A rendering of the future Bloomingdale Trail.

Chicago is on the verge of something big. The Windy City is working hard to redefine itself into an urban oasis. Ideas for parks and green areas are popping up left and right. Two that stand out are Bloomingdale Trail and Northerly Island Park. Both projects focus on reusing previously vacated civic space; Bloomingdale Trail will take over a former rail line, while Northerly Island Park reclaims a bygone airstrip on Lake Michigan. These projects  are indicative of a larger movement that we are noticing in cities across the globe to convert underused areas into functional destinations that people will revitalize urban centers.

The Bloomingdale Trail before improvements.

The elevated Bloomingdale Line served as an artery for the industries and manufacturers in Chicago during its peak use, distributing locally made products to the rest of the country and the world. The line’s use began to decline as the shape of Chicago manufacturing changed, and it dropped significantly in the late 1980s and 1990s. The line went dormant for a decade, and people of the surrounding neighborhoods began to support the idea of using it as public open space. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates was chosen to lead the design of the park. In their design, MVVA focused on using the corridor as an active space, connecting different neighborhoods together. They envisioned people using the trail for their daily commutes, biking or walking along it to the different rail lines the trail intersects. In keeping with this connection theme, MVVA allowed the trail to intersect with other parks along its path, providing a seamless transition in and out of the different neighborhoods. The parks serve as the main entrances to the trail, emphasizing the bond between the green areas. The most important aspect of the Bloomingdale Trail is its community support. People from neighborhoods all along the 2.7 miles of the trail offered their input at community meetings and events. MVVA took this advice and incorporated it into their plan, making Bloomingdale Trail truly a community project.

Northerly Island after Meigs Field closed.

Northerly Island Park began as a vision in architect and urban planner Daniel Burham’s mind. He saw the park as the first in a series of manmade islands stretching along the coastline of Lake Michigan. The park was used as a site for the World’s Fair in 1933-34, and had trails, green space, and a beach. However this publicly accessible space was converted to an airstrip in 1947, called Meigs Field.  The air strip continued to operate until 2003, when, in an intriguing twist of events, the then mayor shut it down and ordered the runways to be torn out. The space went mostly unused until 2010, when the Chicago Parks District released its Framework Plan for the island. The Parks District worked with JJR Landscape Architecture, Studio Gang Architects, and other organizations on the creation of the Framework Plan, laying out a strategy to convert the land back to a park over the next 30 years. The plan calls for many different zones on the island.The zones transition from active to passive and from urban to natural as one moves south away from the entry point and towards the farther reaches of the island. The park incorporates things like an outdoor music venue, camping areas, bird watching blinds, and a lagoon where swimmers and divers can explore the waters of Lake Michigan.

A rendering of Northerly Island Park.

These urban renewal projects are inspiring to us for their sustainable aspects of reclaiming brownfield sites and also for the big impact they can have by bringing dense urban populations together, ease transit and support wildlife. Over the next year we will continue to highlight urban cities and projects like these that we find inspiring. Contact us at info@greenarchitecturenotes.com if you know of a project that you’d like to nominate for a future article.

Caterpillar House by Feldman Architecture earned LEED Platinum certification in the LEED for Homes program in 2011. Photo by Joe Fletcher.

At Feldman Architecture, we have been fortunate to have clients coming the project kick-off meeting with a list of ‘green goals’ in mind. Today, with so much being published about sustainable design, the ideas that green design can be beautifully integrated into a project and promote technologies that help rather than harm the environment are widely disseminated.

One of the champions in the promotion of green design has been the United States Green Building Council, USGBC, with its well-known LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, program. Buildings which have earned the LEED designation are known to have met and exceeded the standards of the local, state and federal requirements for green design. Here in California, our Title 24 and local requirements, some of which even require that projects meet the Green Point Rating system administered by BuildItGreen, tend to be quite progressive in terms of protecting the environment, but LEED tends to push the green building practice steps further.

As jurisdictions get more and more attuned to green building, a common question from clients is, “Why should I complete LEED certification?” There are many tangible benefits in pursuing LEED certification, including but not limited to bringing a thorough process to evaluating and pushing a green design agenda. Back in 2008, the USGBC began the LEED for Homes program and we began our first quest for certification on the Caterpillar house. The client for the Caterpillar house wanted to create something of a case study of green building and pursuing LEED, eventually leading to LEED Platinum certification, made sense as we were held to LEED’s intense standards. LEED certification does come at a cost, requiring additional services by the architect and general contractor in terms of paperwork, research, calculations, etc., which means we wouldn’t suggest pursuing LEED if the clients aren’t committed to issues of sustainability. On the downside, the considerable paperwork, extra research, and additional coordination of consultants must all be factored into the decision to pursue LEED.

As the USGBC has been a marketing juggernaut in green building, I took a look at the LEED for Homes Overview on their website and generally agree with all of the main points of ‘Why LEED for Homes.’ These include savings in energy, water and therefore money; providing “a healthy environment for families;” increasing the value of the home; and providing a “performance test and green measures which are third party verified.” As the architect on a LEED project, we are forced to take a wider and more thorough look at different areas of sustainable design. We are also held to follow-through with our early project commitments to green design and to help keep our clients, vendors and builders committed. Also, with the Caterpillar house, we received considerable good will from building departments, home-owners associations, and from the press because of our project was the first LEED Platinum project in the area.

Caterpillar House great room by Feldman Architecture. Photo by Joe Fletcher.

From the homeowner’s perspective, a LEED certified project is one where all the materials, products and environmental strategies were a little more carefully considered, specified, installed, calibrated and tested. On any LEED project, the general contractor’s role is essential as they are responsible for a fair amount of documentation. This can be very difficult for a small contractor without much front office support. And, obviously, the more the builder is familiar with sustainable products and building techniques the easier the process is for everyone.

There’s a bit of a steep learning curve for LEED checklists, so the more architects and builders go through the process the easier it becomes. I also think that the more architects and builders share what they learn with each other, and the more we embrace the different certification programs, the easier it will be for all of us. There are those who don’t want to share what they’ve learned with those they view as their competition. I find this amazing. If we are truly concerned with making a dent in curbing the devastating effects of the building industry, then we really should be doing everything we can to help every building project move as much as possible towards sustainability. And if we are not really committed to this goal, then participating in the LEED certification process probably doesn’t make much sense to begin with!

Historic photo of old growth Bald Cypress grove in Florida.

Sinker Cypress is one of the most stunning and beautiful woods that we at Arc Wood & Timbers have the honor to reclaim and custom mill for our clients. Its rich color ranges from deep honeycomb gold to dark olive green depending on the water regions where the logs are found. Sinker Cypress (also known as Deadhead Cypress, Heart Cypress, or River Recovered Cypress) describes harvested trees that sank as they floated down rivers in log rafts to the nearest sawmill. Historians estimate that anywhere from 10% to 20% of the logged virgin growth Bald Cypress trees met this watery fate. Most of the Sinker Cypress logs that we salvage from the southeastern region of North America have been under water for the past 80 to 130 years. Radiocarbon studies have dated Sinker Cypress logs as old as 30,000 years. These ancient logs likely blew down millenniums ago in gale force hurricanes. This incredible underwater preservation is a testament to the durability and resiliency of this unique lumber. The heartwood of Sinker Cypress contains Cypressene oil. The highest concentrations of Cypressene are found in the old growth Sinker Cypress logs. This oil creates a natural preservative making Sinker Cypress one of the most rot- and insect resistant woods in the world.

Cypress trees were girdled or “ringed” 1 year in advance of logging to drain the water and kill the tree on the stump. This would reduce the weight of the tree so that they would float down the rivers to the mill.

In the words of one of the river loggers we work with, “This stuff doesn’t grow on trees anymore.” And he’s absolutely right. The color and density of grain found in the heartwood of Sinker Cypress cannot be replicated from the younger 2nd or 3rd growth Bald Cypress trees currently harvested in the United States today. As Sinker Cypress logs lay on the swamp and riverbed floors, the wood fiber starts to absorb the minerals and tannins found in the surrounding water to create breathtaking colors. Muddy river bottoms can lend to hues of olive green, while sandy bottoms of water can result in deep, rich reds and golds. Sinker Cypress logs can have 40 to 50 growth rings per inch, creating an extremely dense grain. Many of these old-growth trees were 1,000 to 1,800 years old before they were harvested. This translates to an unparalleled stability in the wood and an appearance that is one-of-a-kind.

110’ long sinker cypress log milled for an Arc Wood & Timbers project in 2013.

Sinker Cypress is an excellent option for interior paneling and ceiling decking, as well as for exterior siding, soffit, trim, doors and windows. It can also be structurally graded for rafters, beam and post applications. The clear “select” grade of Sinker Cypress is ideal for contemporary modern home designs. The #1 or #2 Common grades, which can include knots and light peck, are suitable for more rustic, “mountain” style homes. Highlights of the Sinker Cypress include: • Deep, rich colors ranging from golden honeycomb to dark olive green resulting from underwater aging over the past century. • Clear Vertical Grain “select” grade material is ideal for contemporary modern home interiors and exteriors. • Rich in history and character.

Vertical Grain select boards at the mill highlighting the olive and golden hues found in Sinker Cypress.

A rare grade of Sinker Cypress, called Pecky Cypress, is caused by a fungus while the tree is still alive. This rare fungus acts as an artisan sculptor by producing narrow oval shaped carvings within the tree’s growth rings while it’s growing. When these Pecky Cypress logs are milled, the peck within the wood fiber creates naturally distressed looking lumber. The fungus disappears once the trees are harvested, leaving behind only its life’s work sculpted into the wood. Pecky Cypress produces paneling and ceiling decking for beautifully rustic interior finishes.

Pecky Cypress Wall Paneling

We are continually surprised and captivated by the beauty of this wood and how nature takes its course to preserve and enhance the character and color of Sinker Cypress over time. With every log that we split open, we never know exactly what we are going to find inside as far as grain & color. It’s like unwrapping a present not knowing what you are going to find inside. We find more often than not that our clients choose to finish their Sinker Cypress material with a clear stain or sealer to simply enhance the natural colors of the material. We hope you love Sinker Cypress as much as we do.

Sinker Cypress used for exterior shiplap siding for an Arc Wood & Timbers project in Hawaii.

A native to Northern California, Lance Karnan’s interest in wood started early while working as an apprentice on his Dad’s commercial and residential construction projects.  After graduating from the University of San Diego with a degree in business and marketing, he moved to San Francisco.  For the next 10 years, Lance worked for both Oracle Corporation and Exodus Communications in contract, sales and management roles.  In 2003, Lance left the high-tech world to travel.  During his year abroad, he committed to pursuing a livelihood he could be passionate about.   Lance wanted to grow a company that made something tangible that could be appreciated from the moment it was delivered to the client. When he returned home, he reunited with his close childhood friend David Ferst to rebuild Arc Wood & Timbers.  Lance continues to live in San Francisco with his wife Tammy and their son Luke.  Always on the lookout for rare and cool woods, Lance also enjoys skiing, golfing, mountain biking and paddle boarding.

It looks like Leslie’s tips on starting your own edible garden have garnered some serious attention. In the April 2013 issue of Sunset, one of Leslie’s projects is featured as one of ten ways to get planting this spring. You can get a taste of the article on their website, but make sure to check out the magazine for the full article.

]]> http://greenarchitecturenotes.com/2013/03/follow-up-the-new-edible-landscape/feed/ 0 http://greenarchitecturenotes.com/2013/03/home-economics-the-urban-partnership-at-the-bullitt-center/ http://greenarchitecturenotes.com/2013/03/home-economics-the-urban-partnership-at-the-bullitt-center/#comments Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:12:36 +0000 Robert Pena http://greenarchitecturenotes.com/?p=2906 The 1987 United Nations report “Our Common Future,” defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Since then the design community has debated the meanings and applicability of sustainability and corollary terms such as sustainable design, green architecture and [...]]]>

The 1987 United Nations report “Our Common Future,” defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Since then the design community has debated the meanings and applicability of sustainability and corollary terms such as sustainable design, green architecture and high performance buildings. Sim Van der Ryn offers a definition for ecological design as “any form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impact by integrating itself with living processes.” What these terms share is the hope for creation of a built environment that might lead to a kind of balance and stability in a world where we have very little of either.

However defined, the sustainability movement is as broad and varied as the people and interests grappling with the issues of human and environmental health at many levels. At one end of the spectrum it is the realm of global policy makers grappling with agreements between nations to limit carbon emissions. At the other end are neighborhood organizers committed to improving their communities and indigenous peoples preserving vital connections between culture and place.

European planners, designers and policy makers have long drawn a clear distinction between those actions aimed at environmentally sound design on a local level and those aimed at environmentally sound planning and policies on a global scale. Urban Ecology is the designation for efforts made to carry out all environmental tasks in one locality. Environmental Management describes efforts that focus on one environmental task in all localities.

Urban ecology is directed at local problem solving on the scale of a building, a neighborhood, and even a city. It operates in the realms of energy, water and resource use, waste reduction, and recycling. The individuals most directly involved in the issue at hand aim their actions at problem resolution. The direction of these actions is wholly dependent upon the attitudes of these inhabitants, the visibility of the problem, and clarity of solutions to the issue. The technology applied in service of these solutions is generally people friendly and involves shorting streams of energy and material flows.

The framework of urban ecology draws inspiration from natural systems, and perhaps more directly, from the ecology of agricultural cultures in which human settlements have achieved a harmonious and long-term relationship with the land, environmental forces, and biotic communities. In traditional agricultural societies, these flows were easy to track because they involved localized, relatively short streams of materials and nutrients. Food was grown locally; services and dry goods came for the most part from the immediate region, produced with local knowledge and local labor.

Modern society in contrast has very long flows of energy and matter. Goods, services and even basic foods originate from around the globe. Along with these stretched energy and material flows comes a scale of mineral extraction and agricultural production that is vastly larger, and more difficult to repair or sustain than when these occurred at smaller scales, closer to home. Water supply and waste recycling have achieved a vastly larger scale and length, where water in many parts of the world is piped from distant water sheds and wastes are widely dispersed far from their origin. These long energy and matter flows make it very difficult to account for the environmental costs of our actions and the responsible management of our home economics.

The Bullitt Center was conceived as both an exemplar of, and experiment in, urban ecology. Nearing completion in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, the Bullitt Center is a 50,000 SF commercial office building that seeks to address all of its environmental tasks in one locality. The building harvests from the sun as much energy every year as it uses for all purposes, which is a significant feat for a 6-story building in cloudy Seattle. Rainwater that lands on its roof is collected, stored, and used for drinking and washing. Used water is treated through a constructed wetland on a third floor terrace where some evaporates and the rest is returned to the groundwater through rain gardens along the walkways in front of the building. Surplus rainwater in the winter is also returned to the groundwater rather than contributing to Seattle’s overburdened combined storm sewer system. Composting toilets virtually eliminate water demand for flushing, converting human waste into food for other organisms. The building is largely constructed with regionally sourced materials and it contains no toxic substances. The environmental impact of the materials that went in to the building have been minimized by careful sourcing of regionally harvested and manufactured materials, and the embodied energy will be accounted for and offsets applied in order to balance, as much as currently possibly, the ledger of this building’s “home economics.”

The writer and farmer Wendell Berry reminds us that the good work of conservation and environmental stewardship begins and ends at home. We can “think globally,” but the real work achieving an appropriate balance between our needs as humans to draw sustenance and resources from the world while sustaining the health and productivity of the land and waters, happens in our actions close to home. In this context it’s useful to remember that the roots of the words economics and ecology both come from the Greek “oikos” or “house.” Eco-nomia is the counting or ledger of the Earth household; eco-logia is the logical organization of the Earth household. Home economics extends responsibility to the household for its use of resources and impact on the environment. It is the work of urban ecologists to facilitate this accounting, making it direct, visible, and achievable. For architects, urban ecology places the individual building in the focus of environmental consideration.

The Urban Ecology Partnership (UEP), an initiative of the University of Washington’s Integrated Design Lab, will serve as the project’s environmental accountants to track and manage the Bullitt Center’s home economics. It will coalesce and broadcast the lessons learned from monitoring its vital signs. The UEP will operate a public education center where today’s thought leaders and tomorrow’s designers, planners, developers, policy makers and financiers will convene to learn and share the knowledge needed to create the next generation of super high-performance buildings, healthy neighborhoods, and sustainable cities. An exhibition will illustrate how the building works and describe the Bullitt Center’s origins, purpose, design and construction. Tours will show the building and its systems in operation, and a building dashboard will display its vital signs and operational performance. The building will be a living laboratory used by student and faculty researchers to investigate an array of green building subjects from energy use behavior to predictive model control.

An exemplar of urban ecology, the Bullitt Center will be a demonstration of how a beautiful, comfortable, and healthy work environment, designed to address all environmental tasks in one locality, makes it easy for its inhabitants to balance their household ledger and practice good home economics.

Rob Peña is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington where he teaches architectural design and building science and ecological design. As a building performance consultant with the UW Integrated Design Lab, Rob works regionally with architects on the development of high performance and net-zero energy buildings. He is currently working on a book about the design and construction of the Bullitt Center.

Schendler touches on how tough it can be to get people working towards sustainability. He cites many of the roadblocks he has come up against as examples of the hardships everyone working in the field will face. One is the issue of return on investment; the higher-ups don’t want to pay for sustainable products because it cuts down on immediate profit. Another is getting the ‘grunts’, as Schendler calls the people actually working with the products and using them every day, on board with new products, even though they have become accustomed to the old, non-sustainable ones. The biggest piece of advice he gives is to become a grunt yourself, get down and dirty, and work towards the future, one step at a time.

Schendler brings up some interesting points in his chapter on “Green Buildings”. Again, speaking through his experiences at Aspen, Schendler discusses the challenges of building green, citing the difficulty to change an ideology in a short span of time, the higher, upfront cost of sustainable building practices, and the issues he has with the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program. LEED, Schendler argues, has been successful thus far as a program to get people excited about building green and as a standard to which buildings need to perform  in order to be considered “green”. The issues Schendler has with the program are threefold: “first, it’s damn hard to get certified. Second, LEED doesn’t emphasize energy enough. And third, LEED is fundamentally a certification system but gets treated as a guide to green building” (180). The third point is the one that I found most interesting. Schendler argues that builders and designers are designing to get LEED points, not designing green buildings, which defeats the point of the whole program. Schendler makes sure to point out that the USGBC as administrators of LEED is working to make it better and he still encourages people to make use of the system.

Getting Green Done is an interesting read, mixing the facts of the science with amusing anecdotes about Schendler’s experiences. Definitely worth checking out.

Nick Riker currently works at Feldman Architecture after graduating from Bowdoin College with a major in Visual Art.

The recent past is full of paradigms that are obsolete, including the idea that residential photovoltaic solar arrays are extremely expensive systems to purchase install, and maintain. Gone are the days when the photovoltaic array had a lower return on investment than a thermal hot water system. The concept of a “payback period”? That is so 2005. Welcome to the current paradigm: Solar Services. Putting solar PV panels on your roof has never been easier or more affordable.

From alternative structural material to hanging gardens, there are lots of different ways to go green with your walls. There are many ways to make sustainable materials work to your advantage, as this project by students at the Rural Studio illustrates. They used tires filled with soil, then covered them in stucco to create the base of this beautiful chapel in Sawyerville, Alabama.

Here are some other examples of alternative materials or sustainable wall coverings.

Joy Charbonneau‘s Desert Dwelling employs rocks found around the site to create the gabion walls of her shelter in the Arizona desert. Charbonnaeu uses the gabion walls to create a fluid connection between outdoor and indoor space.

Nader Kahlili uses sandbags and barbed wire to create his “superadobe” structures, which he insists are disaster-resistant, cheaply and quickly built, and very adaptable in all sort of climates.

Rural Studio‘s Corrugated Cardboard Pod was originally built as an experiment to see if corrugated cardboard bales would hold up as a structural material and they were very successful.

Eco-Tec’s Ecoparque El Zamoraro is the first house in the world made with PET bottles without using cement in the walls.

Maruja Fuentes’s wall tiles, made from all recycled material, are an easy way to install a living wall in your home, allowing you to customize how they look and the pattern they create.

Solar Ivy is a great alternative to full photovoltaic panels that are fully customizable to your needs and can be placed nearly anywhere.

Blair McCary addresses the crowd at SXSW Eco. Bill Reed and Paula Vaughan are seated.

This post was originally published at Dwell.com and has been reprinted with permission.

By Addie Broyles

Bill Reed helped develop the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, but at a panel during the South by Southwest Eco conference, he explains why it’s time to move on.

“LEED is a great starting point. It’s the reason we’re able to be in this room and have a common language,” he says. “But it was never meant to be used as a measuring stick.” Reed, along with Atlanta-based architect Paula Vaughan and Vancouver engineer Blair McCarry, both of Perkins + Will, argue for a more holistic approach to “sustainable design” in a panel called “Beyond LEED: Living Buildings and the 2030 Challenge” at SXSW Eco, an offshoot of the sprawling Austin festival that takes place every March.

Even with all this talk of “sustainability,” we’re not doing a very good job of creating a culture that produces more energy and resources than it consumes, Reed says. “Like Bill McDonough said, sustainability is a slower way to die.” We are still creating buildings that are just above what the law requires, Reed says, and even if we achieve a zero carbon footprint, “zero is not sustainable.”

We can’t just look at building and infrastructure, Reed says. We have to be actively regenerating the living systems in which we subsist. The first place to start is semantics. “We have to think beyond ‘the environment.’ ‘The environment’ is what’s beyond us. ‘Ecology’ includes us.”

Reed cites an example of a cooperatively owned grocery store he worked with in Vermont: Instead of simply designing a building that would score high on the LEED scale, he helped them look at the needs of the ecosystem of the area, which weren’t just limited to a place to buy food. Because the town was surrounded by abandoned farms whose soil was so depleted that it wasn’t suitable for growing, Reed and his Integrative Design Collaborative recommended adding an agriculture and soil center to help members of the community grow their own food in their yards and expand the daycare center so shoppers and employees’ children could play while they shopped or worked.

Reed continues to explain his perspective. Just as each of us is bigger than the sum of our body parts, a building or even a community isn’t defined by each of the individual pieces, he says. We can’t think of humans and nature as being two opposite forces. Humans are nature, not merely coexisting with nature. An urban neighborhood is its own ecosystem, and we need to be designing our lifestyle to support that ecosystem. “Humans can reconcile with nature, not compromise.”

Perkins + Will’s headquarters in Atlanta serves as a case study in the Beyond LEED: Living Buildings and the 2030 Challenge” at SXSW Eco.

Both Vaughan and McCarry show off examples of buildings they’ve worked on that are part of their ecosystem, not merely respectful of it. McCarry starts with the VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre in Vancouver, which is a candidate for the International Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge.The sewage is treated on site and is then used to irrigate the gardens. The panels that make up the flower petal-inspired roof were prefabricated, saving energy and untold damage to the gardens that would have occurred if the construction would have had to take place onsite. Instead of relying on concrete or steel, they used mostly wood, a plentiful renewable resource in this part of North America. A glass skylight tower pulls air through the building, reducing the need for additional ventilation, and excess heat collected from the solar panels is stored in reserves underground.They aren’t just using less energy than they were before; the building generates more energy than it can use, so the excess is exported to an adjacent building. They are saving their client money that they’d have otherwise spent on utilities, but the innovative design and striking architecture are drawing thousands of people to the gardens who might not have come otherwise, McCarry says. “You have to fit (this kind of design) to the business of your client and make their life a lot better, not just get another plaque on the wall,” he adds.

The VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre.

At Perkins + Will’s headquarters on Peachtree Street in Atlanta (named one of the top 10 green buildings of 2012), Vaughan’s team needed to renovate their own 1980s, concrete building, and they used the 2030 Challenge to help set their goal to have a carbon neutral building by 2030.

One of the first things to go was a traffic circle that faced a pedestrian-heavy street. “We wanted to reweave the traffic fabric,” Vaughan says. The rerouted traffic to the side of the building and created an open street-level terrace that anyone could enjoy. They added fixed louvers and a retractable awning to the all-glass, west-facing facade.

Vaughan says that one of the hardest parts about the project was learning how to “design energy.” They installed radiant heating and cooling throughout the building and set up microturbines on the roof. Because the microturbines created excess heat, they found a way to collect that energy and use it heat the water for the building.

At the end of the session, Reed brings the conversation back to the big picture. “Even if the companies step up, that isn’t enough,” he says. “What has to change is our culture. It’s not just a building; it’s an opportunity. We affect the world through what we eat and where we live, and farming and building practices are the biggest influences on the planet.”

Read more at Dwell.com.

Addie Broyles is a writer based in Austin, Texas. As the food writer for the Austin American-Statesman, she writes a weekly column and blog called Relish Austin and her stories usually appear in the Wednesday print section of the newspaper. When she’s not wrangling backyard chickens or her two young sons, the Ozarks native and University of Missouri graduate writes about women and food at TheFeministKitchen.com and is the advisory council chair of the Austin Food Blogger Alliance. In 2011, Addie was named by Tribeza magazine as one of the top 10 Austinites to watch and was voted the top food writer in the city by the Austin Chronicle. She recently won the National Headliner Award for special or feature column on one subject by an individual.