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Dirty Pretty Things

As a kid I thought it would be cool to follow in my dad's footsteps and become an architect. I designed my first house about age 12, using one of his linoleum samples to create a round white house with an interior courtyard. My dad didn't think much of it--"What, are you going to have pie-shaped rooms?" he asked. Things continued downhill after that. At 15 I failed the aptitude test in spatial relations. The next year I had an impossible time trying to lay out yearbook pages, and by 17 I put my design aspirations to rest.

The National Association of Home Builders recently chose this year's Green Building Award Winners. (Click here to see last year's winners.) Maybe some of their creators should have followed my lead. Without embarrassing any single design firm too much--I'm sure they might be very nice people--let's just say a lot of them mix elements of Levittown, New York and Tony Soprano's house in the ways of many a woefully familiar subdivision.

Seems what's driving green building has little to do with aesthetics and design principles and a lot to do with R-values. You take your CAD architectural design software, plug in some foam insulation, Energy Star windows, and bamboo floors, and poof: green design.

As Michigan architect and blogger Philip Proefrock puts it,"Too often, green is being used as the determining factor in a project in place of good design."

If you're into triangles, check out the Slate discussion on the problem with solar home design by one of my heroes, architect / historian / writer Witold Rybczynski: "They tended to resemble wedges of cheese. That's what happens when a single factor--how you heat a building--is given precedence over all the rest."

I can't believe it has to be that way. One of last year's runners-up caught my eye: a place called the Berry Residence by Chandler Design-Build in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. There's a place a person could actually enjoy living in. The funny thing is, when I called the builder, Michael Chandler (his wife Beth Williams is the designer), he told me that yes, one of their projects was a finalist, but not this one. They didn't even enter the Berry Residence, but it seemed to have caught the eye of somebody at NAHB. Chandler thinks the BerryResidence is more interesting than the actual finalist, so he left it as is.

He also directed me to their 2006 runner-up, the Vidra-Moody house. Not only is it a fabulous-looking place, but I love what he writes about their approach. "Many of the ‘demonstration green' homes we are seeing are in the 200-dollar-per-square-foot range and cost $800,000 to well over a million dollars to house a single family. It is hard for me to reconcile the word ‘sustainable' with a home that costs a quarter million dollars per occupant. This house was built at a price that is affordable for a young family with two kids that just needed a roof over their head that suited their lifestyle and fit their values. What this house really represents is an attempt to maximize green for your green."

Beautiful, green and on a budget: my kind of place.

© The Green Guide, 2008

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