With First Class Stamps to 1600 Penn. Ave.

Dear Michelle:

I hope you’re enjoying the new digs. You made a great choice on the swearing-in outfit; it defined your style and signaled the flair of the new first lady.

You know, the girls’ jackets got a lot of press, but I have to take issue with with dressing your children in clothes made by children. There simply must be some room in those big Barbara Bush closets for some sustainably and ethically produced goods. The family of O is too smart, too connected, and too wealthy to not consider the environmental and social dimensions of material consumption.

The First Family does have to be relatable and relevant figure for the American public, of course. Nobody expects you to go crunchy-Berkeley style on the White House (now officially the House of Color); nobody wants to see the Obamas in hemp. But it has been shown quite well in the first week of your ascension that your taste in gowns has huge impact (see one-shoulder drapes and white, white, white), and you could just as easily have a big effect on the demand and acceptance of ethically produced goods. You’ve got the power–use it for a good cause!

You friend always,

Voter 61,684,339

Dear LEED: you’ve been outdone

Landscape architects fudged around for a long time, thinking (enviously) about the effect of LEED green building standards on the profession of architecture. Are sustainable standards possible in landscape design? Are sustainable landscapes relevant to global environmental crises (e.g. climate, biodiversity, water)?

The American Society of Landscape Architects, The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the United States Botanic Garden have laid down a resounding affirmation to the above with the Sustainable Sites Initiative.  From the website:

The services people enjoy from healthy ecosystems are the unobtrusive foundation of daily life. Yet people often underestimate or simply ignore the values from these “ecosystem services” when making land-use decisions— only to realize later how difficult, expensive, and sometimes impossible it is to replicate services once they are lost. The central message of the Sustainable Sites Initiative is that any landscape—whether the site of a large subdivision, a shopping mall, a park, an abandoned rail yard, or even one home—holds the potential both to improve and to regenerate the natural benefits and services provided by ecosystems in their undeveloped state.

The site details their core concern for sustainable landscapes and their impacts on environmental problems, but more importantly: ample case studies. The project still seems rather nascent; let’s be optimistic that it can expand to the ubiquity that LEED has taken.

Kresge Foundation Headquarters by Conservation Design:

Clinton Beach Park Vegetated Structure by the Berger Partnership:

Point Fraser Precinct Development by Syrinx Environmental Planning:

Lethal Times in the Tennessee Valley

Knoxnews has posted a galley of scenes from the Tennessee Valley Authority cleanup of the recent spill of toxic coal-ash-sludge.  Check it.  Some previews:

Your next best friend: Ecology and Society

Scholarly publications are too often an esoteric, expensive bunch of journals that offer little to no access for those without academic institution affiliations.  There is a growing movement for more open-source, open-access methods of sharing scholarly work: Creative Commons licenses, data wikis, free online journals, etc. One of the most relevant of the last category is Ecology and Society, an online and print journal that focuses on the intersections of the natural and built environments through their related disciples (e.g. ecology, urban planning, anthropology).  The latest issue covers a great deal of important issues in Latin American resource management and urbanization; Volume 13, issue 2 available here:

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/

Archives are fully available and searchable online.  Enjoy.

le mur végétal

“The vertical garden is something closer to a living painting than a garden.”

- Patrick Blanc

The French botanist Patrick Blanc has been creating what Ping Magazine calls, “organic wallpapers” since 1988.

To replace soil,  Blanc uses a lightweight structure composed of  a metal frame, a 1cm thick sheet of pvc, and a layer of felt. The plants put roots through the felt without damaging the walls of the building, and a mineral complex mixed with water flows evenly through the living tapestry from the top of the wall.

Blanc notes that the walls can reduce energy consumption because they have an insulating effect similar to that of green roofs and that they cleanse the air with the same or greater efficiency than plants with their roots in the ground. The vertical gardens require minimal human intervention after installation and can support richly textured plant life over a multitude of surfaces.

This scientist/landscape architect has even created a dress out of living plants:

Check out his website for more.