Top Nine Green Viral Videos

These videos are, er, so...viral. Go Green!

via @archivedigger

Don't let green get you down.

credit:stephencaver.com

Friday thoughts: If you are like us, some days you get tired of fighting the green fight. There is a sense of despair when you see the people in the car in front of you heaving their fast food wrappers and cups out the window as they drive through your city at 50 miles an hour. There is the sense of anger when you watch one more cigarette butt tossed on the sidewalk, because you know it has a biodegradable life span of 400 years and it is going to wind up in our oceans. Plastic bottles? We can't even go there. Restaurants packaging food in Styrofoam? Why?! Then there is the unfathomable results of a recent Pew study showing that the number of Americans who believe there is solid evidence for global warming is at its lowest point in three years. These things wear you down little by little.

But we found some good news today. We thought we would share it to cheer you and ourselves up:

82 percent of Americans say they are still buying green products and services today, which sometimes cost more, according to a 2009 study commissioned by Green Seal and EnviroMedia Social Marketing.

More than six in 10 (or 66 million) U.S. homes currently use eco-friendly household products (Focalist, 2008).

U.S. consumers are looking at using more green products in everyday life, with more than one-third of adults regularly buying green products (Mintel Research, 2008).

18-34 year olds are twice as likely to buy green (EnviroMedia, 2009); 40 million baby boomers currently buy green (AARP, 2008).

And more intriguing good ideas here and here and here and here---we could go on!

These are small steps on the long journey. But, remember – though some countries, corporations and individuals - are trashing the earth without a second thought, we ARE making a difference. And we continue to make a difference every time we make a choice or take action for a green world. Also remember, it took 20 years for people to give up buttons...and use zippers. Fight on!

No Goat Jokes.

Before

After

An old idea receives new attention. Individuals and organizations are choosing a new green option, using goats to clear farms, parks, roadways, ranches. No harmful chemicals are employed. No heavy machinery is needed. The goat's cloven-hoofs, that allow them to meander slops and cliffs, cause no harm to the earth. Also, goats are quiet.

This "innovation" has become rather popular. It was used recently, even, in Druid Hill Park---three days, one-quarter acre. Eco Goats in Donaldson, MD, provided the herd. What volunteers couldn't do, goats did. Additionally, goats will completely clear an area of invasive plants.

Rent-a-Ruminator in Seattle provides more information on the beauty of goats and a slew of before and after pictures.

Pretty Sweet Green Roof

Japanese practice Atelier Tekuto has completed this aluminium-framed private residence in Kanazawa City, western Japan.

We especially liked this little green roof system. Other sustainable features include full LED lighting, rainwater harvesting and solar panels on the top for water heating. It is helpful to see the variety of green roof designs. We think this one is pretty sweet.

Architectural Review featured this house. For additional images of it, click here.

Our Trash is Killing Birds in Remote Places

Chris Jordan has published a series of images identified as dead albatross on Midway Atoll whose bodies are filled with bits of plastic they ingested.

Midway Island is an anemic little line of sand and coral reefs, way out in the middle of the Pacific. Now, I don't know Mr. Jordan personally, and haven't fact-checked the story behind the photos -- but presuming it's all as presented, this really is a horrifying set of images.

Birds that live as far away from civilization as you can imagine, their innards packed with petroleum flotsam?

via Boing Boing http://tiny.cc/vhpqU

Mr. Sustainable!

Rob Brennan, AIA and Carri Beer, AIA, LEED AP

Brennan + Company's founder and Principal Architect, Rob Brennan was featured in the October issue of Baltimore Magazine. Tapped as one of the region's reigning green gurus, Rob, along with Carri Beer, talk about how to make a home environmentally friendly. It's a good read, if we do say so ourselves. Here's the link.

Polaroid, Lost and Found.

Few things mark an era like a Polaroid photo. When Polaroid announced in 2008 that they were discontinuing the production of Polaroid film, hearts fell. A frenzy of bidding quickly heated up on Ebay for any remaining film, sparking scrappy bidding wars.

On Oct. 9, the last lot of Polaroid film passed its “use by” date, and the era of instant Polaroid photography is officially over, or at least for now. But there is hope. The Impossible Project is one of them. The Impossible Project has been founded with the aim to re-invent and re-start production of analog film for vintage Polaroid cameras. They have leased the Polaroid factory in Enschede, The Neatherlands that closed in June of 2008. They plan to produce an innovative and fresh product for all the artists who work with Polaroid film and all us common, die-hard fans who get goofy about it.

This from a New York Times recent comment :

The Polaroid was the only kind of contemporary photograph that could come close to the unique singularity of a painting or drawing, part of its charm being the unpredictability of its colors and marks on the print. The built-in frame is another major reason why people were attracted to them, giving the impression of a “finished piece” the moment they become visible.

May it always be.

The 60s swing again.

The Beatles by Robert Whitaker, 1964
Robert Whitaker Archive
© Robert Whitaker

The National Portrait Gallery in London has assembled an exhibition of iconic photos of the musical groups who created "Swinging London" in the 60s. Beatles to Bowie: The 60s Exposed, 15 October - 24 January 2010, could only be fun. The Who, The Kinks...they're all there.

Huge cultural and social changes were reflected in the styles and imagery of the pop music scene. The classic rivalry between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones is played out visually by a variety of top photographers such as David Bailey, Gered Mankowitz and Robert Whitaker, who helped create and endorse their changing images.

Fact: Next year it will have been 50 years since the 60s. No way!

Urban Rust

When you walk around a city, you don't expect to find Cor-Ten steel---weathered steel alloy with a protective coat of rust---on facades. You expect to see it in industrial areas or an occasional modern single-family home. A post on A Daily Dose of Architecture provides a nice opportunity to see Cor-ten steel at work on city buildings.

For more views of Cor-Ten, Flickr has a group dedicated to it!

The Paradox of Preservation

The Century Plaza hotel, designed by Minoru Yamasaki, opened in 1966 and quickly began accommodating stars and dignitaries. New owners have revealed plans to demolish the hotel, no longer the VIP magnet it once was, and replace it with a $2-billion complex that includes two 50-story towers containing condos, offices, shops and a smaller luxury hotel.


Los Angeles is to modern architecture, what Rome is to Catholicism. However,"California modern" postwar architecture, for better or for worse, undermined the ideas of traditional architecture forever. Its reach is international. Its style immediately recognizable. For some, it is a reason to swoon, for others it seen as an egotistical force undermining the intrinsic value of meaningful design. As historic, modern architectural buildings begin to age, it is inevitable that the preservationists and the developers will collide.

While preservationists would argue for reuse based on green values, developers argue that 60s modern buildings are hardly energy efficient, sustainable or nontoxic. In his Sunday column, Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times architecture and design critic, makes this point:

Those two ideas -- that preservation is green and that postwar city building was not -- are now coming together in some contradictory, even absurd ways. The debate over the future of the Century Plaza has been a case in point. Both sides have tried to argue that they have sustainability on their side, the Conservancy because knocking down the hotel would waste its "embodied energy" -- the energy it took to construct it -- and Michael Rosenfeld, the developer, because his proposed replacement, designed by the architect Harry Cobb, would promote green urbanism, namely pedestrianism and use of mass transit.

These conflicting ideas deserve a thoughtful investigation in less charged venues. It seems that the guiding ideas of preservation-as-green, must be bold and vivid to win the day. The issues confronted in preservation are often more complex and broad than the arguments that are being presented in defense of green preservation. Is preservation always "green?" And, to throw a wrench in the works, we wonder, how preservationists, who typically hold a disdain for modern architecture, will wholeheartedly defend against its demise?

The starting line at the Baltimore Marathon this weekend!

Photo by Arianne Teeple at the top of the Hilton Hotel

Click on this photo to enlarge it and enjoy all the colors. The Under Armor Company has done a good deed for the city by promoting this marathon. Bravo for Under Armor and bravo for city life.

The Future of Prefab. Where's it Going?

Empyrean International, "Dwell House"

Marmol Radziner "Skyline House"

Michelle Kaufman's "Glidehouse"

Our stringer in Los Angeles sent us this thoughtful article by Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne. Hawthorne tells the story of the prominent prefab architects who are rethinking their efforts, some of whom are closing down their operations. Those closing their operations include Michelle Kaufman of Glidehouse fame, Empyrean International, the company that worked to develop Dwell's prefab models and Marmol Radziner, the Los Angeles firm known for smartly designed Neomodern houses, has mothballed its prefab factory in Vernon in what it says is a temporary move.

Prefab is foundering again. Most of this distress is, of course, caused by the freeze of credit. But even if you take away this credit problem, making the leap to high-volume business remains prefab's central dilemma.

One way to reach that point is by colonizing big swaths of flat land and building 1,500 identical houses at the same time. Without a doubt this kind of development is what has helped get us into our current dilemmas. Hawthorne and others have another solution. The solution resides largely in helping develop prefab infill apartment complexes and cooperative housing.

At the heart of this solution is the tricky sociological process of detaching modern prefab from the ideal of the single-family house.

Most people in this country -- even most city-dwelling, design-loving sophisticates -- still locate their dreams of residential bliss under the roof of a detached house. That roof might be pitched or it might be Gropius-flat, but it still covers a house and not an apartment.

We will have to see how the current financial crisis will effect this powerful, very American, expectation. This article last week in the New York Times, Real Estate section, "Owners No More," may be the first indication.

Somebody call the design police!

I think I need an aspirin. Thanks to one of our stringers in Florida, we were linked to this fascinating video of an animated building---the former headquarters of Bayer in Leverkusen, Germany. This is called a "media facade." It is composed of 5.6 million LEDs over a 17,500 square meter surface. We can't imagine having an apartment overlooking this enormous vision! Imagine a whole neighborhood of such facades.

The gargantuan advertising form creates an intense kind of visual pollution that curtails any ability to say "No!" Also, seeing a piece of architecture used in this way makes us weepy.

For a look at how the LED plates were constructed, here's the link.

Hat Tip to B. Eby

Glenn Gould Speaks About Music

Glen Gould (upper) Tim Page (lower)

We rarely have the opportunity to listen to a musician talk just about music. Musical genius, Glenn Gould, referred to as the "James Dean of classical music," did one last interview before his untimely death six weeks later at the age of 50. Gould is legend. Although we rarely post about music (we are aching to say something about Gustavo Dudamel but reserve our enthusiasm so we don't appear to be wandering) we thought Gould personified a kind of music, design-mind worth honoring.

It appears that Gould scripted the whole interview for New York music critic Tim Page and himself! A weird but intriguing aspect. They recorded it just after Gould's 1981, historic, re-recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations (a story in themselves).

When we heard the interview, we were so pleased just to hear Gould's voice. You may, too. Here's the link to the interview. Musicians, this is an exquisite gab-fest that begins to get really cool about 20 minutes into the "interview."

twitter: @glenngouldfndn

What happened to the Bromo Seltzer Bottle?

Almost nothing today matches the impact of the colorful Bromo Seltzer image. It was a brand extraordinaire and a design triumph. This 1995 Baltimore Sun article we found fills in the colorful details.

The 51-foot-high bottle was fabricated of laminated steel. It was 20 feet in diameter, tinted blue to resemble the headache remedy's bottle and mounted on the very pinnacle of Baltimore's Emerson Drug Company headquarters at Lombard and Eutaw streets. What became known as the Bromo Seltzer Tower served as a potent landmark. The bottle even had a huge crown on the top.

So what happened to it? The revolving, blazing bottle lasted 25 years until January 1936, when winds and rain got the best of it. Adolph F. Nethen, general foreman of Claude Neon Lights of Maryland, climbed to the top and took the metal sheeting apart. The rusted, decayed materials were taken to the scrap yard. A sad demise for a great symbol.

We want that bottle back!

We are up against Goliath. We need your vote!

Help us keep architecture, sustainability, design and culture in the foreground of the conversation.

Brennan + Company Architects blog (the very one you are now reading!) has been nominated for a Mobbie Award in the category of "Art + DIY" AND also the category of "Misfits" (which makes some sense), by the Baltimore Sun.

It means a lot to us to be part of the blog wonders in Maryland. It would mean a heap of happiness for us if you faithful (and unfaithful) readers clicked the Mobbie icon at the top right and placed your vote for us (you can vote once a day!). Thanks!



Talk About Adaptive Reuse!

This 13th Century church in Maastricht, Netherlands, was re-purposed as a sensationally beautiful, contemporary bookstore. In the USA, we tend to tear buildings like these down because developers feel that the buildings are too difficult to adapt or that they are simply in the way of the developer's objectives.

Because of the dearth of historic preservation incentives, history and culture goes down with bulldozers and wrecking balls. Our own home town of Baltimore has demolished some fabulous old buildings to make way for such projects as high-rises and hospital expansions (requiring huge parking garages).

We do not oppose development, but we see projects like this as examples of the historical benefits and possible magnificence of reuse. The simple comfort of historical space and the urge to reflection they provide is immeasurable.

Small Sag Harbor Shelter

A great example of creating interior design cohesion even when creating zones within a small space.

Abstract Art Meets Football Stadium Success

Anne Truitt, "Apricots"

In 1975, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) included a number of Anne Truitt's Arundel paintings in an exhibition. "The works were white, starkly white, with a little white paint on top, and some marks in graphite." The first exhibition of abstract expressionism at the BMA, it was vilified by the art critic at the Baltimore Sun. Week after week The Sun expressed its denunciation of her work, even suggesting that all public funds be withheld from the BMA in punishment for its insult to public sense.

The event, including Truitt's diary account of it, is considered by Tyler Green editor of Modern Art Notes in this post. Green reports that the exhibition, today, of abstract artworks in museums, and even football stadiums, has become common and is well received. Perhaps the forcefulness of an art form's rejection may be the measure of its potential for future acceptance.

October 8, the Hirshorn Museum is mounting the first exhibition of Truitt's work since 1974. Ironically it was curated by Kristen Hileman. Hileman is the newly appointed Curator for Contemporary Art at...the BMA.

Link: Anne Truitt's legendary journal, Daybook

Frank Lloyd Wright's Unknown Legacy

Above is a trailer for a film entitled "One Hundred Women Architects." The film premiered at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in June as part of a Symposium celebrating the 50th year anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum in New York designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Over 100 women architects, designers and artisans worked with Frank Lloyd Wright, many of them going on to remarkable careers of their own. They are Frank Lloyd Wright's unknown legacy, and their practice forms a legacy for all women working in architecture today. The full length 20 minute film features architects Marion Mahony, Isabel Roberts, Jane Duncombe, Lois Davidson Gottlieb, Eleanore Pettersen, and Read Weber.

It is a little known fact that Wright was one of the few architects who hired women to work in his studio. His work force included at least 25% women. This was unheard of in his day. The film pays tribute to this history.

We've dicovered that you can order this 20-minute documentary film plus its backstory, the symposium discussion and an interview with Lois Gottlieb, a Wright Fellow at http://bwaf.org.

Small Homes. Big Deal.

A change in the building code in 2005 has allowed Los Angeles architects and builders to expand housing for first time buyers and middle income families. The new code allows builders to divide small parcels of land to create grouped small houses. They differ from large condominiums, because individuals separately own their homes. Buyers must agree to adhere to certain restrictions, such as not altering the exterior, or painting the facade a different color. These small lot subdivisions promise increasing density without creating large, anonymous complexes. We think it is a smart idea. The Architect's Newsletter has the fuller story.

Expand Your Vocabulary

Nadel Architects with Barrio Planners: Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Center

viv-id(vĭv'ĭd)

Architectural Record offers The First Word: A Dictionary of New Architecture Updated Daily. The writers take a look at new projects and---in a single word---explain what about each design caught their eye. A nice resource for many different reasons, all good.

Julius Shulman Film in US Theatical Release

The documentary film, Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman, has found a distributor, Art House Films. Yipee! Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, VISUAL ACOUSTICS celebrates the life and career of Julius Shulman, the world’s greatest architectural photographer, whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream. Shulman, who passed away this year, captured the work of nearly every modern and progressive architect since the 1930s including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner and Frank Gehry.

The film opens in NYC at Cinema Village on October 9. It works its way to the E Street Cinema in Washington DC for an opening on November 6. On October 16 VISUAL ACOUTICS opens in Los Angeles at, yes!, the Nuart Theater. The website link above provides dates for many other cities. This promises to be an enriching and fascinating film. By all accounts, besides being a genius photographer, Julius Shulman was a kind, funny and wonderful human. We could use that kind of role model. Right now. Let's go!

World's First Sustainable City to Be Built in the UAE?

How more ironic could it be that the petroleum rich United Arab Emirates (UAE) will be the first to build an entire city, Masdar, that will be the world’s first zero carbon, zero waste city powered entirely by renewable energy sources. While a substantial number of our citizenry see no need for action of any sort, even the petroleum nations get it. Hmm.

LAVA, The Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, a Sidney, Australia, firm created the prize-winning design.

2009 Shiny, Green Award

Photographer: Anne Gummerson

We are happy to say that our own Carri Beer, AIA, LEED, AP, and Rob Brennan, AIA, CSI, received the Natural Home Magazine 2009 Kitchen of the Year Award. They received the award for the superior integration of green materials, including recycled-paper counter tops; cork and rubber composite tiles; zero-VOC paint, PVC-free nontoxic wall coverings; 100% recycled cabinet material, and recycled-glass backsplash tiles. The addition of energy and water-saving appliances and recessed fluorescent lighting served to further enlarge the project's environmental scope.

Before Photo

Another distinction of the redesign was opening the dark, closed, 1960s kitchen and breakfast area to the living and dining rooms and the expansive view and ample daylight. The project is a great example of how a home owner can take a battered, cramped area and dramatically recreate it as a sunny, open, living space.

5 Shipping Containers + 3,0000 acres = Retreat

Cinco Camp, Roger Black’s West Texas retreat, is made of five shipping containers on his 3,000-acre ranch. “I wanted something that blends into the landscape and could be installed and eventually removed with minimal disturbance to the environment,” he said. Here's the NYT slideshow of Black's retreat.

Here's the NYT article relating the details of the project.

Rare Orchid Discovered on Eastern Shore

The "B'More Green" column in the Baltimore Sun provides this delightful story. Read it slowly. For those environmentally oriented, it is sheer poetry. It's here. Platanthera x canbyi: fewer than a dozen of these plants have been found in the last 70 years.

FAR FOOD

Click on image to enlarge.

A way to consider the real cost of food to the environment. Far Foods is an alternative packaging concept for supermarket produce, highlighting the distances that some foods travel and the resultant carbon dioxide released during the journey. The receipt features a boarding card style tear-off strip. By James Reynolds.

(via swiss-miss.com)

An Incomparable Chair Blog

For all of us who love them, the best chair blog, ev-ah. HERE.

First Floating Wetland Education Center

The Elizabeth River in Virginia is one of the most polluted in the country, but help is on the way. The University of Virgina School of Architecture (UVA) has established the Learning Barge as the first floating wetlands learning center in the country. There is a good podcast interview with founder of the project, Phoebe Crisman here explaining the ambitious goals of project and the dire situation of the river (the Crisman interview begins at 00:15:15).

Where others have placed structures directly on the wetlands, UVA decided to put people on the river. Floating on the river, one experiences the full impact of the river crisis and its effect on the wetlands. One begins to grasp the larger picture. A terrific idea.