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Book burning

by any other name. A friend of mine wrote this article about another one of those, shall we say, constructive dilemmas: build a new-fangled structure in a newish city, wait thirty years until they want something else cutting edge (ouch!) and new, then watch as they decide what to do about the old building. In this case the old building is the final structure of Modernist master Marcel Breuer. Take it, JL:

Breuer’s design sits closely surrounded by other buildings where Peachtree Street, a principal artery, touches a remaining patch of narrow, 19th-century street grid, about a half mile southeast of the proposed Centennial Olympic Park site. If the building could be viewed whole, from a greater distance, its sculptural power might be more affecting. As it is, Pitts and others don’t get it. “From a design point of view, it probably means a lot to those in the field, but for the average citizen who sees it, it’s just not there,” he says. “It’s dark, it’s not friendly, it’s not inviting.” Isabelle Hyman, a Breuer scholar at New York University, acknowledges that “the concrete architecture of that period is disdained right now. It’s massive, heavy, bulky, weighty, and it’s not appreciated.” Still, she insists, “You just don’t get rid of a good building by a good architect because it’s out of style.” Pitts would prefer a building with of-the-moment transparency. “I envision glass and color and water and openness,” he says. But can a shiny new building attract patrons to the library, and visitors to Atlanta?

So… there’s a thread here, connecting what they’re contemplating doing with this building and what has saddled them with an urban landscape largely indistinguishable from that of Dallas or Indianapolis or Phoenix. Can anyone guess what it is?

For another thing, why not let the building stand as a marker for the question of why we designed and built structures like this once upon a time? Could be instructive.

And what do you know, there even could be a fiscal upside to preserving the structure, beyond its architectural merits.

Jon Buono, a preservation architect, makes a com­pelling pragmatic argument for saving the building. “I’m clearly interested in the artistic and cultural value of the library,” he says. “But as a civic booster, I’m even more concerned with recognizing the financial and material value of that public investment.” He calculates that the energy embodied in the library and required for its demolition equals a year’s electricity consumption by some 4,000 households.

Hmm. Preserve cultural heritage. Save the city some money. Conserve a non-trivial amount of energy. Does this compute? Or is it a plan written in a book, shelved in a library that’s become obsolete?

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outta site

So here’s a nice idea from this guy in Norway about how to charge your batteries with the sun, complete with pictures. While the set-up is somewhat amateurish, I like the tone of we should be able to do this. Indeed we should. And not just this.

This was courtesy of this site, which was sent my way by mrs. green and is far more up our alley and not just because it’s in french. Poke around and see what you see. Don’t miss the two-year-old housekeeper.

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Living in the City

Ah… the immortal words of Lee Ving, via a lot of good research presented in this article by Ed Glaeser.

The five metropolitan areas with the lowest levels of carbon emissions are all in California: San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. These areas have remarkably low levels of both home heating and electricity use. There are cold places, like Rochester, that don’t air-condition much and thus use comparably little electricity. There are warm places, like Houston, that don’t heat much and thus have comparably low heating emissions. But coastal California has little of both sorts of emissions, because of its extremely temperate climate and because California’s environmentalists have battled for rules that require energy-efficient appliances, like air conditioners and water heaters, and for green sources of electricity, such as natural gas and hydropower. (Some analysts argue that this greenness is partly illusory—see “California’s Potemkin Environmentalism,” Spring 2008—but certainly, by our measures, California homes use less energy.) Also, despite the stereotypes about California highways and urban sprawl, some of these five cities, like San Francisco, have only moderate levels of transportation emissions, since their residents actually live at relatively high densities, which cuts down on driving.

In one of the charts, they measured overall carbon emissions for cities, then differentiated emissions of central city residences from the suburbs. Surprises abound.

Boston and Philadelphia are the third and fifth cities on the list. Though hotter summers and more coal make Philadelphia browner than Boston, the city-suburb differences in both areas reflect the high density and abundant public transportation in their central cities. Nashville and Atlanta, on the other hand, rank second and fourth not because their central cities are particularly green but because extensive driving makes their far-flung suburbs particularly brown.

However, even these are not without their caveats, exceptions and reasons why. So you should read the whole thing. Land use patterns and incentives that shift us toward high energy-use locales instead of green ones – those are the issues.

Plus, it beats getting fat and dying your hair.

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I ask you:

Is this a parody?

I myself believe in the sanctity of life. But the market has its own logic, and if we’re going to live with it, we must make the most of its choices.

…

An extreme case in point would be the Green Revolution, the introduction of modern technology in Third World agriculture in the 60s and 70s. Just for the sake of illustration, let’s give momentary credence to the most pessimistic figures and suppose that between 1970 and 1990, the number of hungry folks in the world excluding China did grow by 11%, and that the Green Revolution had something to do with it. Let’s even throw Bhopal into the mix, since the factory there made components for pesticides.

Would this be acceptable risk from our viewpoint? The answer is clear when you notice, on the one hand, that the Green Revolution was essential to modern agribusiness, being its most profitable experiment ever; and that, like climate change and other huge trends, the Green Revolution belongs to a type of risk case in which scientists do not all agree on the source of problems caused, or whether they even exist. Unless the precautionary principle comes to dominate government once again, there is little actual risk in such cases–especially interesting now at the dawn of the new “Green Revolution.”

Thanks, Andy. I think.

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means-as-medium

If we were truly the musical people that we think we are, there would be a growing discography based on the notion of a people who gorge themselves endlessly, yet are profoundly undernourished. But invariably, time from time someone leaves a door unlatched and a few bars or whole measure drifts out that is recognizable – how we have conditioned ourselves to think that we’re open to different ideas when that isn’t actually the case at all; that we’re already overtaxed with things to do and think about when we actually ask quite little of ourselves; how ‘the whole thing’ (whatever it is) is just too complicated when it’s often quite simple and only the onus of our choices which we find too troublesome to delve into.

The column this week touched on this idea in a very indirect way, via a coincidental example of an eco-themed art show. It’s greatly true that if you just keep in mind what it is that you’re doing, most situations tend to be navigable, that one included. In a timely NYT follow up (kidding), this article presents much the same take on a coincidental example, a review of a show by the recipient of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Hugo Boss Prize.

When an artist uses her art to advance a political cause, how are we to judge the result? Should we evaluate the project by applying artistic standards or on the basis of its political or moral argument?

Consider Emily Jacir, who employs conventional devices of conceptualism and performance art to call attention to the plight of the Palestinian people.

This particular example of her work has a tertiary component that makes it even more suspect, but the point holds that even and especially with sympathetic subject matter, the basic premise of ‘art as means’ remains problematic.

However tragic and deplorable Mr. Zuaiter’s story may be, Ms. Jacir’s exhibition does not bring him to life sufficiently enough to elicit a strong emotional response. You may agree or disagree with her political goals and her use of the art exhibition system to further them. But the problem is with her unexceptional artistry, not her politics.

Just so.

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Wanted:

Director of Creation (new position – salary neg.)

Experience with multiversal systems generation preferred but not required. Management and coordination of poorly understood direction and leadership in accordance with ill-defined goals and objectives of the organization to safeguard and grow the assets of the organization for future generations or until such time as original systems expire.

The Director of Creation (DC) is invested with broad responsibilities and authority. Portions of these may be occasionally delegated though not the overall responsibility for the sustainability and profitability of the enterprise. Hands-off approach favored by many stakeholders; direct interventionist line by still others. Ability to tread lines between the two a must. Evidence for existence/non-existence must be salutary and mutually self-refuting.

Stakeholders: Time. Space. Matter. Shifting array of personnel with varied attributes including but not limited to cognition, lifespans, opposable digits and other physical capabilities.

Key Competencies: Simultaneous demonstration of passion, enthusiasm and indifference. Imagination, thick skin, flexible construction parameters of embedded design evolution, with the ability to authorize destruction and/or extinction of poorly performing entities. Ability to provide for deprivation means-testing of sample populations based on populations’ abilities to perceive and mimic key competencies of the DC. Maintain a healthy balance between multiple dimensions, obvious solutions within reach and absolute breaches of DC protocol. Direct interaction with personnel definitively prohibited though solicited without cease.

Benefits Package: Poorly defined though perceived to be significant.

Apply Within.

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Eco Hustle

New Flagpole column is up (on a snazzy new Flagpole website, btw) wherein I recommit myself and my proclivities for overreach to reading the entrails of early 21st century eco-enlightment before they dry. Our po-po-mo motto (what is the heart, anyway, if not two facing question marks?): “How can it be dead yet if we didn’t kill it?”

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The Green Zone

Not that one.

One connection to what’s happening to the planet is the shape our self-interest takes in the form of our kids and what they will be dealing with. In the early years of life when we are learning about the world, unafraid to question adults or puzzle over the answers of more than a few of them, there’s an opportunity to bond with the natural environment in a fundamental way that is a heavy indicator of our later predispositions. Here’s a thoughtful Monitor piece about a mom’s concern for her young sons over global warming.

On the other corner (no offense intended unless appropriate) is this wonderful little bit, via TPM, about the coordination of global warming denial by a former Limbaugh producer. The fun never stops, apparently.

It’s profound in its way, the manner in which that ever-so-brief early epoch of life effects so much of what comes later. Relatedly, in a way that I wish I could say was some kind of extreme example of this but which is way more average than we should be comfortable with, a run down of the top 15 searches on Technorati, via the wit and wisdom of Dr. Cole.

And then, just to round things out, the world’s angriest dog.

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The road to sustainability

tracks through the forest of stupid, veering off for extended moments in moronic triviality as we all behave like children for a little while longer. If you want to see the current dynamics of the debate over the financial crisis, gird your loins for this.

It’s amazing. On the one hand you have a couple sober realists, patiently speaking about the absolute necessity to massively de-leverage the insolvent banks… heaping ridicule on central bankers and others who didn’t see this coming but who remain in decision-making positions, insisting that banks must be nationalized. On the other, you have clowns asking for stock tips. There could be no more explicit description of the crisis itself than this display of inanity, which is at least representative if not the norm. When are we going to pull out of this? Like it’s just another slight downturn and not the collapse of the house of the mother of all pyramid schemes.

It’s a deep structural crisis. When Taleb tries to explain how executive compensation is tied to incentives that led to this mess in the first place, he’s met with demands to instead answer questions that are so far removed from the situation, they might as well be about the rock star status of Roubini and Taleb at the recent Davos summit.

Wait. That was what they were about. Nevermind.