up your architecture.

The latest discussion for Coll[arch]quial tackles the future of the "Green Job" market and what the investment in green technologies will mean for the design profession. Recently the GCCDS has been researching best practices for a new set of specs and it was really great to see so many great suggestions coming out of all the work. This got me thinking about the investment that Obama proposal to invest $150 billion over 10 years to produce 5 million jobs (there's a great article on page 15 of the November 8th issue of The Economist).

This influx of money into the system has certain obvious advantages, but as the Economist notes should not come without penalties for waste produced by companies as well as subsidies for those companies that are producing cleaner energy and products. I also stumbled upon a great quote that was culled from the thousands of hours of off-camera recording of the election. From redgreenandblue.org...

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, “I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.�

Not necessarily the Green vote that Obama was talking about, but also welcome...

But the fact remains that after all the rhetoric, what does this mean for the architectural profession and design community as a whole? We certainly have begun to explore sustainability in our own ways with LEED accreditation for our working professionals, but Sam brought up a great point. How can someone become LEED certified without ever having worked on or managed a LEED building? It seems that the memorization of facts is good enough to prove that you are a green designer without any time actually having to be logged while working on a LEED certified project. This seems a bit ludicrous to me. Now, I don't want to sell anyone short that goes through the committed efforts to study for and take the test, in fact many of my friends have just taken it today and passed. Their firm has never worked on a LEED certified project.

Another question is the idea of sustainability being one-sided in terms of qualifications and quantification. There's a great article Mike sent to me called "It's the Energy Stupid" from buildingscience.com that talks about this in great detail and makes a couple of fantastically snarky, very well informed, and articulate points regarding "greening" and sustainability in building.

The last point to touch on is the idea of SEED vs. LEED with SEED (Social/Economic/Environmental Design) being a grass roots movement dedicated to community-based architecture and ethical design practices. Read the following article off the AIA Committee on the Environment and then leave a comment and let the discussion begin!

http://www.aia.org/nwsltr_cote.cfm?pagename=cote_a_0605_SEED

The SEED Network
By Barbara Brown

The SEED Network is a collective of practitioners, activists, and theorists devoted to collaborative, community-based design. Encouraging what Stephen Goldsmith, director of the Frederick P. Rose Architectural Fellowship, refers to as a “more holistic ethic for building,� the group acknowledges an inherent value in involving community members in the shaping of their built environment, while still balancing other aspects of thoughtful design.

Advocating design as a mode of community support and empowerment, SEED participants hope to facilitate culturally and ecologically sensitive, community-based design efforts through the supportive web of its membership. Through the fusion of local and professional assets, the network believes that communities will find both the means and the best responses to their own challenges.

The Network emerged from a roundtable organized by Maurice Cox, Bryan Bell, Kathy Dorgan, and Stephen Goldsmith at Harvard in late October 2005 to discuss how design could more relevantly address the social, economic, and environmental issues faced by communities without access to such services. A second meeting at New Orleans in February 2006 furthered the development of this network, while also allowing its members to discuss potential modes of collaboration in regards to the needs of the Gulf Coast.

During the first two meetings many ideas emerged from the SEED Network including: 1) the development of a system to support young, socially inclined professionals as they enter the workforce; 2) the institutionalization of design ethics into architectural curricula; and 3) the need for a more effective system of incentivizing socially oriented design in the architectural realm. This last item might be satisfied through two complementary activities: creating a complementary system to green certification systems like LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), and encouraging architecture critics to acknowledge the importance of positive change through design in the built works they evaluate.

Although the group has not yet adopted a single set of principles, it is significant for the many facets of design that the SEED Network exists and that its members are further developing the concept. An open forum for discussion on the Internet allows any interested persons to engage in the creation and further development of SEED Network. Plans for a third meeting on the east coast in July are already underway.

Barbara Brown is a graduate student in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. As the first Luce Fellow associated with the Center for Sustainable Development at Utah, she is working to foster relationships between the School's Basic Initiative program and local communities, while also investigating the social architecture movement through her active participation in the SEED Network.

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On the next Coll[arch]quial: Community Design/Studio

Also, if anyone has ideas for Coll[arch]quial let me know. I have a couple of ideas on the docket but am always looking for more. Feel free to leave a message or e.mail me at james.wheeler [at] gmail [dot] com.