable design movement. We publish research, educational tools and original books – all intended to inform and inspire the transformation of the built environment.

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Yl03 the proof is in the pudding: performance Metrics from the First Five Certified living building Challenge projects

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Fall 201114

I woke up recently to an email from a colleague telling me that Waangari Mathai, who was 71 years old died of ovarian cancer. I was supposed to meet her just a week ago at a conference I attended in New York, and I had wondered why she was not there. She was also being considered as the keynote speaker for next year’s Living Future, our annual conference about environmental, social and economic transformation.

It is always shocking when someone larger than life – someone who worked so hard on behalf of life – passes on. We imagine that these leaders will always be there, and we want them here with us, fighting on behalf of those without voices. We owe a lot to this Kenyan wom-an, who from the late seventies onwards worked hard to create a better world through the simple act of plant-ing trees. Her work leading the Green Belt Movement, which created jobs for some 90,000 women and led to the planting of 30 million trees, eventually won her the Nobel Peace Prize.

Last month Ray Anderson died of cancer as well. The CEO of Interface Carpets had been struggling with the disease for sometime, a tough ending for someone who also gave his all to create transformation. Ray wanted nothing more than to change the way we make things – with less waste and with greater efficiency, and ele-gance. He started with his own company, did remark-able things and inspired hundreds of others to copy him and follow his lead. Ray made more than f loor cover-ings – he made green business synonymous with good

When Our Leaders DieThe Aging of the Green Movement

business. That’s a contribution we should all be grateful for. Ray and I never saw eye-to-eye about PVC, which ironically causes cancer, but my admiration for him and what he accomplished was never diminished. He was a true leader and we’ll miss him. He e-mailed me a couple years ago inquiring whether his new home in the Blue Ridge Mountains might qualify for the Living Building Challenge. This meant a lot to me even though it meant bringing up our stance on vinyl, which is banned in the Living Building Challenge standard. There is now a great void in the industry with the loss of Ray.

A couple years ago the green building movement lost Greg Franta and Gail Lindsey, two deaths that affected me deeply. Both Greg and Gail were pioneers in pro-moting responsible design and construction and they were wonderful human beings who were a real joy to be around. Gail also died of cancer while Greg was involved in a tragic auto accident. As young pioneers they were responsible for key leadership through the eighties and nineties, long before green was cool. And they were both much too young to leave us.

People don’t live forever. We know this. It’s still hard. But what is important to realize relative to the environ-mental movement, and green building in particular, is that our movement is still young enough that almost all of the people that helped shape it are still with us. With just a few notable exceptions – our founders are still here. I’m writing this as a gentle reminder that we must all give our appreciation now to those who have paved the way

By JA SON F. MCL ENN A N

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JASON F. McLENNAN is the CEO of the International Living Future Institute. He is the creator of the Living Building Challenge, as well as the author of four books, including his latest: Zugunruhe.

for all of us to follow. You know who they are. They are the folks that have been doing this for twenty to forty years. You’ve read their books and heard them speak at dozens of events. They were originally called ‘crazy’, then ‘pioneers’ and now ‘founders’. They are our elder states-men and women and we stand on their shoulders. People like Pliny Fisk, Sim Van Der Ryn, Bob Berkebile, Bill Mc-Donough, Amory Lovins, Hunter L. Lovins, Ed Mazria, Janine Benyus and many many more come to mind.

Not long ago – before the thousands filled conference halls at Greenbuild – there were only a few hundred people in the whole country who consistently pushed for deeper green standards for energy, materials, water, health and more. They defined our movement. They stretched its boundaries and broadened our shores. They did the hardest work in the dark and we should recognize them and thank all of them while we still can. An under-standing of history and context is essential to any move-

ment that hopes to endure – especially one as young and as important as our movement. Other movements only celebrate their founders and leaders after they die. But our movement is about life – and we celebrate people when we can hug them, look them in the eye and say “thank you.” Take a moment to think about who first turned you on to green building and sustainability. Post something on your facebook page or tweet/blog about it. Let them know you appreciate them and what they’ve done.

Thank you. Jason F. McLennan

Waangari Mathai Ray Anderson

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Fall 201118

By PAT T I SOU T H A RD

By PAT TI SOUTHARD

Kathleeno’brien

we wish it were not so but Kathleen O’brien is on the brink of retirement as president of O’brien & company – the leading-edge sus-tainability consulting firm based in seattle, washington. it is difficult to imagine this green warrior stepping away entirely and, as it is with many genuinely dedicated citizens, she fully intends to keep her hand in special projects. a nationally recognized expert in the field of sustainable design, construction and devel-opment, Kathleen has given the green build-ing industry more than 25 years of tireless en-ergy and passion and we should all hope that she will continue to teach, share and steward

future projects with the knowledge and vision that has defined her impressive career.

Kathleen’s accomplishments include organiz-ing the first regional conference in the North-west for the green building industry and working with local chapters of the National association of Home builders to develop several award-winning green building pro-grams. as a result there are now over 20,000 green homes certified in washington, Hawaii and california. she also has worked on sev-eral early green building demonstration proj-ects around the region and has continued to

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consult on leading-edge initiatives, such as the washington sustainable schools Pro-tocol, a green building standard for public schools in washington state. as a writer that has contributed to many green building jour-nals and as the co-author of The Northwest Green Home Primer (Timber Press 2008) Kathleen is a natural story-teller. Kathleen re-ceived her bachelor’s degree in political sci-ence and secondary education at university of buffalo (summa cum laude); her master’s degree in environment and the community at antioch university; and is both a certified sustainable building advisor and a leed ac-

credited Professional. she and her husband built a home that achieved the highest rating from the non-profit built Green, won the Pa-rade of Homes environmental achievement award, and has been featured on Home and Garden Tv for its sustainable features.

in 2008, cascadia Green building council rec-ognized Kathleen O’brien as a cascadia Fel-low – the organization’s lifetime achievement award and acknowledging her dedication to the sustainability movement King county recently named september 13th “Kathleen O’brien day”.

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“GReeN buildiNG is NOT jusT

a busiNess PROPOsiTiON, buT

sHOuld alsO be PeRceived

as a ciTizeN’s ResPONsibiliTy

TO assisT iN sOlviNG

cOMMuNiTy scale PRObleMs

RelaTed TO susTaiNabiliTy.”

Patti Southard: what led you to help found the green building movement and then later O’brien and company?

Kathleen O’Brien: i did not see myself as founding a movement, for me it was a common sense expres-sion of what was necessary in design to eliminate waste and conserve energy. i grew up with depres-sion era parents so this was obviously practical. i later felt inspired by my grandchildren to seek out best practices that would hopefully serve their gen-eration in the future. in the early years, i worked for New england solar energy association (Nesea) where i met steve loken, another founder of the movement. i was also a contributing editor to the journal of light construction and after hearing a story about a “builder with a conscience,” i pitched the story to the journal. it turned out the builder was steve loken’s cousin.

PS: it was a small green world in those days!

KO: yes. steve loken challenged me and a woman named debbie allen, who specialized in solid waste issues, to produce a conference. while we were do-ing our research debbie and i realized that everyone was associating different words with sustainable design. i called it “resource efficient construction”, because as an editor i found this to be more concise. i decided to do a workshop to create a common no-menclature. i was determined to come up with a common definition of what green building was and share it nationally.

O’brien and co was founded in 1991 because i like to work in close association with others. The following year i went on to collaborate with the original mem-bers of the Northwest eco building Guild to help get the organization started.

PS: you have often times served clients who work beyond the green building industry such as gov-ernments and corporations doing corporate social Responsibility (csR), and eventually what you have in the end is a product developed for your clients’

end user; the consumer. when discussing true “sus-tainability” versus just “green,” what advice do you have for clients who are striving to balance the tri-ple bottom line while trying to be a trusted source to public interest?

KO: when talking about sustainability in this indus-try, look for specifics versus generalities so you can understand where the knowledge is coming from, and look for people’s credentials. Our work should be driven by evidence, and i have brought some skepti-cism to the table in my work. That skepticism is there to avoid green washing which is something we see far too often in the consumer markets. Green build-ing is not just a business proposition, but should also be perceived as a citizen’s responsibility to assist in solving community scale problems related to sus-tainability. i have a 3-part lens based on experience, knowledge and credentials which is how i manage my skepticism and i hope to share that with others.

PS: The initial foundation of your work with built Green’s residential certification came from efforts to reduce waste in the building industry, including the development of deconstruction guidelines and training for industry professionals. what is your im-pression of how the management of waste is pro-gressing so many years later?

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KO: waste management is a very big issue in com-munities, relating to social equity and is grossly im-balanced on a global scale. solid waste is rarely man-aged in the community in which it is generated, and the fact that it can be re-directed to poorer commu-nities creates a social imbalance. if we, as a culture, did a better job of recognizing waste as a resource and kept it local, we would do a better job of reduc-ing it and turning it into (usable) byproducts.

we have all of these problems right here in our own backyard! Take Polyvinyl chloride (Pvc), for ex-ample. if communities had to manage all the waste related to the Pvc they used, including during its manufacture, we would not see it specified in prod-ucts anymore. Pvc, its manufacturing and incin-eration would not be readily received in the Pacific Northwest if we had to manage it. The run off from manufacturing processes and health related issues to workers is a long distance issue for us, as a result we unfortunately do not hesitate to buy it and pass that risk to other regions. The cascadia Green build-ing council has done the best job of any usGbc chapter in raising awareness around these persis-tent toxic pollutants through the materials red list. we inherently want to be able to color in between the lines, especially the grey areas of product se-lection, rarely are we successful without identifying core values. in the end we still have a lot of room for improvement in product stewardship and our biggest resource for addressing these issues is our-selves. we all have to take individual action steps to address pollution because it poses the highest risk to our health apart from cultural degradation.

PS: i have heard you quote socrates in relationship to the concepts of integrated design process (idP) and whole systems thinking. can you elaborate?

KO: idP is a series of inquiries that happen in a de-sign process; the inquiries start big and scale down. until we can formalize into implementation the feed-back loop continues to generate more questions. it is important that we include all stakeholders in this process to prevent polarization, this works for build-

ings and communities if done right. in the past it was assumed that an owner and/or architect would somehow represent all of these stakeholder groups. The community needs to function as a whole and so do buildings; we need buildings to become liv-ing like an organism. socrates spoke of what some humans assumed they could comprehend from a situation. in the idP process we ask each potential stakeholder to speak for themselves versus creat-ing an illusion of representation. idP helps us learn and respect all stakeholder needs and use them in the design. There are unquantifiable needs such as love, and those needs are not always represented by traditional stakeholders. This process truly requires a team of people to take risks. we need everything to function together, not as separate entities. if you put a bunch of things together they will not just become an organism, a lung and heart on a table do not constitute a human body. integrated design Process forces a new model of design, planning and development, and asks all participants to think be-yond themselves and their own needs and to work

Kathleen is co-author of The Northwest Green Home Primer (Timber Press 2008).

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collaboratively together. This is truly a commitment to all people involved.

PS: what’s next for Kathleen O’brien now that you have completed your book on green remodels and now that you are wrapping up full time tenure at O’brien and company?

KO: i’m working on a book on leadership and how to build capacity, after all, it can’t be done by yourself. i am also hoping to spend more time with my fam-ily - particularly my aging parents. i recently have returned from a trip where i hiked over two hundred miles through France, it gave me a lot of time to think on what is truly important.

PS: do you have any advice to give us; the builders, architects, government staff, elected officials and consumers?

KO: save the best resources but use the worst - what has been spoiled needs to be restored. cross

boundaries to bring people together - the environ-mental crisis is an invitation to work in your commu-nity to make real change!

Kathleen O’Brien has dedicated a great deal of her

life – a quarter century to be exact - to the better-

ment of the building industry. As a writer, a speak-

er and a green warrior she has been instrumental

in many green building successes throughout her

career. We wish her well in her retirement and are

thankful that she will continue to make contributions

to the over-arching mission of creating a healthy and

sustainable world for all.

Seattle and King County green building leaders thank Kathleen for her service to the movement.

PATTI SOUTHARD is Project Manager of King County GreenTools and cre-ative director for the internationally ac-claimed EcoCool Remodel Tool. Patti is currently president of Northwest Natu-ral Resource Group, and board member for the EcoVillage in New Orleans, LA.

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Fall 201124

By JA SON F. MCL ENN A N

A REVOLUTIONARy REORDERING OF SOCIETyANTICIPATING OUR HEAVy-NEAR, LIGHT-FAR FUTURE

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This article is about a simple, singular idea, yet the significance of the idea to modern society is pro-found and far-reaching. Here it is: In the near future anything heavy will become intensely local while at the same time the limits to things that are “ light”, ideas, philosophies, information will travel even further than today- literally and figuratively. This is a new para-digm for humanity and it has huge implications for the complete reordering of society.

Environmentalists, economists and sociologists agree: we are in an incredible state of f lux, and this transi-tion is simply the beginning. The planet is undergoing massive change and critical resources are diminishing, conditions to which the human race must respond. Population growth, resource scarcity and climate change will propel us, whether we like it or not, toward a new energy, food and resource paradigm. The world’s economies, based on cheap, plentiful energy and the

Fall 201126

Hunter/gatherer societies understood their place on a profoundly deep level. Everything was local.

exploitation of people and the environment, are start-ing to crumble. We are beginning an era in which the cozy assumptions of the last half-century are turned upside down, a time when the institutions and tech-nologies that run our civilization are re-engineered. To understand how radical this new paradigm will be, let’s explore similar reorderings in the past.

A HeAvy-NeAr, LigHt-NeAr PArAdigm: tHousANds of yeArs of HumAN History

For most of human history, everything in a person’s life was intensely local. People all over the earth had a deep understanding of their place and the world that they could literally see, touch and feel. Moving things that were physically heavy was difficult and limited first to what people could carry, then limited by the capacity of domesticated animals. Culture too was necessarily local – with people only a short distance away having differ-ences in language and customs. These cultural differ-ences emerged in relation to climate, the range of spe-cies migration and other place-based distinctions. Oral

cultures, by necessity, stayed close to home, keeping beliefs and ideology very local – sometimes as local as a family group or a small village. The world had hundreds of languages, thousands of dialects and even more foun-dational stories, creation myths and ways of looking at the world. Most of human existence has operated under this paradigm of “Heavy-Near” and “Light-Near”.

There were intermittent exceptions of course – mo-ments when bursts of innovation launched our spe-cies on great journeys (almost like punctuated equi-librium). The great Polynesian migrations and Viking explorers come to mind, but even they, after finding new islands for habitation, typically settled back into local realities.

Global population during this protracted era of our species’ history was relatively stable and our impact on the planet was largely within the carrying capacity of each place we lived. However, as discoveries, inven-tions and innovations expanded our collective knowl-edge, the traditional paradigm was destined to end.

For most of human history, everything in a person’s life was essentially local. People all over the earth had a deep understanding of their place and the world that they could literally see, touch and feel.

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The great Polynesian voyages were intermittent - huge burts of exploration followed by intensely local island settlements

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HeAvy-NeArisH, LigHt-somewHAt fAr

Slowly as new inventions arose and were refined, our species began to move some physical objects (“heavy”) and ideas and beliefs (“light”) across the globe. The emergence of agriculture, the domestication of animals and the written word made change inevitable. During the rise of the first great civilizations, resources like gold, jewels, salt and spices were transported through caravans, sailing vessels and on the backs of slaves. Along with them new ideas and information was dis-seminated, including the beliefs of all the world’s great religions. The range of cultural travel – both “heavy” and “light” – grew in proportion to the size and inf lu-ence of the empire behind it. During this era energy was still a precious commodity and because of the extreme costs to move goods and people, it was only the most valuable things that really traveled far – and it was only the richest and most powerful members of the society who benefited. For most of humanity this second age was still intensely local with only glimpses of any world beyond their own.

By the Middle Ages, some ideas (particularly religious beliefs) began to spread more widely. Exploration or con-quest began to transcend language barriers. However, religious and political leaders held many of the most im-portant ideas closely, limiting the general public’s access to them in order to control their populations and to keep “divine information” in the hands of the “anointed”.

So, even widely-traveled belief systems like Christian-ity and Islam were localized in a different way, care-fully released and controlled by the intellectual elite. Priests, monks and royals were the typical gatekeepers.

With the rise of empire based on the success of agricul-ture, population quickly grew – sometimes outstrip-ping local ecological carrying capacity as happened in the middle east and parts of the Mediterranean. But for the most part the planet did not feel too many ill effects from our civilizations under this overarching paradigm – there were simply too few of us and our technologies not yet transformative to planetary health.

The tall ship era began to open up the world, but largely only the most wealthy benefited from such trade.

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Our ability to transport things was until recently limited to what beasts of burden could carry.

Ideas and key technologies have also until recently been kept by the rich and powerful with strong local control of the masses.

Ideas – just like goods – travelled the globe, first through printed publications and then through even more powerful mediums such as the radio, the telephone, the television and finally the computer. In the last century, ideas finally began to move not only across physical boundaries but also across socio-economic, racial and gender boundaries, with the average person in modern society having access to information and ideas from anywhere on the planet.

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These days we ship heavy things all over the globe.

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HeAvy-fAr, LigHt-fArMost of the history we now study is centered on the huge changes that occurred globally in the span of just a few hundred years. From the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution to today, ideas, tech-nologies and inventions have allowed us to radically remake the world. The beginning of this age often saw violent clashes between civilizations still operat-ing in earlier paradigms with the civilizations that had rushed ahead. The old paradigms always lost. The “civ-ilized” speech of empires eclipsed tribal languages and beliefs the world over, which weakened and, in most cases, disappeared. Large-scale manufacturing models called for inexpensive human labor and the scourge of human slavery spread.

Gutenberg paved the way for many modern inventions when he introduced the printing press in the mid-15th century, allowing language and ideas to be distributed widely for the first time in human history. The Indus-trial Revolution enabled the most dramatic change in our ability to move the fruits of our labor, first with the steam engine and eventually with the combustion en-gine. Advances in weaponry – gunpowder in particu-lar – changed the rules forever. Suddenly, anything we made or conceived of could reach people in the farthest corners of the planet simply by shipping it overland or overseas. As new nations, the United States and Can-ada were shaped by some of the first products of this new paradigm and the cultural mythologies that exist with us today (and are so hard for us to shake) are a result of these pervasive inf luences.

After thousands of years in the first paradigm, then a couple of thousand years in the second, we fully trans-formed to this third paradigm in the span of just a few hundred years – with exponential acceleration happen-ing in the last one hundred years and matched graphical-ly with the huge explosion in human population. Some-time early this century this unprecedented population growth, and the accompanying human toll on the envi-ronment, suddenly tipped beyond what was sustainable.

All of this transformation was made possible through the availability of cheap, plentiful energy, borrowing on the stored carbon of millions of years of dead organ-

isms, partnered with human ingenuity and invention that did not see or believe in limits. Moving heavy ob-jects like stone, concrete, furniture and even people re-quire enormous inputs of energy. Coal and petroleum met the need and easily satisfied the demand. Ideas – just like goods – travelled the globe, first through printed publications and then through even more pow-erful mediums such as the radio, the telephone, the television and finally the computer. In the last century ideas finally began to move not only across physical boundaries but also across socio-economic, racial and gender boundaries, with the average person in modern society having access to information and ideas from anywhere on the planet.

By the 1980s and 1990s, we could – and did – ship any-thing anywhere. We shared ideas and stories with oth-ers across the globe. There was no limit placed on the distribution of anything. Indeed, our society complete-ly reordered itself around this reality within the span of a single lifetime– while seemingly being completely oblivious to the long-term disruptions it would cause.

Gradually, in the midst of this “success,” people ques-tioned the sanity of the paradigm – and the modern en-vironmental movement was born only thirty years ago. And here we are – a world with 7 billion people, rapidly closing on 8 billion – a world where the era of cheap en-ergy is quickly disappearing, as is the economic house of cards it was built on.

What is next?

A familiar sight as we ship goods everywhere.

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HeAvy-NeAr, LigHt-fAr: tHe resPoNsibLe PArAdigm

We are about to take a dramatic leap into the next era: the modern age of Heavy-Near, Light-Far. In a world where energy is increasingly scarce and expensive, we simply will not be able to transport goods and people over far distances. We need to prioritize energy use for tech-nologies that bring us together virtually – that allow us to connect and share regardless of the distances between communities. The world is about to get simultaneously bigger and smaller depending on the field of human ac-tivity concerned. Imagine an America where people stick much closer to home; where we are not defined by the open road, but by the quality and depth of our neighbor-hoods and communities; where the majority of the things in our lives – our clothes, furniture, food and building materials come from close at hand rather than being glob-ally sourced; where we eat according to seasonal varia-

tions and see the reemergence of incredible regional di-versity in architectural and cultural expressions.

At the same time it must not be a return to provincialism and hierarchical society. Rather, what is called for is an in-tensely localized economy, punctuated by key global tech-nologies that keep us connected, informed and up-to-date, with uniform access to information and ideas despite so-cio-economic, gender or racial backgrounds. Within this responsible paradigm, the possibilities for environmental and social/cultural healing is immense. Yet, this radical reordering will not be easy for us and will, at times, be vi-olently resisted by those rooted in the current paradigm. I believe that the riots we have been seeing around the world are natural permutations of this emerging paradigm – a world where the average person is super-connected with one another and informed – and frustrated with the status quo world power that refuses to change.

People are connected like never before - regardless of background or wealth.

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Here are some of the characteristics of the new reorder-ing as I see it:

• The “global economy” as it is now defined will shrink rapidly between 2012-2030, as energy scarcity will limit our ability to ship things all over the world. In a short span of time the cost of transporting human or material cargoes over any appreciable distance will simply be too high and the market will begin to cor-rect itself. In its place will emerge strongly local “liv-ing economies” with an emphasis on local materials, local knowledge, durability and craft.

• Super-sized retailers and one-stop shops will all but disappear. If Wal Mart, Costco, Target and others like them survive, it is because they will have learned to operate on a new business model based on locally pro-duced goods-globally managed through information management technologies (“heavy-near”, “light-far”).

• A renewed focus on food and goods that can be grown or made locally will have a positive effect on reinvigorating local cultures and revealing regional variations. Artisanship will reemerge and quality will trump quantity. Food and drink will become quintessentially local – inspiring the re-emergence of creative cuisines and local f lavors. Wine from France or Australia will once again be a true luxury in North America – but, thankfully, equally good vintages will be available close to home!

• “Winning” technologies (as defined by those tech-nologies we will continue to invest in) will be those that require less energy to make and operate rela-tive to the benefits they provide. Web-enabled cell phones are a perfect present-day example, as they put a world of information in the hands of any user and draw very little energy in the process, which is why they already are ubiquitous in third-world

The future will see an interesting paradigm between ultra low tech solutions like bicyles and high tech solutions like tablets and smart devices.

Fall 201134

countries. Small solar panels will power hand-held electronics and tablets. Larger machines such as cars, elevators, and HVAC systems will either be completely reengineered to be super-efficient or will disappear. Larger utility infrastructure such as regional energy grids and regional waste treat-ment plants will give way to a network of decen-tralized, distributed technologies.

• The era of the dominance of the automobile will final-ly end. Expect a rapid “de-autoization” of our culture over the next twenty years despite the introduction of better electric vehicles and hybrids. While some larger specialty vehicles will continue to be supported (we will keep trains and specialized automobiles for key tasks like ambulances and fire suppression), the original mechanical horse – the bicycle – will emerge as the world’s transportation vehicle of choice even here in the United States as it is already in many plac-es. Electric assist for bicycles will extend our ranges.

• As we become more globally connected via elec-tronic information exchanges, we will become more physically disconnected beyond a small radius of

The bicycle is the vehicle of the future.

travel. The costs of mechanized transport will limit our ability to travel overseas and relocate on a whim, but virtual communication will expand our abil-ity to share ideas with our across-the-world neigh-bors. So, while you may increasingly talk and share ideas with people in other countries, the chances of physically visiting them will diminish. The f lip side is that we will know our own communities much more intimately while maintaining open dialogue with our fellow global citizens. Information will be-come even more democratic and widely shared.

• The ultra-rich will continue to be the exception to most of the rules. Wealthy individuals will pay – dearly – for the privilege of globetrotting and having heavy special goods shipped from afar. Yet in a world where the exploitation of the envi-ronment and other people is no longer tolerated, what it means to be “rich” will begin to be rede-fined as well.

• The network of Certified Living BuildingsSM around North America will grow and become beacons of hope for the future of our homes, buildings and offices.

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JASON F. McLENNAN is the CEO of the International Living Future Institute. He is the creator of the Living Building Challenge, as well as the author of four books, including his latest: Zugunruhe.

Modern technology matched with age-old culture. Smart phones and mobile computers are a key part of this future paradigm.

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mAkiNg gLobAL LemoNAdeWe delivered ourselves here on the very vehicles that we are managing to make obsolete. Therefore, it is up to us to plan for this next natural cycle of innovation so that we can embrace it mindfully. The path I have de-scribed is, of course, by no means certain. The future could spiral in many directions – some quite dire. But I am hopeful of the path that I think is quite possible – “Heavy-Near”, “Light-Far.”

I believe we will:

• return to an essentially local way of living, and one that is globally conscious

• continue to innovate, and share our new ideas with friends we will never meet

• eat and wear what is available in our region, and we will create culturally rich communities as we do so

• work with colleagues who live in various countries around the world, and we will embrace the beauty of our virtual collaborations

• live in a world of relative scarcity compared to what we had in the 20th century, but be more connected and abundant from deeper connections to place and culture and a proper relationship with the nat-ural world

• rely on the human machine and “current solar in-come” to propel us forward, and enjoy the vitality that follows

The transition will not be easy, and we will weather many storms, but there is a chance, I believe, to find equilibrium on this planet again.

Fall 201136

By BRI A N A MEIER A ND JAy KOS A

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Our Take action article features stories of ambassadors who are courageously starting new conversations. Numerous exceptional individuals are already preparing their communities for large-scale transformation, yet in many ways, the ambassador Network is only just beginning to develop. a world of opportunity remains for increased collaboration among ambassadors across continents, and within similar bioregions. some of the possibilities beginning to emerge are captured in the following pages.

ambassadors TaKe acTiON

Fall 201138

Houston, Texas: Bankers introduced to restorative design principles

ambassador julie Hendricks recently introduced the concepts of the living building challenge to an association of realtors and bankers in Houston, Tex-as, a group not yet primed for taking up the princi-ples of restorative design and development in their day-to-day practices. after her talk, one participant asked, “do you realize that what you are presenting is contrary to the lifestyle enjoyed by all the people in this room? imagine how disruptive and expensive it would be to try to implement these things!”

julie took the opportunity to explain why she feels such level of change is necessary, and shared a di-agram below with the group, explaining: “This line graph illustrates the concept of overshooting the earth’s resources. The x axis is time and the y-axis is resources; the area under the horizontal line we call the “carrying capacity of earth”. The point of this graph: no matter how long we continue on the “less bad” path it will never take us where we need to go. we’ve all just got to get on the green line.”

julie and fellow ambassador amanda Tullos are invit-ing attendees at presentations like the one described above to establish an ongoing presence as change agents in the Houston-Galveston area by participat-ing in the area’s living building challenge collabora-tive. The collaborative sponsored Galveston’s entry

into the living city design competition, and is con-necting with other local groups to get the word out. amanda explains, “Our main goal is educational, with a hope to inspire living building projects in our area. There are many “challenges” for our climate zone within the living building challenge, and we hope to have a dialogue to address these and help interested people speak the language of other experts so that barriers can be overcome. i am involved personally because i believe that with seven billion people on the planet and a finite amount of resources, we must evolve into a new consciousness.”

central eastern europe: Green building councils converge

Timea Paal, a representative of the Romania Green building council (RoGbc) is initiating new conversa-tions of her own, and recently introduced the living building challenge to staff members from ten differ-ent european Green building councils. at the build Green central eastern europe conference held this past july, Timea spoke with representatives from Ro-mania, croatia, slovakia, slovenia, serbia, czech Re-public, Poland and Turkey, as well as the Netherlands and spain. she used the presentation as an opportu-nity to encourage international collaboration. Timea explained, “since the Green building councils of the central eastern europe region are small compared to the usGbc, for us, getting to know one another and acting together is essential.” The RoGbc is also spur-ring action beyond the realm of the PowerPoint, and is actively guiding the renovation of a town library with the goals of achieving living building certifica-tion and serving as a model of advanced green build-ing possibilities for central eastern europe.

atlanta, Georgia: Students put theory to the test

in the southeastern united states, volunteer presenter Pace Pickel started out with an all-together different kind of audience: university students. as an architec-tural representative of a building products manufac-turer in atlanta, Pace works to balance the concep-tual and the material elements of building. He’s found an effective strategy in complementing architectural

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JAy KOSA is the Community Coordinator for the International Living Future In-stitute. He supports the Living Building Challenge program, as well as the ILFI Ambassador Network.

theory taught in schools with examinations of various applications currently practiced in the field.

when Pace presented the living building challenge to a sustainable design class at the art institute of atlanta, he reinforced the central theme of the chal-lenge, “the ultimate goal should be to create a build-ing that truly benefits every one and every thing in-volved; occupants, community members, passersby and even wildlife in surrounding spaces.” The presen-tation succeeded in prompting critiques and ques-tions, particularly regarding the roles of social equity, education and beauty in the design process. Mov-ing forward, Pace is eager to present to more stu-dents in the atlanta region. Pace is not alone in his efforts. He recently joined volunteer facilitator john Mlade and several other area building professionals at the kick-off meeting of the atlanta Region living building challenge collaborative. The group plans to meet regularly to support each other’s efforts to take green building in the region to a new level.

Milwaukee, wisconsin: New Collaborative kicks off with an affordable housing design competition

along the shores of lake Michigan, ambassadors jerry Knapp and juli Kaufmann are starting up a living build-ing challenge collaborative in preparation for nothing less than a complete transformation of the way homes are built in Milwaukee. inspired by the institute-spon-sored living aleutian Home competition, jerry, juli and other collaborators plan to launch a design compe-tition for an affordable home in Milwaukee that meets the requirements of the living building challenge.

jerry explains the group’s bold first step: “The past few years have fostered a greater awareness of the needs within our community. There is a palpable sense of ur-gency in Milwaukee to change the way we think about and deliver basic human needs like housing. we recog-nize that sense of urgency, as do our other challenge partners. if our collaborative can help stimulate con-versation and action, i think we will have accomplished something worthwhile. There are regulatory, financial, political and social barriers that make building a living building challenge certified structure quite difficult. it

isn’t called a challenge without reason. That said, we believe that few things worthwhile are accomplished without a great deal of effort. Personally, i seldom think the easy way isn’t all that interesting.”

The paradigm shifts these ambassadors are call-ing for are inherently difficult. ambassadors, by the very definition of the word, accept the bold work of exchanging ideas with new audiences, in new terri-tories. bolstered by the support of their peers within the ambassador Network, these leaders are calling for fundamental reconsiderations of conventional ap-proaches to building practices, and they are taking critiques for what they are, opportunities to prepare new ground for growth.

New audiences—whether students, developers or representatives of burgeoning green building move-ments—present a risk of resistance and cynicism, but as many of our ambassadors have found, they also offer unique insight and the potential for future collaboration. asking people to consider restorative principles may not always be easy, but as with all worthwhile endeavors, the results are worth the ef-fort. in the meantime, we can take heart in finding ourselves in good company.

bRIANA MEIER is the Community Manag-er for the International Living Future In-stitute. She supports the Living Building Challenge program, as well as the ILFI Ambassador Network.

You can join in. visit www.livingbuildingchallenge.org/action

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By Cy N T HI A MOFFIT T

uNleasHiNG THe POweR OF cOMMuNiTy:cOMMON GROuNd, aN aFFORdable HOusiNG NeiGHbORHOOd ON lOPez islaNd

Common Ground, a project of Lopez Community Land Trust (LCLT) is a unique development that has successfully incorporated the power of commu-nity while creating an affordable housing and net-zero energy neighborhood.  The project is located on pic-turesque Lopez Island in Washington State and was completed in 2009 with eleven homes, two studio apartments and office spaces. Common Ground is a depiction of a model community – a socially just, sus-tainable community that was only made possible with the citizens’ committed involvement.

Common Ground homeowner, Chris Greacen, said “Common Ground is about reinventing the American dream. In the years ahead, Americans will be com-pelled to shed some deeply ingrained habits of mate-

rial consumption. These adjustments can be endured, nay, embraced, if people are confident that the country is headed to a more fulfilling transformation. I believe this transformation is fundamentally about discovering what it means to be truly human, not as ‘consumers’ but citizens, neighbors, friends, co-creators of a compelling new story that embraces social justice and a healthy planet. It’s about smaller footprints and larger lives.”

Common Ground embraces the community while weaving sustainable living into the fabric of its citi-zens. Since 1989, LCLT has been a leader on the island through established programs that include affordable housing, sustainable agriculture and rural develop-ment, and energy initiatives and has developed four award-winning affordable housing ownership projects

43trim tabView off the coast of Lopez isLand. creatiVe commons image by Joe mabeL.

using the community land trust model, including the Common Ground project. 

develOPiNG a NeT-zeRO eNeRGy NeiGHbORHOOdThe vision of Common Ground was to create a place that was sustainable and affordable for islanders. The Execu-tive Director for LCLT, Sandy Bishop, describes Com-mon Ground; “In 1989 LCLT was created in response to the rapid rise of real estate prices. Escalation of home prices threatened the very fabric of our community. Common Ground is our fourth affordable housing de-velopment and the first net-zero energy neighborhood.” 

Common Ground was developed for replication: model-ing rain water catchment, solar electric and solar thermal

systems, passive solar design, straw bale construction, earthen plasters and elements of permaculture design. 

Common Ground is home to people of at least five diverse cultures and interests, eleven children, and in-cludes teachers, small business owners and those who are self-employed. It is a testament of living comfort-ably and sustainably with a greatly reduced carbon footprint.

In 2010 LCLT won the Home Depot Foundation Award of Excellence for Affordable Housing Built Responsibly for Common Ground. The award came with a $75,000 prize to be used for affordable housing. For an over-view of the completed development, see: http://vimeo.com/16942789. 

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THe desiGN eleMeNTsecOlOGy based laNd use:The 6.5 acre site is located within the Lopez Island Ur-ban Growth Area (UGA) , approximately a 3/8 mile (6 minute walk) north of Lopez Village. Phase I took place on approximately 2 acres of the 6.5 acre site.

The site was gently sloped from high on the north side to low on the south side with three distinctive vegetative zones: the forest which occupies the north half of the site, the transitional habitat edge which is scalloped and varies in width along the east west axis, and the meadow or field which occupies the southern third of the site. 

The concept of permaculture was employed as a pri-mary basis for planning the site design. The completed village has gradients of human inhabited and more nat-uralized habitat. Water and sun are treated as resources that enrich and are central to the life of the commu-nity. Approximately 50 percent of the site was retained as a forested wildlife corridor.

waTeR balaNce:The site receives 26 inches of rainfall a year. Potable water usage in all buildings are reduced by utilizing dual-f lush toilets and high-efficiency fixtures. 

A rainwater system further reduces potable water con-sumption in which water that falls on the buildings is captured and sent into a 38,000 gallon rainwater catch-ment tank before it is pumped back into houses for use in washing machines, toilet f lushing and garden and site irrigation. Each house has a rainwater budget of 35 gal-lons per day and current measured usage is 17 gallons per day. Excess rainwater overflow from the tank and site is stored in a pond and used for supplemental irrigation.

Potable water is supplied by a 74-foot-deep on-site well with a budget of 75 gallons per day. Measured use is ap-proximately 40 gallons per day. Each house has both a rainwater and a potable water meter. Rain gardens are installed at the parking area to collect gas/oil run-off from vehicles that is filitered before it leaves the site. Wastewater is pretreated in a septic tank and the re-maining eff luent is treated by the local sewer district. 

iNTeGRaTed desiGN PROcessBoth the design team, owners and the community were included during the design phase of Common Ground. A three-day design charrette began in March 2006 where the owners and design team gained es-sential development expertise. The goal setting, pro-gramming, design and construction involved not only the Lopez Community Land Trust and professional consultants but also those who were to become the residents of the community. The community aspect of “community land trusts” is woven into LCLT’s ap-proach to housing development. The following excerpt from The Community Land Trust Reader portrays the importance of this model; “Community means place. It is the place where we live, the place where we make our living, the place we care about which nurtures us. But community is more than a commitment to place, community is a commitment to the people in that place—to all of the people in that place, but first and foremost to those in greatest need. Finally and criti-cally, community is a commitment to development models that protect and preserve—that retain and re-cycle the income and the assets of the people derived from that place.” 

In addition to unleashing the power of community the following goals were established during the integrated design process:

• Achieve “zero-net energy” as an annual balance of consumption and on site energy production within five years of occupancy.

• Encourage community collaboration for all aspects of completing the construction, future maintenance and care of homes.

• Establish a resource room and office that will pro-mote, demonstrate, and exemplify the emerging culture for independent living and sustainable com-munity on Lopez Island.

• Promote, in measurable ways, energy and water independence and local self-sufficiency while pre-serving the rural character of the site.

• Improve the natural diversity and habitat of the site and surroundings.

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Common Ground Neighborhood (Image credit: Mithun | Juan Hernandez)

Owners and LCLT staff provide “sweat equity” to the project

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1. Homes sizes are small to reduce energy and resource use.

2. Overhangs engineered for heat gain in winter and shading in summer.

3. Vegetated trellis for shading at lower windows.4. Super-insulated roof and walls.5. Straw bales at north, east and west walls for

insulation, resource use, and interest in natural building by interns and local community

6. High efficiency, operable windows for solar performace, natural cooling and ventilation.

7. Solar shades on window interiors.8. Insulated night/light shades at windows.

Concrete f loors add thermal mass.9. ENERGY STAR appliences and compact

f luorescent lighting.10. Low-f low plumbing fixtures.11. Solar hot water heating.12. Rainwater catchment for toilet f lushing, washing

machines and stormwater control.

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lOPez cOMMuNiTy laNd TRusT & cOMMON GROuNd cOOPeRaTivelOPez islaNd, wasHiNGTON

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eNeRGy iNdePeNdeNce:The design strategy for energy load reduction in-cludes small unit sizes, together, with envelope im-provements. It consists of R-30 blown-in cellulose insulation for framed walls, straw bale construction and advanced framing. R-50 insulation for roofs and energy efficient air ceiling techniques were used in the design. Only ENERGY STAR lighting and appliances were selected for the project.

Passive solar gain was a primary goal of the design. Buildings were positioned with the front elevation, fac-ing south on the site, in order to take advantage of the sun’s heating and natural lighting potential. Placement and shape of buildings were mocked-up, using sun shading analysis and modeling, to ensure the orienta-tion, glazing types and thermal mass were optimized. It is estimated that the homes receive a 48 percent re-duction of required energy due to passive measures. 

The passive solar design requires active participation of the occupants and provides interactive, visible and oper-able components such as: use meters, insulated night/light shades, operable windows, and vegetated sun-screens that people can use as tools to make their homes and offices more comfortable and resource efficient.

Additionally, LCLT helps residents understand and keep their homes in tune by providing continuing edu-cation on site and an innovative homeowners manual (www.lopezclt.org/manual) that illustrates the sea-sonal strategies and features of the homes that will re-duce resource and energy demands. 

On site renewables include a solar thermal hot water system, installed in each unit and an active grid-tied photovoltaic system. 

THe PeOPlecOllecTive wisdOM aNd FeedbacK:

The participation of future homeowners during the construction and occupancy phase was a unique and critical aspect of the project. All homeowners were required to put in a minimum of 22-26 hours of la-bor per week in the construction of the homes, either

themselves, or with volunteer building partners. Both during the building and after homeowners moved in LCLT conducted training seminars. Each household was gifted a manual about their home and its opera-tions, as well as a bag of various non-toxic household cleaners. The homeowners met together with staff in the homes and talked about the best practices for living in a net-zero, environmentally friendly home, includ-ing concerns about energy use reduction, wastewater and what types of cleaning products to use. The con-versations were lively and because everyone had been a part of the construction and preparing the homes for occupancy there was a fair amount of acquired aware-ness and receptivity.

In 2010, the first year of occupancy for Common Ground, four of the eleven households reached net-zero energy. Of course, how the entire project achieves this result depends on the individual energy use by the residents. Those who conserve energy will not pay en-ergy bills beyond the minimum user fee and those who do not conserve will pay accordingly. This has helped bring awareness to residents and will hopefully help change the energy use behavior of the residents.

sOcial equiTy:A major goal for LCLT is to provide housing for people who are part of the community but cannot afford its prices. In order to make this a reality LCLT buys land, develops neighborhoods and sells the homes while re-taining ownership of the land. The land is leased back to the owners on a 99 year, one-time renewable term so that there is a 198 year commitment to security of land while retaining affordability. 

Houses in Common Ground carry a mortgage of be-tween $80,000 and $150,000. Buyers must have lived on the island for two years and show income to match the mortgage requirements. Currently ten households fall within 45 – 80 percent of Area Median Income and one below 95 percent.

cOMMuNiTy sOul:For all the challenges building Common Ground, there has been plenty of laughter and good times shared by

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Straw wall demonstration mock-up for future owners and island community.

the community. One of the most onerous tasks was sifting over 150 yards of clay soils, sand and manure for the earthen plaster mix. Despite the initial groaning about the piles, people stated, “We have the best con-versations while doing that endless sifting! It’s the one job where we have uninterrupted time to get to know one another better!” Citizens of Common Ground have a real feeling of empowerment when it comes to their neighborhood. They have come together as a col-lective whole to help create a place to call home.

lOOKiNG TO THe FuTuRe LCLT and the residents of Common Ground are con-cerned, yet optimistic for what the future holds. Rhea Miller, LCLT Assitant to the Director, states: “Along with the rest of our Lopez community, we are adjust-ing to challenging economic times, unfamiliar weather and limited resources. Yet our deep love for precious islands and its inhabitants continues unabated. We talk constantly with local residents about ways not only to sustain our community but to see it thrive.”

Lopez Islanders are asking themselves what their role is, what they can offer and what windows of opportu-nity there are to make the future a brighter one. This quote by The Little Prince is a great ref lection on this sentiment. “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Affordable, sustainable and communal neighborhoods create positive and healthy places to live and learn. And places like Common Ground offer a glimmer of hope for what is possible for future developments.

cyNTHIA MOFFITT is a planner and a member of the Lopez Community Land Trust Board. She has spent more than 20 years working with municipalities on sustainable regional growth manage-ment coordination.

Fall 201150

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Existing Buildings, The Road Ahead

part one: building context

Fall 201154

building industry crossroads

As we emerge from the worst recession in a century, we have a golden opportunity to both lead the transforma-tion of the building industry and dramatically reduce its environmental impacts. A renewed focus on the renova-tion and reuse of existing buildings is imperative. Over four years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their Fourth Assessment Re-port. It stressed the urgency of addressing the causes of climate change and offered what the IPCC considers the most practical solution – a focus on energy efficiency in buildings. Improvements to existing buildings are likely to provide us with the most immediate and deep cuts to carbon emissions of any potential strategies before us. Emerging research will provide building industry lead-ers and policy makers with the data and analysis neces-sary to direct this needed transformation.

characterizing our building stock

The U.S. building stock is as vast as it is complex. The Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Commer-cial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) and Residential Energy Consumption Survey provides dozens of data-filled spreadsheets that help paint a pic-ture of our current inventory. The most recent report provided by the EIA in 2006 found that there are more than 110 million housing units and 4.8 million com-mercial buildings, which accounts for more than 328 billion square feet of buildings in the U.S.

While commercial buildings represent 71.6 billion square feet of space, the vast majority of the building stock is residential, with 256.5 billion square feet of built space throughout the country. Less than 13.5% of the residential building stock was built prior to 1940. Little more than 3.7 billion square feet of commercial buildings, or 5.28%, date before 1920. Interestingly, evidence from CBECS shows that commercial build-ings of today use about the same amount of energy per square foot as those built prior to the 1920s. The major-ity of the buildings in the U.S. were built after World War II and these are our worst energy performers.

Existing commercial buildings are ripe for renovation – using common energy efficiency measures; these buildings can reduce their current energy use by 20% to 40%. Ultimately, the choice to renovate, demolish or build a new building is driven by the complex work-ings of the building industry.

building culture

Howard Davis, in his 1999 book Building Culture, sug-gests that, “the culture of building is the coordinated system of knowledge, rules, procedures, and habits that surrounds the building process in a given place and time. It is responsible for the character and for-mation of everyday buildings around us, in addition to building landmarks.” Our current building culture is the product of centuries of design and construc-tion practice and evolution combined with prevailing values, attitudes and financial conditions. Teams of architects, engineers, specialty consultants, bankers and real estate professionals support the development of renovation projects and new buildings. Knowledge and skills are highly specialized in today’s building industry and development projects are inf luenced by many complex and institutionalized practices and policies, making change sometimes slow and difficult.

The complexity and cost of successfully complet-ing a development project means many developers will only work on projects of a particular scale. Small projects require many of the same efforts and incur similar costs as larger projects, making the potential for a good return on investment more uncertain and

u.s. building stock – billion square feet

residential 256.5 billion square feet

commercial 71.6 billion square feet

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Residential and commercial buildings are frequently demolished to make way for new development.

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The vast majority of the existing commercial building stock is comprised of smaller buildings less than 25,000-sf.

“small projects require many of the same efforts and incur similar costs as larger projects, making the potential for a good return on investment more uncertain and therefore, more risky.“

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therefore, more risky. In many ways we have a current building culture that values large, new and lower risk buildings. These tendencies have evolved over the past several decades – all cultural trends which result in a prejudice against renovation over new construction.

However, the emergence of sustainability over the past decade has brought a significant shift to our building culture. Our initial emphasis on design and construc-tion practices leads to deeper questions about how development is financed and which policies enable or hamper advances in sustainable development. With an industry so focused on new construction, how can we focus more attention on the environmental value of ex-isting buildings?

building economy

The building industry’s connection to the economy ap-pears in the news daily as a measure of economic health based upon new housing starts, construction jobs, and the manufacture of durable goods. What may not be well understood is the magnitude of our reliance on the building industry – and especially new construction – to keep the economic engine moving. In 2009, the building industry was responsible for approximately 9% of U.S. Growth Domestic Product, almost one tenth of our economy. At the same time, among other envi-ronmental impacts related to buildings, the operation of buildings contributed over 40% of CO2 emissions in the U.S. due to electricity and direct use of fossil fuels. What is less well understood and often times left un-noticed is the magnitude of the carbon emissions that results from a robust building industry in good times and the relative impacts of existing building renovation compared to new construction.

In what often appears to be a boom-and-bust cycle, the building industry is closely connected to the macro economic cycles we experience in the U.S. Called “The Real Estate Cycle,” this sine curve of the real estate business parallels our economy. A no-table element of this cycle is the shift from a focus on new construction when the market is favorable to renovation when replacement cost exceeds the value of existing real estate.

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On the upward swing, the economy is strong and avail-able leasable space becomes limited in certain market segments, thereby driving up rents in existing build-ings. As rents rise, they cross a threshold in which the replacement cost of space in a new building is lower than rents in the market, spurring the development of new buildings. With a boom in new buildings, many developers attempt to time their projects to sign up new tenants when the buildings are complete. Often, they attract tenants from older existing buildings with the latest building concepts for their market sector, be it commercial office or housing. Once too many projects hit the market, the cycle starts on a downward trend and over saturation of a particular building type leads to rents softening and dropping below the replacement cost of space in new buildings.

Renovation and demolition activity also generally follow this cycle, but with subtle differences. Most

major renovations occur on the upswing, when build-ings change hands and new space in old buildings is desired and capital is available; while minor retrofits and tenant improvements in existing buildings oc-cur throughout the cycle. Often, as rents soften and leases are set to expire, tenants choose to move to take advantage of lower rents in better buildings with new tenant improvements.

Building demolition is often the result of new develop-ment pressure in the rising market, but can also follow a significant recession. This is especially true where abandoned buildings and communities are blighted and the expedient solution is to remove the abandoned and derelict buildings in order to prepare sites and neighborhoods for new development.

Merchant developers seek the highest possible inter-nal rate of return for their investment while providing

Called “The Real Estate Cycle,” this sine curve of the real estate business parallels our economy.

decreasing vacancy

buy

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the real estate cycle

rent growth

lower replacement

costsell

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decline

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“building demolition is often the result of new development pressure in the rising market, but can also follow a significant recession. this is especially true where abandoned buildings and communities are blighted and the expedient solution is to remove the abandoned and derelict buildings in order to prepare sites and neighborhoods for new development.“

a valuable product in the market. With this focus on the bottom line, building the highest possible ratio of rentable space to gross building area is a goal. By build-ing as fast and as cheaply as the market will bear, de-velopers keep site development and construction costs as low as possible, thereby reducing risk; and building for what the real estate market desires or will accept. More recently, sustainability and energy efficiency are becoming an important part of the value proposition, thereby inf luencing developer choices.

Tenants and real estate brokers also have significant power and inf luence over building performance. As participants in an economic exchange with the land-lord, they may have different goals or incentives for building efficiency, which can lead to conflicting ap-proaches. This is commonly referred to as the split in-centive. The split incentive often disconnects tenants and building owners from issues of sustainability and

leads to less investment in efficiency upgrades in or-der to reduce construction costs. One most common example of the landlord-tenant split incentive is when the tenant pays utility costs. The landlord has no direct incentive to pay for energy efficiency upgrades since they are not a beneficiary of future energy savings. Likewise, if the landlord pays utility costs and makes efficiency upgrades, the tenant has no incentive to use energy efficiently. Therefore, the split incentive ham-pers our progress toward dramatic efficiency upgrades in buildings, yet this issue is commonplace in the real estate market today.

demolition and new construction

The cycle of demolition and new construction is also ingrained in the building industry with little regard for its associated environmental impacts. Accord-ing to the Brookings Institution, between 2005 and 2030, 27% of existing buildings will be demolished,

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or just over 1% per year. In their place, or on green-field sites, new buildings continue to be built. While the rate of new construction tracks with the broader economy, the average rate of new construction from 1950 to today was approximately 1 billion square feet of commercial buildings and 3.4 billion square feet of residential buildings per year, for a total of about 4.4 billion square feet annually, or about 1.3% a year of our existing building stock.

The median lifetime of commercial buildings is 70-75 years, but buildings with different uses have different survival rates. Many of the most abundant building types also have some of the longest life spans – which may be considered an obvious outcome. For instance, warehouses, office buildings, mercantile and schools represent 60% of the commercial building stock and have the longest survival rate, a median lifespan of 80 years. A 2004 survey conducted by the Athena Insti-tute determined that the most significant reasons why a building was demolished was related to pressure from

area development, the building’s poor physical condi-tion due to lack of maintenance and that the building was not considered suitable to the anticipated use. Per-haps one of the biggest challenges is our perception of the potential for a building to be reused and the effort that it may take.

There was a growing split between spending on new construction versus renovation. In 2006, prior to the economic downturn, spending on new construction outpaced spending on renovation nearly two to one. Remember that new construction represents less than 1.5% of total existing buildings square footage, yet we were spending twice as much on new construction an-nually. The downward slope of the real estate cycle in recent years has undoubtedly reversed that trend, and therein lies our opportunity. As we come out of the recession, we need to build additional momentum be-hind rehabilitation and retrofit. According to McGraw Hill Construction, in 2010 commercial building en-ergy efficient retrofits represented 66-75% of the $41

Existing buildings are demolished for a variety of reasons. yet their environmental value is not well understood.

CAPTION HERE

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RALPH DINOLA is principal at Green Building Services and board member of the International Living Future Institute.

According to national survey data, pre-1920s buildings, such as this traditional “Main Street” type of development, often use the same or less energy than buildings built today.

billion of major renovation spending and renovation represented 64% of all construction projects. By 2014 that share is anticipated to rise to 85-95% of $53 billion in renovation spending.

If scientific data showed that building reuse had sig-nificantly lower environmental impacts and resulted in dramatically lower near-term carbon emissions than new construction, could this evidence support the transformation of our building industry toward a prevailing culture of building reuse? A new study for the National Trust for Historic Preservation be-ing conducted by Cascadia Green Building Council, Green Building Services, Quantis and Skanska may soon provide such proof. The study, called Quanti-fying the Value of Building Reuse, utilizes life cycle assessment to explore the relative environmental impacts of building reuse compared to new con-struction for six distinct building types in four cities across the U.S. The purpose of the study is to pro-vide analysis and interpretation of the findings to

support building industry professionals and policy makers. As these key players continue to evolve their practices and codes toward deeper levels of sustain-ability and as they identify potential incentives and policies that monetize preferred environmental out-comes, they can engage the building industry with market-based mechanisms.

Part two of this article, published in a future edition Trim Tab, will provide an overview of the study results and analysis, along with a challenge to the building in-dustry to respond to this information with a new re-spect and fresh approach to our existing building stock.

Fall 201162

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Fall 201164

Before dawn on April 18, 1906, the ground lurched without warning along nearly 300 miles of California’s San Andreas Fault. For almost a minute, the San Fran-cisco Bay Area shook, and then for three days the city burned. Over 28,000 buildings were destroyed. That fall, Portland, Oregon mayor Harry Lane joined other municipal leaders in a call for fireproof schools.

His plea slowly gained traction. At a gathering four years later, Portland’s civic leaders insisted on “the sub-stitution of fireproof buildings for the (wood) frame af-fairs now put up by the Board of Education.”1

The call for fireproof schools unleashed a wave of school construction that joined cutting-edge school architecture with the progressive learning ideas of phi-

1. “School Buildings Are Called Unfit,” The Oregonian, July 31, 1910.

PUTTING EARTHQUAKE SAFETY ON THE GREEN SCHOOLS AGENDA

By EDWA RD WOL F A ND JUL E S BA IL E y

losopher John Dewey to create modern, safe learning environments for young Oregonians.

The result: beautiful brick and concrete structures that have withstood nearly a century of continuous use. Yet today those historic schools, designed and built with fire safety in mind, include buildings that some struc-tural engineers rank among the most dangerous public buildings in Oregon.

While conventional wisdom said that Oregonians needn’t be concerned about earthquakes, none of the school ar-chitects of the early 20th century could have known that earthquakes vastly more powerful than the Great San Francisco Earthquake had struck repeatedly throughout the region’s history, shaping the Pacific Northwest envi-ronment. The last great earthquake to shake Cascadia

CAsCAdiA’s seismiC CertAiNty:

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occurred on January 26, 1700, nearly a century and a half before the first settlers crossed the Oregon Trail.

Few schools designed and built in the Pacific North-west took earthquakes into account until the 1990s, when Oregon adopted its first seismic building codes. Since schools tend to be some of the longest-lived buildings in their communities, hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren in British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon attend classes in structures liable to col-lapse when a powerful earthquake strikes.

North of California, few architects or engineers took steps to mitigate a risk that most considered remote. Discovery of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a plate-boundary fault stretching 650 miles from Cape Men-docino to Vancouver Island, forced a re-examination of those long-held assumptions.

Using new methods to study seabed sediments, pa-leoseismologists have documented forty-one great earthquakes of magnitude 8 and larger along all or part of the Cascadia Subduction Zone during the last 10,000 years. Eighty percent of the intervals between known Cascadia quakes are shorter than the 311 years that have elapsed since the most recent temblor. Avail-able data suggest that the Cascadia fault may be “nine months pregnant and overdue,” says Yumei Wang, an earthquake risk engineer for the State of Oregon.

Earthquakes along Cascadia, a fault with a geology similar to the plate boundary off northern Honshu that generated the Great Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, can shake a region from Ashland to Van-couver with ground motions lasting as long as three to five minutes. The fault can generate earthquakes of

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Class in session at Rosa Parks Elementary School, Portland, Orgeon

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magnitude 9 and above, triggering landslides, severing pipelines, and toppling bridges and buildings.

Whatever else it may be, this precarious geology is also Cascadia’s deepest ecology. Great earthquakes and tsunamis have shaped the coastlines and land-scapes of the region since time immemorial. Native peoples of Vancouver Island, coastal Washington, and Oregon recount tectonic upheavals in their myths and stories. Great earthquakes are as native to this place as the spawning journeys of Chinook and Coho salmon.

Retail district north of Market Street devastated by the Great San Francisco Earthquake, April 1906.

The case for earthquake-resilient schools echoes the rationale for improving the energy efficiency of our schools. Aging public schools lack seismic fitness for the same reason they are energy inefficient: most were built decades before these aspects of our built environment were understood, during an era characterized by cheap energy and ignorance of the region’s true seismic risks.

Green schools advocates take justifiable pride in new schools like LEED Gold-certified Rosa Parks Elemen-tary in Portland’s Portsmouth neighborhood. The school, unique in the Portland district’s 85-school in-

of the 2,161 public school buildings in a state inventory comprising most of oregon’s 1,355 public elementary, middle, and high schools, 2,027 (94 percent) pre-date the state’s first seismic building codes.

PHOtOgrAPH COurtesy OF nAtIOnAL ArCHIves AnD reCOrDs ADmInIstrAtIOn

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ventory, represents an advance in the design of learn-ing environments as significant as the Progressive Era school architecture of the last century – and it com-plies with current seismic building codes. But given the longevity of school buildings and the challenges of financing school construction, opportunities to build schools like Rosa Parks Elementary will remain rare. The retrofit of existing schools will be the central challenge for green schools innovators in Portland, as elsewhere in Cascadia, for decades to come. Consider these numbers from Oregon:

Of the 2,161 public school buildings in a state inventory comprising most of Oregon’s 1,355 public elementary, middle, and high schools, 2,027 (94 percent) pre-date the state’s first seismic building codes. Eighty percent were constructed before the energy price spikes trig-gered by the 1973 OPEC oil embargo. Sixty percent are more than fifty years old. From an energy standpoint, these aging schools are sieves; from a seismic stand-point, many resemble a house of cards.

A statewide assessment of seismic risk2 found that 1,018 public school buildings, 47 percent of the total re-viewed, rated “High” or “Very High” risk of collapse in a strong earthquake. The study employed a Rapid Visual Screening methodology developed by FEMA

2 Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. 2007. Statewide Seismic Needs Assessment: Implementation of Oregon 2005 Senate Bill 2 Relating to Public Safety, Earthquakes, and Seismic Rehabilitation of Public Buildings. Open-File Report O-07-02. Salem, OR.

to prioritize structures that need thorough structural engineering check-ups.

By any measure, Oregon’s public schools are highly compromised. Over 300,000 Oregon children attend classes in buildings with a better than one-in-ten chance of collapse during the several minutes of shaking that a Cascadia earthquake is expected to generate. Many public schools rate 100 percent risk of collapse. How to come to grips with a challenge of this magnitude?

Enter the Cool Schools vision. Governor John Kitzha-ber campaigned for office on a pledge to bring energy efficiency to Oregon schools, a sweeping statewide vi-sion designed to save money, create jobs, and reduce Oregon’s dependence on fossil fuels. As schools low-ered utility and fuel bills, savings could be directed straight to classrooms or used to cover interest on funds borrowed to pay the upfront costs of insulation or high-efficiency lighting. Kitzhaber set a goal of bringing such efficiency improvements to at least 500 Oregon schools.

To achieve the Governor’s vision, a bipartisan group of lawmakers came together with school administrators, contractors, and energy professionals during the 2011 legislative session to craft the legislation that became Cool Schools, HB 2960. Facing a record state budget deficit, Cool Schools advocates knew that efficiency upgrades would have to be financed using only exist-ing funds and programs. Oregon’s Small-Scale Energy

ImAge © gAry WILsOn PHOtO/grAPHIC

Green features of LEED Gold-certified Rosa Parks Elementary School in Portland, Oregon include extensive daylighting, native and drought-tolerant landscaping, a high-efficiency gas boiler, and a 1.1-kw demonstration photovoltaic system.

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Loan Program (SELP) and public purpose charge rev-enue to schools provided a platform on which to build.

As the Cool Schools bill moved through committee, several legislators, led by Representatives Cliff Bentz (R-Ontario) and Deborah Boone (D-Cannon Beach) made integration of seismic and safety upgrades a pri-ority. While the Cool Schools bill provides no new funds for seismic upgrades, it does prioritize schools that also use a small state grant program for seismic retrofits. Including seismic resilience in the vision for Cool Schools made good policy and financial sense, and it attracted additional support. Oregon’s business community saw that both energy and seismic projects could create jobs, a top priority for the governor. On June 20, 2011, Cool Schools passed with unanimous support in both the House and Senate.

To make energy efficiency loans pencil out for older buildings, Cool Schools advocates favor diverting a por-tion of the “avoided cost” of energy savings to pay inter-est charges on loans for upgrades. Left uncorrected, the structural deficiencies of many Oregon schools would undermine this key Cool Schools assumption. A build-ing destroyed or rendered unsafe to enter by earthquake damage effectively ends the payback from energy sav-ings. Seismic upgrades to collapse-prone buildings pro-vide a kind of insurance policy for energy upgrades.

As every owner of a vintage home knows, taking steps to modernize an old structure can be costly. Com-bining seismic and energy projects offers a way to ac-complish both goals at least cost, using tax money ef-ficiently and saving scarce dollars that can be directed to classrooms.

Governor John Kitzhaber signs landmark Cool Schools legislation in the Oregon State Capitol, June 23, 2011.

ImAge © gOv. JOHn KItZHABer

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The nationwide green schools movement has much to teach the architects and engineers who will design and implement a new generation of seismic retrofits. Green features involving water, energy, and ventilation are commonly designed to be seen, even explored, by building occupants; a green school reveals its systems in order to teach by example. “Architecture as pedago-gy,” USGBC Center for Green Schools advisor David Orr calls this, adding that “buildings have their own hidden curriculum that teaches as effectively as any course taught in them.”3

In Cascadia, revealing and explaining seismic fea-tures of the built environment can teach in a similar way. Reinforced shear walls and visible bracing or

3 “Architecture as Pedagogy,” in David Orr, Earth in Mind (Washington, D.C. and Covelo, CA: Island Press, 1994).

Journeyman carpenter Tom White drills holes for anchor bolts to secure the roof in a seismic retrofit at East Portland’s Floyd Light Middle School, August 2011.

base isolation – seismic analogues of green roofs and bioswales – can serve to remind people in schools and other public buildings that shaking should be expected here. Schoolchildren who share awareness of seismic features with their parents can motivate safety investments at home that will also save lives. Structural features that confer resilience, like those that achieve sustainability goals, should be designed to engage and delight. In this way, the built environ-ment can foster a culture in which seismic resilience becomes second nature.

Such a culture does not yet exist in Cascadia, but there are signs of progress. British Columbia, several years into a 15-year overhaul of provincial schools, has spent more than half a billion dollars on seismic up-grades. Thanks to a decade-long effort by Senator Pe-

ImAge © sAm tenney/DAILy JOurnAL OF COmmerCe

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ter Courtney, Oregon has a small but promising grant program in place to retrofit public schools and emer-gency response facilities, and the state’s Cool Schools initiative may help grow interest in seismic projects and attract new funding.

What steps can green building professionals take to weave seismic resilience with sustainability? First, become educated on the region-wide risk of a Casca-dia earthquake and tsunami. The science is advanc-ing fast, the risk is large, and unlike many other natu-ral disasters, the region’s next earthquake will strike without warning.

Second, recognize that seismic upgrades provide a key piece of risk mitigation for energy-saving projects. Pru-dent approaches to risk can lower interest rates, mak-ing financing for resource efficiency improvements more affordable.

Third, advocate for public investment in seismic re-silience. Inspiring as a new green school can be, vast numbers of existing schools expected to serve for decades need public investment to perform safely. Architects and designers can help keep a spotlight on this risk over the many decades it will take to ad-dress it.

Schools are the f lagships and beacons of living com-munities. As f lagships, they supply neighborhood pride and identity. As beacons, they can set power-ful examples that resonate widely through the urban built environment. Green schools like Rosa Parks Elementary demonstrate that a new way of living in Cascadia is possible. Earthquake resilient schools can help impart the message that a new way of living in Cascadia, informed by the region’s deepest ecol-ogy, is necessary.

An example of seismic bracing

ImAge © utAH DIvIsIOn OF emergenCy mAnAgement (vIA FLICKr)

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JULES bAILEy is a consulting economist and a two-term State Representative from Oregon House District 42 (inner Eastside Portland). He led the unanimous passage of the landmark Cool Schools bill. He’s a member of the USGBC 50 for 50 Green Schools Caucus Advisory Committee.

EDwARD wOLF, a freelance writer and public school parent who writes fre-quently on seismic resilience, is a con-tributing author of Worldchanging 2.0: A User’s Guide to the Twenty-First Century (Abrams, 2011).

Portland’s Franklin High School, built in 1915, exemplifies “fireproof” Unreinforced Masonry construction in the Colonial Revival style of the early 20th Century.

Not even the oldest of Cascadia’s residents has expe-rienced a great earthquake and tsunami here. But the certainty of the next earthquake is no longer in doubt. To live gracefully and responsibly in Cascadia requires both sustainability and seismic resilience. Architects, designers, innovative engineers, and foresightful pub-lic officials must work together, as they did in crafting Oregon’s Cool Schools initiative, to forge the synthesis that Cascadia needs.

A century ago, school architects shocked by the Great San Francisco Earthquake responded with fireproof schools. Their design response was only half right. “Why is it that so much of our built environment is unfit for our most sensitive and vulnerable citizens?” Jason McLennan asked poignantly in the Summer 2011 issue of Trim Tab.4 Green schools advocates, architects

4 Jason F. McLennan, “Our Children’s Cities: The Logic & Beauty of a Child-Centered Civilization,” Trim Tab, Summer 2011.

and builders can answer his question by matching their deep understanding of the sustainability chal-lenge with a determination to address Cascadia’s seis-mic certainty.

ImAge © HOmesteAD ImAges

Fall 201172

uNderstANdiNg tHeliving Building challengesm

leaRNiNG ObjecTives:

• identify the key components of the living building challenge

• discuss the rationale for restorative design principles

• understand successful strategies for compliance with each performance area

• Recognize financial, regulatory and behavioral barriers and incentives related to high performance design

• describe the living building challenge community resources and certification process

in-hOuSe wOrKShOPSdesigNed for your Needs, deLivered to your offiCe.

This 6-hour workshop provides an in-depth introduction to the program, and also includes discussion of contextual information such as development patterns and density, and regulatory, financial, behavioral and technological barriers and incentives.

APProved for 6 AiA LeArNiNg

uNits ANd 6 gbCi CoNtiNuiNg

eduCAtioN Hours

For inquiries on pricing, further details and to schedule an in-House workshop, contact  education@living-future.org.

view other educational offerings online at www.ilbi.org/education.

Public wORKsHOPs cOMiNG TO a ciTy NeaR yOu:

Oct. 4 – Toronto, ON (at Greenbuild)Oct. 28 – Portland, ORNov. 3 – New york, Ny

Dec. 6 – sacramento, ca

73trim tab

TRANSFORMATIONAL THOUGHT

www.cascadiagbc.org/trimtab

CASCADIA’S MAGAZINE FOR TRANSFORMATIVE PEOPLE + DESIGN

TR ANSFORMATIONAL THOUGHT

The Essential Role of Women in a Restorative Future

The Living Building Challenge From Concept to Certification

TR ANSFORMATIONAL DESIGN

There’s Danger Underfoot. Where Do You Stand?

SARAH HARMER

TR ANSFORMATIONAL ACTION

TR ANSFORMATIONAL PEOPLE

issue 008cascadiagbc.org

WINTER 2011

ALSO:

The Tooth of the Lion: Beauty, Logic and the ILBI Logo

Removing the Roadblocks to Material Reuse

The Path to Net Zero: Oregon’s Story

How Do We Love More?

Leaping Ahead Without Leaving Others Behind

Book Review: Half the Sky

Trim Tab reaches an audience of

green professionals four times a year —

frEE!

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For more information, visit competitions.living-future.org.

Fall 201174

Moving UpstreaMMoving UpstreaM

Do you have a lead on cutting-edge green building progress in the region? Contact joanna-gangi@living-future.org and put “Moving Upstream News Lead” in the subject line.

making progress?

CasCadia Center for sustainable design and ConstruCtion begins

the new commercial office space broke ground recently

in seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. the project is

aiming for the living building Challenge certification

which make it anything but a typical office building.

sensitivity analysis: Comparing tHe impaCt of design, operation, and tenant beHavior on building energy performanCe

this study (from the new buildings institute) was

designed to try to quantify the degree to which

operational energy-use characteristics affect building

energy use and compare these variables to the

relative impact of what are typically considered

building design characteristics.

google is adopting greener Ways

google is beginning to build greener office spaces that

support the health and productivity of their employees.

and they use materials free of the living building

Challenge red list.

Clean Water, HealtHy sound

the international living future institute just released a

life cycle analysis of decentralized wastewater treatment

strategies.

tHe evolving green story of pHipps: a living building takes sHape

Watch the fascinating story of why and how the phipps

Conservancy in pittsburgh decided to pursue living

building Challenge certification for its Center for

sustainable landscapes.

13-year-old makes a solar breaktHrougH WitH fibonaCCi sequenCe

this is truly biomimicry at its best. solar panels that

mimic the leaves of trees – and invented by a 13 year

old. Who would of thought?

Customized support for

WHAT IS IT?This optional service is intended to improve a project’s potential to comply

with the Living Building Challenge requirements at a point in the design

process where adjustments are still possible.

HOW DOES IT WORK?The Institute spends a day with the team to learn how the project accounts

for each Imperative of the Living Building Challenge (an option for a virtual

meeting is also available). Following a review of the project documents, we

will issue a report outlining our guidance for the team to improve their ability

to succeed. It is possible to receive feedback on the Imperatives within a

single Petal, select Petals, or all seven Petals of the Living Building Challenge.

HOW DO I GET STARTED? For more information on fees and scheduling, email: certification@livingbuildingchallenge.org

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT GUIDANCE

WHAT IS IT?To steer teams toward innovative yet feasible solutions for their Living

Building Challenge projects, the Institute offers an optional service to lead the

kick-off meeting or “charrette” and help define fundamental, strategic goals.

HOW DOES IT WORK?The charrette should take place at the beginning of a project when the

potential to explore is at its fullest. The one-day meeting format focuses on

fostering an interactive dialogue that allows participants to consider each area

of impact. The two- or three-day format allows time for a deeper examination

of promising ideas. The Institute designs the agenda, facilitates the session,

and provides a follow-up summary.

CHARRETTE FACILITATION

Living Building ChallengeSM is a philosophy, advocacy tool, and certification program that addresses development at all scales. It is comprised of seven performance areas: Site, Water, Energy, Health, Materials, Equity, and Beauty.

At the International Living Future Institute, we believe that a compelling vision is a

fundamental retirement of reconciling humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

www.livingbuildingchallenge.org

Measure Twice, Cut Once.

The Early Bird Gets The Worm.

Designed for your needs, delivered to your office.

IN-HOUSE WORKSHOPS WHAT IS IT?Customized training is available as an optional service for organizations

and project teams to ensure that everyone has a shared fundamental

understanding of the Living Building Challenge or particular Petal area.

HOW DOES IT WORK?Whether there is a specific area of interest or a desire for a private

presentation of an established curriculum, the Institute can bring the

education to you. The most common workshop requested is a full-day

introduction to Living Building Challenge that also includes discussion of

contextual information such as development patterns and density, and

regulatory, financial, behavioral and technological barriers and incentives.

EvENT CalENDar oCtober – deCember 2011

FOR cOMPleTe deTails, Please visiT www.cascadiaGbc.ORG/caleNdaR

events And Workshops Presented By Or In Partnership With the International Living Future Institute

uPdate On ecOlOgY’S draft StOrmwater Permit ruleSseattle, wA – 10/04

leed 201: cOre cOncePtS & StrategieS wOrKShOPAnchorage, Ak – 10/05

Bd+c 301: imPlementing the BuildingdeSign + cOnStructiOn leed rating SYStemAnchorage, Ak – 10/06

tranSfOrmatiOnal lecture SerieS featuring ralPh dinOla: the BuSineSS caSe fOr greenvictoria, bC - 10/11

tranSfOrmatiOnal lecture SerieS featuring dave ramSlie: cOnnecting citieS with PeOPlespokane, wA – 10/12

bellingham, wA – 10/13

tranSfOrmatiOnal lecture SerieS featuring YancY wright: the BuSineSS caSe fOr greenbend, or – 10/12

klamath falls, or – 10/13

leed canada fOr new cOnStructiOn: technical review 2009vancouver, bC – 10/18

leed canada fOr exiSting BuildingS: OPeratiOnS and maintenance: technical reviewvancouver, bC – 10/18

leed fOr hOmeS 301: imPlementing the leed fOr hOmeS rating SYStemseattle, wA – 10/21

green aSSOciate StudY cOurSevancouver, CA – 10/26 – 10/27

net ZerO Building envelOPe deSigntacoma, wA – 10/28

workshops, lectures + other opportunities throughout the cascadia bioregion and beyond.

leed canada fOr new cOnStructiOn: technical review 2009victoria, bC – 11/01 – 11/02

tranSfOrmatiOnal lecture SerieS featuring deniS haYeS: the green BuBBlePortland, or – 11/01

tranSfOrmatiOnal lecture SerieS featuring rOBert cOStanZa: ecOlOgical ecOnOmieSseattle, wA – 11/02

vancouver, bC – 11/03

underStanding the living Building challenge wOrKShOP

New york City, Ny – 11/03

green aSSOciate StudY cOurSevictoria, bC – 11/09-11/10

tranSfOrmatiOnal lecture SerieS featuring Bert gregOrYkelowna, bC – 11/09

whY StOrYtelling iS the “x” factOr in harneSSing YOur SuStainaBilitY effOrtSonline – 11/17

tranSfOrmatiOnal lecture SerieS featuring StePhen Kellert + film Screening - BiOPhilic deSign: the architecture Of life

vancouver, bC – 12/01

Other events

victOria SuStainaBilitY SYmPOSiumvictoria, bC – 10/11

whidBeY iSland BiOneerS 2011Clinton, wA – 10/14 – 10/16

ecOdiStrictS Summit

Portland, or – 10/26 – 10/28

OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER

RainwateR HaRvesting in King County is BeComing a Reality 

Homeowners in King County look to take more steps down the path of sustainability through the use of rainwater harvesting systems as a sole source for potable water.

tHe PatH of Coal to asia

As major coal companies are looking to expand their monopolies throughout Washington, more and more residents affected by the industry’s harmful transportation tactics are fighting back. Learn how you can help!

wHat Does a new eneRgy eRa looK liKe? 

“Learn why moving from today’s fossil fuel reality to a new energy future powered by efficiency and renewables makes sense and makes money.” View the Reinventing Fire infographic from the Rocky Mountain Institute to discover the pathways to put the idea into action.

3 of tHe 13 “Best Bills of 2011” aRe in oRegon

Many new policies that have been passed this year certainly do not seem very progressive or even very positive. This is a look at 13 state bills that could possibly help turn the ship…and 3 of them are in Oregon.

taR-sanDs oil PiPeline PRotests

Recently there have been international protests about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, for Canada to the Gulf Coast. Where do you stand on the issue?

fwD: ReaD tHis!

CliCK

CliCK

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fwD: ReaD tHis!If you have something that should be included here please send it to us at trimtab@living-future.org.

CliCK

Fall 201178

BecOme an induStrY Partner

sPoNsorsHiP

to learn more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Sarah costello via email at sarah.costello@living-future.org or by phone at 503.228.5533.

Partner with uS and…

• Join a network of the most influential

green building thinkers and practitioners

• announce yourself as an industry leader

• Support locally relevant and globally

inspired training, lectures, programs and

standards

79trim tab

Start the year off on the right path.

BECOME AcAScADIA MEMbER!Stand with the bioregion’s leading green build-ing thinkers and practioners. Make an invest-ment in your green building community and join Cascadia today.

• 50% of membership dollars directly sup-port your local branch*

• receive discounts on all Cascadia events, including Living Future

• earn up to 14 LeeD Ce hours, at no extra charge

• 100% of your membership contribution is tax deductible in the us**

*In the United States, Cascadia is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit; membership fees qualify as charitable contributions. In Canada, Cascadia is pursuing charitable status. Consult with your tax profes-sional to determine how you can benefit.

**Branches will receive 50% of net revenue from all annually renewable memberships. Lifetime memberships are not included in this policy.

We make buildings smarter and more energy-efficient. In the process,

we reshape the world around us.

This is Energy for Change™

peci.org

peci-trimtab-ad-FINAL.indd 1 9/20/2011 12:36:13 PMNEW LEADING-EDGE TRAINING!

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Advanced Green Roof Maintenance, Introduction to Rooftop Urban Agriculture, Integrated Water

Management for Buildings and Sites, and Green Walls 101 (2nd ed.) manuals are now on sale for

$175 ea. Take the online courses online for $125 until Oct. 31st and receive the manual for $95 plus shipping!

For online courses go to:

To purchase manuals go to:

www.greeninfrastructurestore.com

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities: www.greenroofs.org

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TrimTab 1-4 Page Aug.2011.pdf 8/18/2011 4:56:50 PM

TRANSFORMATIONAL THOUGHTFORwARD TO FRIENDS:

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ADVERTISE:

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