Getting to Zero: Aspiring to the Zero Energy Home

Going into the new year I'm naturally in a reflective mood. What can I do to impact the greater world as we head into the unknown promise and potential of a new year? Sharing ideas which matter is a place to start!

What if more Zero Energy Homes became more prevalent in the coming year? What's a Zero Energy Home you ask? It is a home which produces the same or more energy than it uses over the course of a year. The specific design and make up of the Zero Energy Home adapts to its regional and micro-climate, siting and the needs and budget of individual homeowners. There is no single solution but rather a common approach to design which starts with shifting behaviors and motivations of all those involved.

A Zero Energy Home is valuable for a number of reasons. It can be an extremely comfortable, healthy and pleasant place to live. It can be carbon-neutral and good for the environment. It also can deliver future energy cost predictability by committing to upfront investments in a super-insulated building envelope, high performance internal heating / cooling systems, renewable energy sources, energy star appliances, lighting and healthy interior materials/ furnishings. As we head into the new year we don't know what our energy costs will be going forward but know intuitively they will continue to escalate with fossil fuel scarcity and growing demand. (See IHS Data, DOE calculator). There will be no magic energy solution I believe. Just hard slogging...

Thus, Zero Energy Homes can form part of the solution going forward, reshaping how we think about our homes into long-term investments which steady-state our energy costs into the future. Their lighter footprint on the earth and in our communities can only be an asset to strengthening them.

How and where does one start?

Read as much as you can: Visit informative web-sites such as....

• Building Science Corporation and it's information on Low-Energy Buildings.
• The Dept. of Energy's Building America website and it's Building Technologies Program has superb and accessible Builder's Guides which are organized by regional climatic zones.
• National Home Builders Toolbase site and it's Seven Steps to a Zero Energy Home.
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory and it's insulation fact sheet. It's a little clunky but useful.

Hire and Organize a Great Integrated Design Team: Contact your local American Institute of Architects (AIA) and Homebuilder's Organizations and look for standout professionals who have experience designing and building low-energy use and/or zero energy homes. They can assist you in early stages of site selection, construction strategies and project delivery methods which best adapt to your needs, budget and schedule. Depending on your project's complexity and your goals your Architect may suggest hiring an Energy Consultant and other specialized sub-consultants/ team-mates to really look at your needs and help optimize building envelope, heating-cooling systems, lighting, building controls and interior design.

Be Prepared to Learn and Grow Over the Course of Your Project: It's a journey with lots of learning along the way and exposure to new ideas and concepts. With the right team, it will be an enjoyable and never dull experience!

Investing in the Future: Remember, you're doing something which will benefit generations to come by looking beyond the present!

Happy New Year!

Seeking and Sensing the Sacred In Jerusalem_Part 2

Continued from the Part 1, 10/24/09 post....

Friday, Saturday, Sunday.....

...I also visited

each of the sacred sites during their weekly holy days. Each called the faithful to prayer and worship through sound. Five times a day the call to prayer of the Muslims rang out around the city. Fire-raid sirens shrilly whistled at sunset on Friday, not to blow again until the next night, signaling the beginning

or end of Sabbath, the day of rest for the Jews. On Sunday morning bells from church steeples rang all over the Old City heralding the holy day services of the Christians.

Together, their sounds indicated the coming to an end of the week and the beginning of yet another within the context of each religion’s holy year of festivals and sacred time. The calls to prayer, horns and bells all reached out and defined the sacred territory of their

neighborhood or section of the city in a sound net. Often, during the week, confusion and tension would result from overlaps in calls to worship where calls to prayer would occur when bells were being rung for Christian services.During these moments the heterogeneous nature of the city became apparent.

I befriended an Imam or teacher at the Mosque of Omar near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Christian Quarter. I asked if I might accompany him to Friday services at the great Al Aqsa Mosque adjacent to the Dome of the Rock within the Haram esh Sharif. This Mosque served all of the Muslims of East Jerusalem and the Old City, and was the equivalent of a great cathedral or synagogue which serves an entire city. He was delighted.

That Friday I met him at his small mosque, ritually washed myself at the wash-basin and walked with him towards the larger mosque area. We joined thousands of faithful pouring through the streets of the Old City towards the many gates which surrounded the mosque sanctuary space. Because it was Summer it was an outdoors service with everyone lined up facing the entry of the Aqsa Mosque in a great mass of humanity. From there the hour-long service was given. At different points, in unison, the many thousands of people prostrated

themselves on prayer mats directing their bodies and uttering their intentions towards Mecca to the south. My hair rose on my neck in reaction to the expressive sounds of unity.

By participating in this ritual, I suspended my fear of another faith and culture, willfully projecting myself into the service. The clapping and chants of thousands of people at once during different point of the service reinforced the sense of unity and harmony I felt in general between Islam and the Old City. The market areas or Suqs, as they are throughout the Islamic Middle East are the belly of the city, the Al Aqsa Mosque or the Friday Mosque, the spiritual heart. Together with nearby housing, they formed a hierarchy of large outdoor rooms connected by narrow canyon like streets.

Here also, the joy of movement and connection to the Land were of equal importance in serving and shaping sacred space and place. The sites were reached by walking through the Old City along proscribed routes each with their own quality of movement and path. To enter a succession of thresholds and interlocking spaces had to be passed through before gaining access to the innermost sanctums. Instead of the topography being shaped by the layout of the Old City, the hilly terrain and system of valleys and ridges radically affected the design of the city.

To gain access to these special places, one must ascend or descend in an almost choreographed or deliberate manner through narrow and dark streets. Some streets were like dark tunnels, burrowing below streets and housing above, with narrow skylights and ventilation shafts providing dusty air and sharply focused light striking the cobbled streets. Others were wider with more of a sense of the sky above.

All paths which led to the three great shrines, ended with a sense of wide expansion of space in contrast to the strong sense of compression felt earlier. Usually this was preceded by entering a gate and passing through a threshold. In this way, the sacred sanctuary differentiated itself from its profane surroundings. The cardinal directions of north, south, east and west in conjunction of the rise and fall of the sun and the moon contribute to the design and layout of the Holy places and shrines. Each employs movement in proscribed ways through their spaces in relation to these forces.

If asked where and what was my most sacred place and space in Jerusalem I would answer an earthwork sculpture by James Turrell located in the garden of the Israel Museum situated in West Jerusalem. There a large unobtrusive mound is sighted, the visitor descends along a path winding around behind the breast-like form to the single entry of the space to the west. It was named Space that Sees. Like much of the work of the Turrell, it presented a frame upon the sky above. You experienced it from below in a very simply detailed chamber of stone with seats located along the four walls of the space.

Unlike all of the other historically sacred places in the Old City, this one was devoid of all narrative imagery, decoration and cultural conflicts. Instead of being focused on an altar or inner sanctum, the changing qualities of the sky above dominated the space. On hillsides near the Old City, similar older sepulchers or burial chambers and deep cisterns punctuated the landscape. Turrell’s earthwork captured a primordial element common to these spaces, framing nature and its forces in a peaceful, yet spiritual manner.

Playing my harmonica and singing softly, I played an ode to the primordial spiritual forces of the Land pervading the place, enframed in the sky-frame above. My harmonica and voice activated the space, inert before my sounds, into a place of celebration and joy. I participated with and made a place sacred through my own self-made ritual. By doing so, I experienced how these places are mere instruments whose walls, ceilings and roofs stand inert until engaged by action of the people using it. I could make up my own narrative in this simple, abstract space strikingly modern, yet of the earth and sky, endearingly primal to its core.

I finally found my own sacred place and space.

Workplace Design Thoughts - Part 1 of 2

Ideas or strategies to consider in Workplace Design:

· Embrace Organizational Ecology... The Workplace as Holistic Living Organism:

Organizational ecology examines the work place as an ecosystem with a set of inter-related systems. Recognize buildings and space as organizational tools and assets to support teamwork and cross-departmental collaboration. Consider multiple hard and soft strategies to integrate organizational values and philosophies into the corporate culture through design choices. Embrace interdependencies between work processes, physical settings and delivery of information technology.

· Think Big Together and Set up the Process: Set up the overall process, meetings rhythm and get buy-in and acceptance from an executive team and key stakeholders before proceeding further into implementation of the process and its steps. Establish challenging goals to differentiate the organization to its staff and its customers. Be ambitious. Do it and help change the world!

· Charette: Set the Vision & Framework: Establish a vision, goal & objective setting charette with key project stakeholders. Whether a small executive team or an all hands company meeting or something in between, tailor it to needs of the organization, cost and schedule. Visualize together in a brainstorming conducive setting. Examine organizational core principles and values. Prioritize these principles and values and how they might or might not influence workplace design. How do environmental, social and corporate responsbility concerns fit in? Does transparency matter to your workplace, key stakeholders, consumers or outside customers? What implementation strategies naturally cluster around the goals and principles to facilitate them?

Building & Landscape Integration

I sketched this a summer or so ago. I cropped the view to show a powerful relationship between the famous covered bridge in Waitsfield and the great rock abutment which forms part of its foundation on the village side of the Mad River.

So much of our practice in Vermont relates to this diagram. We're always building and designing in relation to our landscape. It's inescapable. The river in our valley is a formative element which shapes the linear form of the village where our office is located. The covered bridge springs across it touching both sides of the river in a manner which engages and frames the landscape within the bridge abutments. The wood clapboard, shingle roof and heavy timber trusses speak of the landscape in union with the enormous boulders supporting it's structure.

Like the famous Japanese temple at Edo which is always in a state of building and re-building, this bridge is constantly being touched by craftspeople, timber framers in a continuous cycle of care going back generations. There are elements on the bridge which date back a hundred or more years and others which date back to last fall. The bridge is an example of a living system happening in time.