Growing Power is a two-acre urban farm in Milwauke. It was conceived by Will Allen, who recently won a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant for his efforts. The farm produces over $500,000 worth of affordable produce, meat and fish. Says Allen: “I’d like to see Growing Power transform itself into a five-story vertical building being totally off the grid with renewable energy.”
See the NYT article on the effort!...
This is an idea for our parking area:A carbon footprint study concludes that even the homeless and the most carbon efficient lifestyles in America leave a carbon footprint twice the international average.
The study concludes:
In general, spending money on travel or on goods that have substantial energy costs in their manufacture and delivery adds to a person's carbon footprint, while expenditures on locally based labor-intensive services--whether it's going to a therapist, taking an art class, or getting a massage--leads to a smaller footprint.
But the biggest factors in most people's lives were the obvious energy-users: housing, transportation and food. "The simple way you get people's carbon use down is to tax it," Gutowski says. "That's a hard pill to swallow--politicians don't like to step up" to support such measures. Absent such national actions, he says, it is important to study "what role consumer choices can play" in lowering the nation's carbon emissions.
Thomas Friedman, incidentally, recently concluded similarly...blaming Congress, so the last hope is changing consumer habits.
All this makes me wonder, can we truly make an impact if our economy fundamentally is tied to consumptive lifestyles? Steering Americans to local choices would be a start. Can we learn from Africans? David Ajaye thinks we can...Look at the energy resilient nature of African cities he points. We might try to save Africans, but maybe they can also save us. ')
Thanks everyone for your input last night!
Here is a short "my take" on comments received last night for an artist-supportive development (above is the precedent of Westbeth suggested by Phillip). While the Parkwood development is not necessarily an "artist community" per se, a starting point for programming and creative development is a concept. Concepts are not pristine things you order online. They grow organically from ideas that get batted around. So let's just engage "artist community" and see where that gets us next.
Big Take:
1) honor the disciplines - sound-proof walls for music/performance, expansive floor area for dance, kiln and arable messy room for throwing clay, as examples.
2) insulate the artists from each other -- related to this: privacy; security; ability to shrink into one's oyster shell; escape; meditation; light; water; serenity; quiet; meditative space; secret escape hatch/back door access away from public areas.
3) affordability: shared living space, shared kitchen for economy units
4) artist condos: basic; adaptable; light everywhere; well-ventilated; concrete floor; "spacy"; no need to finish (except for perhaps bamboo cabinetry); will be partitioned/finished by owner
5) courtyards: one public, one for residents only - an atrium garden
6) water as a special feature
7) green roof (w/ amenities)
8) flexible common area for producing work w/ tool shop, etc
9) no need for designated ground floor "gallery space", focus on sustainable retail like coffee/deli shop and office space
....I get brom BLDGBLOG:
The declarative/constitutionalizing architecture of seasteading.
An MIT study is describing the amazing possibilities here...basically its a sheer untapped resource
I found this essay by Maja and Reuben Fowkes compelling:
The Principles of Sustainability in Contemporary Art
They explain the need to transition from "Environmental Art" towards "Sustainable Art"...Artists have tended not to focus on the reuse of things, which is actually - next to energy innovation - is probably the single most important service anybody can do to advance the goals of sustainability. We need to focus here on process. And I don't think they are talking about adopting hippie lifestyles. I think we need to create recycling systems for everyone. We need to make on-site complete life-cycle process (like bamboo cultivation) both usable and attractive, culturally as well as economically. (The Art CUBE is a good example of a start.)
Don't think of it as housing for the homeless, but restoring the displaced to their original habitat.
I find the fact that the homeless are appearing in our "roofless" photo feed (on the right) quite interesting. It immediately brought to mind the homeless vehicle projects of my former art professor Krzystof Wodiczko.
How can our roofless project benefit the homeless? How can its rooflessness contribute to their "mobile conditions"....Can we create a mobile roofing system in place of a traditional roof? What if the roof was still put in...but in mobile capacities? A roof that reassembled in the evening or during dinnertimes...dispersed in the morning.
...I'm a student of Krzystof, what can I say? :)
park and kudzu
Not sure if RB Marx did this...but I thought this was a shining moment. Only a landscape artist can treat the water that way.
What lies beneath the bulge...intrigue
Here's a shot of Phillip's precedent project.
My precedent project. Sorry for the modernism...but I'm an architect.
What I really love about this housing typology is the way it addresses all the layers of habitation of the traditional row house and brings different possibilities to the foreground. Siza treats each layer as a unique habitation zone and plays with layers of privacy. He does this not only vertically but horizontally in subtle moves. I see similar play in Rome's older residential quarters - which is why I am infatuated with that city. 
How can Siza's layered architecture inform our approach to green design? How can artists find refuge in it and work and commune in it?
There a lot of great blogs and resourced sites I've started to keep up with, here are a few. Nothing big, it's just nice to keep tabs on them through my Netvibes feed page (If you have not a Netvibes page going what kind of an urban warrior are you!): So you are an artist...What would your ideal place to live, work and entertain look like?
