Green Central Blog

from April 3rd
by Lucia Athens
Milan

One of my hosts in Italy was Mr. Mario Zocattelli, the President of GBC Italy. Mr. Zocatelli is a physically commanding personage, very tall, with a deep authoritative voice and friendly, personable style. We immediately hit it off. I was lucky enough to get to spend quite a bit of time with him. Mario drove me from Roverto to Milan, to attend a meeting of the Milan Chapter of the GBC. First I had a nice lunch with other important representatives of GBC and Mr. Lorenzo Orsenigo, Director of ICMQ, a well-established building certification organization. After feasting on pasta and tiramisu, my hosts showed me around a massive sustainable development site (in the Northern part of Milan.) The project, being done by Heinz, is called Porta Nuova. See www.hines.com/property/detail.aspx?id=2179

The 34.3 acre site will eventually have 24.7 million square feet of mixed use space for a hotel, office, retail, a museum, and fashion exhibition hall. Cesar Pelli and Kohn Pederson and Fox are a few of the stellar architects on hand to help with the design. The project is currently under construction with foundation work, but stay tuned. This project is all set to be LEED certified, and will likely become one of the most important green developments in the world.

We went back to Lorenzo’s offices for the meeting. I gave a presentation in English, without Italian translation. Most Italians speak English quite well. Then there was a presentation by Mr. Zocatelli on their progress with USGBC and creating a LEED Italy tool adapted to their building standards. Towards the end of the meeting, volunteers were recruited to help with their efforts. Mario joked that it would only require a little bit of bloodletting in order to make a contribution. I could relate! Creating LEED is a lot of work, but well worth the effort. Someone asked who in the room were the newest LEED AP. Hands went up and applause followed. The meeting broke up and I was introduced to some interesting people, including the mechanical engineers for the Porta Nuova project, who are with Hilson Moran See www.hilsonmoran.com

After 20 years of involvement in green building in the US, it was exciting to see how things were catching on in this part of Europe.

from April 1st, 2009

by Lucia Athens
Rovereto, Italy (near Verona)

Jeremy Rifkin is a name I have been familiar with since way back in the 80’s when I read WorldWatch papers. These have always been an authoritative source of sustainability information. He now heads the Foundation on Economic Trends which has created campaigns including “Beyond Beef,” “Civil Society Education,” Biotech genetic commerce, and now a campaign called “Hydrogen Economy.” Rifkin’s name has now taken on an almost mythic quality as a green economic guru.  He has written 17 books, including one called The European Dream. The book description from his website reads: The American Dream is becoming ever more elusive. Americans are increasingly overworked, underpaid, squeezed for time, and unsure about their prospects for a better life. One third of all Americans say they no longer even believe in the American Dream.

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from March 31st
by Lucia Athens
Rovereto, Italy (near Verona)

The headquarters of the Italian GBC and Distretto Technologico are located in the upper floors of a modern building in this northern Italian city. My host Alberto Ballardini is with Distretto Technologico, a consortium of 30 businesses all focused on green issues. Their themes relate to Renewable Energy, Sustainable Materials, and Smart Technology. The “C” in GBC is pronounced with a “ch” sound. I just love saying G-B-CHee. Everything always sounds better in Italian.

I grabbed a hoteling office spot to catch up on some email, and found myself right in the heart of their business operations. They are in the process of creating an Italian version of LEED, and at the same time providing technical assistance to projects that desire to pilot the tool. Everywhere I went, at every desk, there were LEED reference guides, a familiar reminder of home. As I sat surfing the net, I overheard two of the staff discussing in Italian some of the LEED Site credits, trying to interpret what the requirements mean. They were chatting animatedly about some of the Site credits, which I had written years ago when I chaired the LEED Site and Water TAG (Technical Assistance Group). It was a profound moment for me, realizing how broad-reaching LEED now is as a green building benchmark. It was now almost ten years after the early days of LEED and my first involvement with it, and I was half way around the world. Nice to see how far things have come.

from March 29th
by Lucia Athens
Venice, Italy

I just arrived today in Venice, on my way to speak at the Innovate to Beat the Crisis conference. See http://www.festivaldellecittaimpresa.it/ At this time of year, they have high tide, or “aqua alta” as they call it. There is a siren that goes off about 2 hours before the tide starts to rise. This city has been sinking for centuries, with foundations on top of foundations on top of foundations. When the tide is particularly high, there are special raised walkways that are laid down in the most flooded areas. There are even maps that show circulation routes that avoid the flooding. Not having been to Venice in 25 years, and being a bit jet lagged, I was not quite tuned in to the perils that high tide might hold for me that very night. I walked about 20 minutes from my hotel, in the old Jewish ghetto, to the Rialto bridge. My journey was rewarded with a wonderful meal at the Trattoria dellal Madonna, a place where the locals go to dine. I was introduced to the restaurant by my Italian architecture professor, Paolo Baruchieri, when I was studying landscape architecture in a studies abroad program. The place had not changed one jot. Still the wonderful cubist paintings on the walls, the white jacketed waiters, and the delicious spaghetti alla vongole (with fresh clams in the shell).

By the time I left the restaurant it was near 11 pm. After turning out of the alley onto the main canal, I was surprised to find water lapping over the edges of the canal and up against the building foundations. I slogged through water up to well over my ankles, and then along the temporary walkways back the way I had come. I quickly realized the route that had brought me there was now impassable. Luckily, I hopped on a water taxi, or vaporetto which ferried me back to the area of my hotel. Between the vaporetto landing and my hotel was another slog through about 9 inches of water. With my short ankle boots completely filled up with the (not very clean) canal water, I finally got back to the hotel, dry socks, and towels. Over the next few days, I began to notice that shops sell huge rubber galoshes and plastic booties. I began to notice how many women wear flat, high topped boots. Fashionable, but practical for walking all over the city and tromping through high tide. Venice was a city inundated by the tides already, and with the rising sea level threat brought by global climate disruption, this would accelerate. Even now, the lower floors of many buildings are not used as living areas. The upper piano nobiles of the grand casas stayed well above the lower floors which tend to flood. How would Venice deal with rising sea levels? My friends in Venice did not seem to have much confidence that the huge multi-billion euro floodgate project, aka Project Moses, would ever be finished due to cost overruns and impracticality. The project intends to construct 78 huge steel gates across tidal inlets to the Venice lagoon. The highest sea levels in 22 years were experienced back in December after massive rainfall, resulting in water levels 5 feet above normal. For footage, see http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=95431

As climate change accelerates, Venetians and others living in coastal areas can expect increased flooding, unpredictable extreme storm events, and ever rising water levels. We as design professionals must explore not only how to lower our climate impact with new development, but also how to adapt to the changing conditions of climate. How will cities manage increased flooding and disasters? How can we create greener infrastructure strategies such as natural drainage systems to provide increased resiliency in the face of more extreme and unpredictable conditions? In the UK, they are required to place all electrical service and outlets several feet off the ground, an interesting code response that anticipates rising sea levels and floods. The need to stay nimble with our building codes and design of the built environment is not something we can wait to deal with until later. We must act now

by Lucia Athens
Seattle, Washington

Today, the City of Seattle and the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced a unique partnership: the new Green Preservation Lab. The lab partners will help develop policies for existing buildings and neighborhoods to make them more green and energy efficient. Help is needed in this arena, as the needs of preservation and the needs of energy efficiency can sometimes be in conflict with issues such as replacement windows negatively impacting the aesthetic of historic structures. A clearinghouse for resources on green building rehab will also be available at the New Lab. The announcement followed a keynote speech by Richard Moe, the President of the National Trust, the previous evening. The lecture was held at the sanctuary of the Seattle First United Methodist Church (now Daniels Recital Hall), a building that was narrowly saved from the wrecking ball. Kevin Daniels of Daniels Development and Diane Sugimura, Director of Seattle’s Department of Planning and  Development, undertook an heroic effort to save the gorgeous structure, one of the few attractive buildings in that particular corner of downtown. As I sat there under the domed roof, gazing up at the stained glass windows and the massive pipe organ, it amazed me that anyone ever could have considered razing the building to the ground, or in fact that it’s even legal to do so.

Seattle’s outstanding historic building stock is an under-recognized resource in our city, that has not been front and center in the green building dialogue. Thank goodness that’s changing now. There is nothing more green you can do than keep an existing building in service, rather than building a new one. The press announcement by Moe and Mayor Greg Nickels was held in the Joseph Vance Building, an historic building that has been revitalized by Jonathan Rose Companies LLC.  Mr. Rose is a visionary developer from NYC. See www.rose-network.com The building now houses quite a few sustainability-minded tenants, including the nonprofit Sightline. Dubuque, Iowa and San Francisco have been selected as other partner cities in the National Trust’s initiative. For more info on all three of the Labs, see http://www.preservationnation.org/issues/sustainability/green-lab/

The new Center will be housed at the Piston &  Ring Building, 1429 12th Ave, on Capitol Hill. Liz Dunn, noted preservationist and the new Director of the Green Preservation Lab, previously helped to save the building along with Pacific Supply and the Melrose Triangle Building, considered to be part of “auto row” and charming signifiers of the area’s previous architectural heritage. Let’s hope that someday soon, there might even be incentives offered by Seattle Public Utilities, in conjunction with Seattle City Light, to support the preservation of historic structures as well as their updating to make them green and energy efficient. Keeping materials out of the landfill AND reducing greenhouse gas emissions and energy use: now that’s something to write home about.