Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [118]
The Challenge of Building Sustainably
SCOTT RODWIN
Perhaps I am naïve, because I love a challenge. “The situation is dire and we don’t know how to solve it! We’re almost out of time. The fate of the whole world is at stake!” Perfect. That’s what makes an exciting and heroic story—and a challenge worth devoting my life to.
As an architect I have spent most of my adult life learning how to creatively solve problems. Designing a physical environment that supports life instead of destroying it—what tougher and more important problem could I choose to tackle?
Noteworthy facts:
In the U.S., buildings consume roughly 65 percent of our electricity and 30 percent of our raw materials; and they generate 30 percent of our waste and greenhouse gases. They are the largest single-sector impact on our natural environment.
The average American spends roughly 90 percent of his or her time indoors. The buildings we create are among the largest environmental shapers of the human experience, greatly affecting both physical and psychological health.
In 1990, my fourth year of architecture school at Cornell, I became part of a remarkable group called EcoVillage of Ithaca (NY), a sprouting “intentional community” (a term for a type of residential development designed to promote interaction and cooperation among neighbors). Two amazing women founded the group, one more the visionary, one more the pragmatic problem-solver. Together they created a dynamic and successful process that ultimately gave birth to a large and vibrant sustainable community. They showed me how both of those roles contribute to create a powerful new solution for housing ourselves.
After graduation, I moved to Colorado and lived at the Nyland Cohousing community in Lafayette for four years. Its forty-two town-homes are grouped on eight acres of the forty-two-acre rural development, with the rest of the land left undeveloped. The houses themselves are small and energy-efficient, passive-solar duplexes and triplexes, with traditional front porches that facilitate impromptu socializing. A large Common House (clubhouse) sits in the center, and community members have the option of eating home-cooked group meals there a few times a week. The central building also houses a library, fitness and rec area, guest rooms, teen and kids’ play rooms, and a laundry area. Cars are kept to the perimeter of the property, and herds of kids safely run amok on the pedestrian pathways that tie the neighborhood together. There is a passive-solar greenhouse, a well-equipped workshop, organic gardens, play structures, and fields. It’s colorful, rural, and a bit funky. The landscape is xeric (featuring drought-tolerant native plants for low water consumption) and employs permaculture techniques.
The community is self-managed and maintained by the residents, and all decisions are made by consensus. Despite the utopian-sounding program, the Nyland Cohousing project is organized on a conventional condominium/HOA (homeowner association) model and largely functions like an old-fashioned neighborhood. People have mortgages, regular families, and normal jobs. It was a great place to live.
At the same time, I was beginning my architectural career and in the process of co-founding another cohousing group, one that deliberately was located in town. Nomad Cohousing, where I have now lived for ten years, is a block away from a neighborhood market, cleaners, coffee shop, and bus stop. Our little eleven-unit town-home project was built as infill in an existing neighborhood.