Rush Hour

Another one from the Netherlands...

Morning rush hour in the 4th largest city in the Netherlands. Streets look like this when 33% of ALL trips are made by bicycle!

This is an ordinary Wednesday morning in April 2010 at around 8.30 am. Original time was 8 minutes that were compressed into 2 minutes, so everything is 4 times faster than in reality. The sound is original.

This is one of the busiest junctions in Utrecht a city with a population of 300,000. No less than 22,000 bicycles and 2,500 buses pass here every day. And yet Google Street View missed it. Because private motorized traffic is restricted here.

These cyclists cross a one way bus lane (also used by taxis and municipal vehicles), two light rail tracks and then a one way street that can be used by private vehicles.

Behind the camera is a railway (you can hear the squeaking sounds of the trains passing) and the main railway station is very close too. A number of rental bikes from the station pass and many of the cyclists will have come by train for the first part of their commute.

For those who frown upon the total absence of bike helmets in this video, consider these findings from a US study:

"Cycling in the Netherlands is much safer than in the USA. The Netherlands has the lowest non-fatal injury rate as well as the lowest fatality rate, while the USA has the highest non-fatal injury rate as well as the highest fatality rate. Indeed, the non-fatal injury rate for the USA is about 30 times higher than for the Netherlands.

Injury rate per million km cycled: USA 37.5; NL 1.4
Fatality rate per 100 million km cycled: USA 5.8; NL 1.1"

Earth Day 2011

On April 22nd, 1970, senator Gaylor Nelson founded Earth Day as a way "to put the environment into the political ‘limelight’ once and for all." Now, 41 years later we are still struggling with conservation and sustainable development but there is a lot of momentum going on. People from all walks of life are moving towards achieving more healthy life styles. Scientists, designers, businesses, teachers, politicians, you and me and so many others. Action is the key, from the big picture to small acts of every day life. What will you pledge to help reduce your impact on the planet?


Check out some great information and initiatives by going to the EPA website.
Or Google "Earth Day" to see all the news, events and information about today's celebrations.

Samba and Sustainability?

Ok, you are probably thinking: "What does music has to do with sustainability?" or "Of course, she is brazilian so samba has to be woven into anything". Well, both of these thoughts ran through my mind. Mostly, this connection happened by chance for me. I just recently finished reading "O Misterio do Samba" by Hermano Vianna (there is an english version, for those interested click here) and was amazed by how he describes the "mystery" of how samba went from being rejected by society into becoming a symbol of brazilian nationality and pride. Samba was not only frowned upon, it was banned from being played and danced in public and musicians and enthusiasts were gathering in secret places. What really stuck for me was how culture at the time was in a sense manipulated to reflect the growing sense of nationalism that the current president (Getulio Vargas) was trying to instill in the population. The shift from outcast to spotlight happened with a lot of help from a Brazilian anthropologist Gilberto Freyre who believed in the beauty of the expressions of the african and indigenous people and in a sense rejected all american and european influences in the brazilian culture.

And what about sustainability? Well, a book that I am reading right now is the 2010 State of the World report on "Transforming Cultures" (click here for more info and to download free chapters). Yes, that is the connection, transforming cultures. In this report, several scientists and professionals from different areas discuss the impact of consumerism in our planet's ecosystem. The current levels of consumption are so high that to sustainably support the world's population we would need a third more of Earth's capacity than is available. In other words, humanity now uses the resources and services of 1.3 Earths, undermining the resilience of the ecosystems that we depend on. This report proposes that we curb consumerism and stop shopping for "unnecessary" items. This is a very hard thing to ask. Transforming cultures is no easy task but the samba example gave me a glimpse into a cultural shift that happened when politicians, artists, social scientists and the population were willing.

"Preventing the collapse of human civilization requires nothing less than a wholesale transformation of dominant cultural patterns. This transformation would reject consumerism - the cultural orientation that leads people to find meaning, contentment and acceptance through the way they consume - as taboo and establish in its place a new cultural framework centered on sustainability. In the process, a revamped understanding of "natural" would emerge: it would mean individual and societal choices that cause minimal ecological damage or, better yet, that restore Earth's ecological systems to health. Such a shift - something more fundamental than the adoption of new technologies or government policies, which are often regarded as the key drivers of a shift to sustainable societies - would radically reshape the way people understand and act in the world."

So I wonder if this shift is possible, can culture change at this scale? Can people as a whole (and not just in some specific places) have a sense of pride not by what they own but by who they are and what they stand for?

Talking Trash

"...if everyone lived like Americans, Earth could sustain only 1.4 billion people."

"...erecting an average home of 2,000 square feet results in roughly 8,000 pounds of construction waste and 136,000,000 tons of demolition waste are tossed into landfills in the United States every year."

That means 4,610,000 standard shipping containers of 40 feet in length!!! What does that mean for architects and designers when the basis of what we do it utilizing materials to build a project? We rely on a steady stream of materials that not only get discarded at the end of their life cycle, they also come from somewhere and require a lot of energy and resources to be produced. Based on the premise that the world is a finite element and we are already running beyond its capacity, it is time to rethink how we design.
A great example comes from the Netherlands (of course!). Jan Jongert and Jeroen Bergsma of 2012Architects have designed a house where 60% of the structure is comprised of reused materials found within a 9 mile radius from the building site. This number goes up to 90% when it comes to the interior. Some of the materials include broken umbrellas and chopped up billboards.

For more images and information click here

StepUp2Green?

The hype is here, it has been for the last few years. All we talk about is sustainable building, green architecture, green cleaning, green, green, green. But was is really green? What is really sustainable? How do we get to it? This can be a touchy subject, and I don't have all the answers, but I sure think about this all the time.

Having worked at one of the leading architecture firms in San Francisco, I was in the middle of this discussion on a daily basis. Architects, engineers, project managers, developers and clients alike wanted to push the envelope, research and implement all the possible strategies to get low energy, high performing designs that respected the environment and the users.

Something that I have a hard time with is when I see architecture firms that have a separate section or tab to show their "sustainable design". To me all design should take into consideration low energy use, high performance, water reuse, site and stormwater management, low chemical emitting materials, renewable resources and a whole myriad of issues that makes good buildings. ALL buildings should take these issues into consideration. "Sustainability" shouldn't be a "special" label that gets attached to "special" buildings. I know there are a lot of "unsustainable" buildings out there, built in the boom of the developing era, that are far from using little energy and from being pleasant to be in. But what I would like to see is that all new construction takes these principles (and some of them are plain good architectural practice, like daylighting) and uses them as part of good design. That we all strive to make good buildings that don't have to be checked by a list that tells me they are sustainable so they can get a sign on the door and then forget about it. I want to see more than the desire to get this sign for marketing purposes. I want to see people interested in good design because that s what we need, good design, good architecture and a good environment to live in that stays this way for future generations.

Recently a colegue of mine was telling me about a project in the US that was being presented at a conference. It consisted of a renovation of street medians in an East Bay neighborhood in California. Then, next up were two large scale projects, one in India and another in Saudi Arabia. Those were large buildings that treated their own water, used a desalination plant for providing water for the buildings among other more all emcompasing strategies. Then, someone in the audience asked "Why is it that in the US we do street median projects while in other countries the interventions are in a much larger scale, with more innovation and acceptance of building authorities?"

Well, I don't really know the answer either but that made me think, again. Are we stuck with old building codes? Are policy makers not keeping up? Is there too much conflicting interest? We can do better than street medians...

Don't get me wrong, I support all initiatives that take one step further. But I feel that it is time to push harder. I would like to see designers, architects and engineers be able to go ahead with their projects and innovations without having to struggle to get something approved because the codes and legislation fall short on what is being proposed. I would like to see all new construction go beyond the checklists and push the envelope. I would like to see collaboration so that we can all face this together.