GREEN TO THE PEOPLE: 26TH STREET

However slowly, America is becoming a recycling culture. We recognize the need, in an age of dwindling natural resources, to use things again or to repurpose them whenever and wherever possible. In architecture, though, sustainability is not only a matter of using salvaged floorboards. It also has to do with taking simple, affordable materials and employing them in ingenious ways.

As architect Stephen Kanner points out, affordable housing is often built to a punishingly low budget, with designers forced to use the cheapest possible materials. That means certain recycled products are simply not a possibility, since their initial cost is often higher than more traditionally sourced building materials. But even stucco and cement can be sustainable, if they are designed to last. The most important criterion for greenness, after all, is how long a building stays with us. If we put it up fancy sustainable houses and apartments that are knocked down in a decade or two to make way for something even fancier, it will be tough to argue that they were ever green to begin with.

Category:

Education

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• webstories
• architecture
• sustainability
• sustainable
• los
• angeles
• stephen
• kanner
• juan
• devis
• kcet
• chris

[tetnbailey]

What a fantastic piece of affordable architecture. I stumbled upon you're building when I was on vacation this year from the UK and for all the reasons you give it merit I understood it when I saw it and took several photos for reference..... Nice work