Martha, Martha, Martha

She’s everywhere, she’s everywhere!*

Not only can Martha Stewart help you with the paint color, cookware, furnishings, crafts and library (not to mention television and radio entertainment) in your home, she can also actually design your home.  Yes, Martha Stewart is an armchair architect.  And has been for some time now.  Were you aware that she has been working with national home builders KB Homes for the past five years?  Evidently she and some of her staff have designed five homes in collaboration with KB Homes, the first four of which are based on her homes in New York, Connecticut and Maine, and the last of which was unveiled recently at the International Builders Show in Orlando.  This most recent home is dubbed the KB Homes GreenHouse, is a net-zero energy home (meaning that over the course of a year, it generates at least as much energy as it consumes) and has earned a USGBC LEED Platinum rating, the highest in the LEED system.

I must say, it’s not much to look at, is it?  I think it might be the color scheme, because it doesn’t appear that they’ve skimped on facade details like windows or garage doors.   What is with those applied “architectural” pieces on the gables?  I’m shuddering. 

Actually, for a home that is priced at $380,000 and is 2,600 square feet (which must really change with local market conditions, no?), I’m fairly impressed.  I’m definitely more impressed with the interior images I have seen.

 

If you’d like to take a virtual tour, you can register here.

Overall, bravo KB Homes and Martha.  LEED Platinum?  That is really some serious energy conservation.  Apparently all of the energy to power the house is generated with a very large photovoltaic array on the roof.  The house is still connected to a city power grid so that it can both draw from it on cloudy days and at night, and contribute any excess energy it might accumulate during the day back to the grid.  I can see how this works well in Florida, where the house was built, but is probably not practical for every location.  And I am guessing this house does not function at LEED Platinum capacity in an established, tree-lined neighborhood (cause those darn leaves and branches would shade the solar panels).  It’s probably best in a neighborhood like this one, in Stapleton, Colorado, where there’s an entire community of Martha-designed homes. 

I’m as big a fan of M.S. as the next gal.  I save her magazines like they are museum pieces.  I lament the loss of Blueprint magazine (R.I.P. you amazing publication, you).

But I’m not sure they went far enough with the KB Homes GreenHouse.  To me, it's just your typical builder home with some major advances in energy generation and consumption.  Shouldn’t the exterior indicate those advances in some way?  KB Homes has probably done their research and decided that the majority of Americans don’t want their homes to reflect these advances, but I’m betting there’s an entire market of homebuyers who don’t know what they are missing.  Isn’t this what happened with the Prius?  For it’s first four or five years, the Prius was that crazy-weird car that got amazing gas mileage.  Then it completely took off and hit its tipping point among mainstream car-buyers.  Probably because Cameron Diaz bought one.  I think Martha Stewart has that type of power here.  Come on, Martha.  Give us a Cameron Diaz moment.

*10 points if you can correctly identify the references of the post title and first sentence.  I’ll respond in the Comments section.

The Economic Value of Green Buildings

Looks like it's finally a good investment to go GREEN, according to economists. A paper forthcoming in a leading economics journal, The American Economic Review, finds that buildings with LEED or Energy Star ratings yield an 16% higher return than similar buildings without those ratings. Thanks to Dr. Jay for the tip.

A night at the ballpark

Last Thursday night we attended the Washington Nationals vs. Colorado Rockies game with N and R at Nationals Park in D.C. As I mentioned previously, this is the first major ballpark to be certified LEED Silver, so it’s a fun place to both watch a baseball game and be an architecture critic.

For the most part, it’s a very nice, well-constructed stadium. Let’s get to the nitty-gritty. It was designed by Populous (formerly HOK Sport) and Devrouax & Purnell Architects and Planners, seats 41,888 fans and cost $611 million of public money to build. Word on the street is that the Lerner family, who own the Nationals, spent tens of millions of dollars of additional construction money. N had the opportunity to take a construction tour before it officially opened last year, so she gave me the low-down on many of the LEED features and stories she remembered from construction. She and R also gave us the stadium tour which included pointing out all the vantage points for the monuments. The stadium itself wasn’t designed to have permanent views of the D.C. monuments (which is a shame) but mostly because the area where it’s situated is a growing one, and there are many high-rises slated to go up around it, so trying to preserve views would be futile. But some view corridors do currently exist, if you hunt them out. This was my second visit to Nationals Park- we went a few weeks ago when family was in town. We all complained that the stadium wasn’t well-situated for views, but I guess we didn’t know where to look.

The stadium is on the west side of the Anacostia River, just about a mile south of the Capitol. Eventually there will be an entire river park development of green space to connect the water’s edge with the entrance to the park. They have just recently opened water taxi service to the park from Alexandria (woo-hoo!) and National Harbor, and eventually there should be service from other parts of the city. Dr. Jay and I took the Metro to Navy Yard station, which is about two blocks from the Park. It was super convenient getting to the Thursday night game, though we had a bear of a time getting home- it involved the subway, a bus, and a taxi and two hours of our life. But oh well, lesson learned.

Some of the LEED features I saw employed?

- Proximity to public transportation

- Bike parking and Bike valet

- Availability of Recycling receptacles

- Dual-flush toilets (which N pointed out no longer have their signs indicating that they are dual flush, therefore, the majority of the public will probably not know to move the lever to the UP position for most flushing needs)

- Recycled materials (and in general, less packaging) at concessions like napkins, etc.

-Green roofs

- Use of local materials: concrete came from next door, along the Anacostia

And a few other features that are less-discernible to the naked eye:

-It was developed on a former Brownfield site, so they got points for cleaning up the site

- There is an intricate ground and storm water filtration system that will protect the Anacostia River by separating water used for cleaning the ballpark from rainwater, and treating both sources of water before releasing it back to the sanitary and stormwater systems.

- There is high-efficiency lighting

- Construction materials contain 20% recycled content.

- They used drought-resistant landscape materials

- Roof materials have a high degree of reflectance, keeping the cooling costs down

What do I think of the park as an architectural piece? Well… I’ll defer to this assessment. I’ll say this: I’ve been to seven major league stadiums and Nationals Park isn’t my favorite. But we had fun with N and R, most definitely.

They had to put on their Rally Caps because the Nationals needed rallying that night. They did not win that game, unfortunately.

Oh, and the first major league game at Nationals Park? March 30, 2008: Atlanta Braves vs. Washington Nationals. The Nationals defeated the Braves 3–2 with a walk-off home run from Ryan Zimmerman (former UVA-man). Oh, the irony.

Green is all around me

It's St. Patty's Day and I have just begun to study for the LEED NC exam, which I have scheduled for March 26th at 1:30 p.m. Ouch! I can't believe I am making a public announcement, but hopefully that's incentive to do well and make this one a success. As if the hefty price tag is not enough. What is LEED you ask? I was going to write a post all about it, but my friend Cassi (in my head I call her Cassi the Extraordinary) who is also taking the exam on that day wrote a great post about it last week, so I thought I'd give her a virtual shout out : http://leomonkey.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/gloom-doom/ To prepare for the intense studying (okay, memorizing), I was reading from a text called In the LEED written by a former test-taker who started a blog about preparing for the exam and turned all of his knowledge in to a helpful text (smarty pants!). He explains all the different credits, their intents and implementation methods and how the various points are awarded. Currently, buildings can be rated LEED Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum based on the number of points:

• Certified - 26-32 points
• Silver - 33-38 points
• Gold - 39-51 points
• Platinum - 52-69 points

Many cities around the country are now (some for a few years already) requiring that all city-funded new construction over 5,000 s.f. or a certain dollar amount or major renovations to existing building be at least LEED Silver. Clearly the demand for LEED Accredited Professionals is rising. Instead of talking more about the finer points of the process, I thought I'd write about my limited experience with the LEED program in the past. I had the great pleasure of volunteering on Saturdays for several months last year at the Ronald McDonald House in Austin, Texas which was the third building in Texas to be awarded LEED Platinum and Austin's first. It was designed by Don Eckols of Eckols & Associates and built by The Beck Group. It's a beautiful building that brings comfort to hundreds of people each year, and volunteering there gave me the chance to experience how an extremely energy-efficient building functions from day to day. It was a real eye-opener into both the success of many of the systems (the fact that they drastically cut the energy consumed as compared to their older, smaller building and can and do serve 3 times as many families as the old Ronald McDonald House in Austin) and the challenges. Performance of these systems is highly dependent on the user, and in a case like the Ronald McDonald House, the user is often temporary. A family may stay for a night or a week or 6 months and they have access to the house's kitchen and laundry facilities, both of which are furnished with energy-conserving appliances. I learned the washing machines were often difficult for people to maneuver because they require small amounts of the concentrated detergent very different from how most families' machines operate. This lead to the machines malfunctioning frequently. The staff posted directions which were sometimes followed and sometimes neglected. I guess my point is that it may take time for us to catch up with these high-functioning buildings. On the otherhand, many of its features (like the lights on timers and sensors) were foolproof. LEED has a category called Energy and Atmosphere and a Prerequisite of it are Minimum Energy Requirements. While I agree this is highly important and should be a Prerequisite (something that can make or break any certification whatsoever), I also think it's necessary to monitor a building's future performance. Points seemed to weigh more heavily on the design and simulation of energy optimization (which happens before construction) rather than it's ultimate performance once user's take over. I recognize the intention, but this is one area I think LEED needs to pay more attention to. The earlier example I mentioned is just a tiny part of how a building functions where things can go wrong. In order for a building and it's parts to perform at the level of Platinum, many many things need to go right, and I think more effort should be made to monitor a building's future performance. I'll leave you with a photo of the Ronald McDonald House in Austin.