Daily Loaf

For the past month or so I’ve been reading books and watching a series titled Building Green which documents California builder Kevin Contreras’ efforts to build his new dream house using green and sustainable building practices.

The series is a great overall primer to green building, although I have to admit that the green building practices mentioned (but not utilized) in the new house are often the most intriguing to me, such as earthen floors and rammed earth.

There is also a healthy dose of greenwashing going on with the actual house: the 4,000 square foot straw-bale “McMansion” that Contreras ultimately builds replaces a smaller house on the same large lot in the far-flung suburbs.  The final house is similar to a home you’d see on a Builder Tour in Nuevo Tampa or Fishhawk Ranch (but much better designed), as opposed to a compact green and sustainable dwelling in a more sustainable context. As “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” (LEED) is slowly learning, where something is built is as important as how it’s built.
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The Roosevelt Art Gallery hosted its grand opening exhibition, “Re:Create: The Art of Upcycle” this past Saturday, January 30th, beginning a series of public exhibitions demonstrating the process of converting their antique building into a sustainable art gallery and performance space under the heading “Project 3.0”.

The event featured “Upcycled” artwork by Carlos Pons Paz, David Rothman, Joe Traina, Guillermo Perez, Micah and Jason Gallup, Blake Emory, and others, as well as live music by Pauly Crush, DJ Noi and J Marley, and a “sneak peak” at the Project 3.0 documentary. “Upcycled” artwork is made using otherwise disposable materials, such as the refashioned clothing of Tabatha Syn, the Gallup brothers’ reconstructed computer and stereo system, and the re-sewn purse dresses (yes, purse dresses) of John Steelman. Barely sliding into the Upcycled category was David Rothman, who staged his photographs with repurposed materials, but printed them in standard fashion.
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What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

U.S. green building activity to grow 146% by 2013 – The combined commercial and residential green building markets should grow nearly 146 percent from 2009 to 2013, according to research from Zpryme. In 2009, the combined markets represented $52.3 billion, but by 2013 the total should be $128.6 billion.

The truth about ‘free-range’ eggs (video) – Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals, talks about the misleading labeling of “free-range” eggs and how it is just a ploy for consumers to spend more money on a falsely labeled product.

Tampa company offers free electronics recycling and e-waste disposal – Florida E-Waste Recycling is a Tampa-based business that offers to help you get rid of your old computers, electronics, and e-waste for absolutely no charge.
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What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Fixing sprawl and redesigning suburbia- Grant Rimbey CNU explores a possible strategy towards improving existing sprawl. Fixing the sprawl that we have, along with sprawl demolition and recycling, are strategies that could be employed in the future as a new green industry.

Nation’s largest solar facility to be in DeSoto County by next year- Florida Power and Light is currently building the nation’s largest photovoltaic plant in DeSoto County, a $173.5 million, 25 megawatt solar generating facility.

Fresh: New Thinking About What We’re Eating screening – What’s wrong with the mega-industrial food industry- Struggling small farms, problems with food safety rules and the mega-industrial food industry, and a film about all of the above.
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In a previous Green Community post I’ve discussed sprawl: developer-driven poor planning and bad growth polices facilitated by developer-friendly elected officials, and why we need to cease building this way.

In this post I present one possible strategy towards improving existing sprawl. Fixing the sprawl that we have, along with sprawl demolition and recycling, are strategies that could be employed in the future as a new green industry.

Ultra cool Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat.com recently held a competition titled “The Reburbia Design Competition”, that had the goal of re-envisioning the suburbs.
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What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

St. Petersburg College’s new Natural Science, Mathematics and College of Education building is certified LEED® Gold- St. Petersburg College recently announced that for the second time in as many months, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has awarded LEED Gold certification for one of its new campus buildings.

Best of the Bay of the Day: Best organic smoothie- Believe it or not, algae and bee pollen add up to a delicious drink called the Spirulina Power Buzz. Read this to find out where to get one.

Tips to improve gas mileage (and save some green)- Do you have a lead foot or drive an inefficient automobile?  Here are a few simple tips to improve gas mileage and save a bunch of green!

Living Sustainably in Tampa Bay: Darren Brinkley, owner of REAL Building- Brinkley is the owner of REAL Building and home that he built for his family in St. Petersburg is the first home in Florida to achieve the LEED for Homes Gold Rating.
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This column is the second in a series of profiles of people who do their part to live more sustainably in Tampa Bay.

Darren Brinkley doesn’t pretend to be the most environmentally responsible person in the world or the Tampa Bay area. He just feels that he is trying to do his part to preserve the world around him.

Brinkley is the owner of REAL Building, which stands for ‘Responsible, Efficient, Attainable, and Livable Building’. REAL Building only builds green homes, unlike many other companies that will build green only if the client dictates it. 

“We don’t build anything that isn’t green,” Brinkley proclaimed. “We have now mandated some form of rainwater and/or greywater and solar water heaters on all our residential projects.”

“We are constantly searching for new and innovative ideas and going the extra mile to bring them to our market, even if it means rocking the boat with a few building officials along the way,” added Brinkley. 
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St. Petersburg College recently announced that for the second time in as many months, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has awarded LEED Gold certification for one of its new campus buildings.

The Natural Science, Mathematics and College of Education building on the Clearwater campus received the certification. The other LEED Gold building is the Student Services building on the St Petersburg/Gibbs campus.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a nationally accepted certifier of high performance and environmentally sensitive buildings. Gold is its second highest designation. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Celebrating Independence Day or creating environmental disaster? – Kelly Rothwell looks at the littered aftermath of Fourth of July celebrations and wonder why, instead of giving back in celebration of their freedom, people decide to light off fireworks, leaving mass amounts of debris in the water and on the beach.

Local Food: Dinner in, and from, the garden at Gateway Organic Farm – Chef Gui Alinat gives information about Gateway Organic Farm’s next “Dinner in the Garden” event, an incredible local foods experience featuring nine Bay area chefs.

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As was widely reported, my family and I lost our home to a fire last year. In an effort to turn a bad situation into something really positive, to be environmentally conscious and energy efficient, and to save money and lead by example, we built our new home to be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified by the U.S. Green Building Council. Many friends, colleagues, and constituents have inquired about my family’s new home and the green features, and so my staff and I decided to grab the video camera and record a tour to share with those interested.
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What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Steps to becoming greener: Reducing your waste, reusing and recycling: Joshua Poll gives some useful tips for ways to start reducing, reusing, and recycling things you thought you could just throw away.

Genetically engineering cows that will produce less methane, reducing greenhouse gases: Geneticists in Canada are trying to engineer a cow that produces less methane, resulting in less greenhouse gases, reports Brian Roberts.
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What architecture is and what an architect does seem largely unknown to most folks.

Tampa often seems strangely ambivalent toward good architecture and design; for instance, it’s nicknamed one of its finest newer downtown buildings the “beer can building” a.k.a. Rivergate Tower (see photo).   This exquisite neoclassical building was designed by architect Harry Wolf, who based its measurements on the Fibonnacci series. You know the building — it’s the round one right next to the “exploding chicken” sculpture.

People work with an architect for many reasons. Sometimes it’s required by law for the building they’re constructing. Others hire an architect because they’re interested in collaborating and turning their ideas into a built form that is extraordinary and reflects not only themselves, but the local climate, history and culture. This team then finds a contractor or builder that can build what they want. Many think that architecture is the purview of the rich, that the intent of architecture is to create expensive “works of art.” This ignores the fact that “good design” needn’t be expensive and often employs good old-fashioned American ingenuity: locating and implementing alternate materials and construction methods to keep the price within bounds. Truly good design accomplishes the needs and wants of the client and architect within whatever budget.

The American Institute of Architects Florida Chapter recently created a video that describes what architecture is, what architects do and why architecture is important.   It’s not on YouTube but it can be viewed after the break, along with a list of recipients of the 2009 AIA Tampa Bay Design Awards.

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What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this past week:

Reconstructing a historic bat tower in Temple Terrace and how to build your own bat roost- Grant Rimbey investigates efforts in Temple Terrace to reconstruct an historic tower for bats, discusses a large community bat roost he designed for the Florida Bat Conservancy, and tells how you can purchase (or build) your own bat roost for your yard.

Summer Solstice: A brief history- Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, occurs this Sunday- June 21st. Here are a few facts you might not have known about it, from Linda Taylor.

Organics: How to eat well without breaking your budget- With the increase of demand over organic food in the last ten years you would think that a wide range of these products would be easily accessible. Here’s some some advice from Kelly Rothwell on purchasing healthy, organic food in this region without breaking your budget.
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This post is about bat conservation: efforts in Temple Terrace to reconstruct an historic tower for bats, a large community bat roost I designed for the Florida Bat Conservancy, and how you can purchase (or build) your own bat roost.

Folks have long thought that installing birdhouses is beneficial, but the idea of placing roosts for bats is a recent one. Bats are not the feared, repulsive creatures of the night that folklore and superstition have made them out to be.  Bats are not blind, they do not attack people, they do not get caught in people’s hair, and they are not flying rodents. Not all bats are rabid, in fact, “studies have shown that less than one percent of bats contract rabies, and when they do, they usually die within three or four days”. Bats are an important and beneficial part of the natural Florida environment, for instance, a single bat is capable of eating 500-1000 mosquitoes per hour!

Growing up in Temple Terrace I had many uniquely Florida experiences as I explored this eighty year old city with my brothers and sisters: the mysterious Hillsborough River; moss draped, crumbling 1920s Mediterranean Revival buildings; the ancient live oaks and longleaf pines; the Olmstedian 1920s golf course; and of course, the sublime and gothic bat tower. That’s right, I said “bat tower”!

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The term “sprawl” was coined in 1956 and is defined as unplanned greenfield (undeveloped land) development on the periphery of urban areas that is generally single-use, single-story, low density, inexpensive to build, and requires little knowledge or expertise to create. Sprawl gobbles up our farmlands and woodlands while increasing dependency on fossil fuel, fosters obesity because you have to drive everywhere, diminishes the natural environment, decreases the feasibility of mass transit, all while failing to create a “sense of place” or build community.

There was once a time in America (before the second World War) when sprawl didn’t exist. The ascent of sprawl to the predominant development form in the United States is based on many criteria: Read the rest of this entry »

A year ago I was doing microfilm research on local history at the John German Library in Tampa. Anyone who’s done this research knows how tedious it is; there’s no index for microfilm so to find pertinent articles one must scan each newspaper page on each microfilm roll. While doing this I was flabbergasted to discover a Tampa Tribune article from November 25, 1924, that mentioned the work of the famous town planner John Nolen in connection with Tampa.

To my surprise, the City of Tampa commissioned Nolen to survey the city in 1924 in preparation for a master plan which he was to create for the city. I know a good deal about the planning and architectural history of the area but hadn’t heard that Nolen was working in our area. Tragically, Nolen created his survey but was never commissioned by the city to create his master plan for Tampa: 1924 was the height of delirium during the 1920s Florida real estate boom and the development industry of the time did not want to slow down the good times enough to allow the creation of a master plan and code to direct them. The great depression came early to Florida and by the end of 1926 the roaring 20s were over.

The discovery of John Nolen’s survey of Tampa is important as he’s arguably the finest town planner to have worked in Florida and is the namesake of the John Nolen Medal for Contributions to Urbanism in Florida, given by the progressive planning organization Congress for the New Urbanism, Florida Chapter. In Florida, Nolen was the genius behind the town plans of Venice, Sarasota, West Palm Beach, Clewiston, and Temple Terrace.

In 1924, the problems that Mr. Nolen identified in Tampa’s planning remain problems to this very day: Read the rest of this entry »