radio

Was interviewed by WLRN's Luis Hernandez on his show, Sundial. Their article includes link to the audio recording. A highlight: "It's on architects and designers to a degree. And then through us, it's on everybody. On the one hand, we [architects] have enormous power in terms of being public intellectuals, activists, and teachers. We have an opportunity to set an example. But at the same time, architects have very little power in our society. In the case of carbon emissions, what drives most carbon emissions are policy decisions either made by public policymakers, like in government, or by private developers. The biggest thing that we could do is simply change our land-use patterns so that we don't drive everywhere--and that's a public policy decision that's really out of the hands of architects."

more press

FIU Magazine published a really nice article on tin box, including our critique of the project. In a nutshell, we don't think freestanding single-family houses are the best use for land, and we strongly advocate denser development. Great thanks to FIU Magazine for letting us get the word out.

And thanks, too, to Inspicio, which published our short pecha kucka presentation about the house over the summer.

Small town, big news

The South Miami City Commission voted Tuesday evening to require all new houses (and existing houses undergoing significant renovations) to install photovoltaic panels. The measure puts our small city in rare company; only three cities in California have similar measures. While the new law will only affect a few houses every year, it will probably have far-reaching consequences across the Sunshine State.

Day job - Italian Futurist edition

I am delighted and honored to find a short essay of mine in the magisterial catalog that accompanies the exhibition, Enrico Prampolini. Futurism, Stage Design and the Polish Avant-garde Theatre. at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. The exhibition is curated by Przemek Strożek, a brilliant scholar of avant-garde culture at the Institute of Art Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. The show highlights the numerous points of contact and overlap between Italian Futurism and the Polish avant gardes.

pecha kucha

Great thanks to my FIU colleague, Ray Elman, editor of Inspicio e-Magazine, for featuring tin box. The illustrated essay is based on a pecha kucha presentation we created on the house. It offers a quick overview of our attitudes toward sustainability and community.

Tea and Parks Ride this weekend

Please join us this Sunday for a bike ride through our city parks where we will discuss ideas related to them in the current  Master Plan. We will stop for tea in Cambridge Lawns.

wildlife conservation

We're humbled and honored to receive an extraordinary honor from the National Society for the Protection of Endangered Species. Our home, tin box, is now a Certified Jackalope Habitat! Their citation notes, in particular, our "dedication to preserving and maintaining the necessary balance of flora, fauna, and topography to support the life cycle of North America's most elusive mammal species."

While there are a handful of other certified habitats for this rare creature east of the Mississippi River, we are the first to achieve Platinum-level certification. The Society's rating system rewards property owners for installing landscape elements that support the jackalope (Lepus cornutus) throughout its life cycle. Pregnant jackalopes ("jennies") prefer folic acid-rich greens, such as spinach and collards, while juvenile jackalopes ("kits") often gorge themselves on wild berries and carotene-rich root vegetables. Our gardens feature areas dedicated to all of these plant species.

The topography of a jackalope habitat is important, too. This shy creature prefers secluded areas sheltered from predators by fallen logs or naturally occurring warrens. The mountainous landscapes of the American West are more conducive to jackalope life, yet even in South Florida we can support jackalope populations by carefully crafting wildlife habitats using available materials, such as our coral rock boulders and piles of fallen banana leaves.

interview

Students in the Broadcast Media program of FIU's School of Communication + Journalism came to tin box a few weeks ago to shoot footage for a class project on renewable energy. Their finished project is pretty good. Forgive the small video - Blogger restricts file sizes, so the video here is a little small.

The two students leading the project–Erica Santiago and Diana Guarnizo–are also producing a longer video that explores larger questions of social and ecological sustainability at tin box. We look forward to posting that later this spring!

garden, banana edition

We've got four bunches of bananas and one bunch of plantains, all in varying stages of ripening.  The bananas represent three different varieties. None of them are Cavendish (the typical grocery store banana), though we grow those as well.

This photo shows the banana plant's inflorescence, which is the big heart-shaped flower spike that grows out of the plant's stalk. The purple bracts (which look like giant petals) peel back to reveal the hands of banana fruit, each of which develops from a female flower that looks like a big snapdragon. The flowers have a faint banana smell to them.

Each banana cultivar has a different kind of inflorescence, and produces differently shaped fruit...

Announcing tin box's new partnership with IKEA

We are pleased to announce that tin box is now an official supplier to IKEA USA! Starting today, you will be able to purchase our sustainably ranched house rabbits, which IKEA will sell under the name Lïvstök. The rabbits are, of course, raised in a free range environment and fed only organic produce from our own garden. Initially, we are offering rabbits in three color schemes, but we are experimenting with new color combinations as we respond to the ever-changing tastes of the Millennial generation.

Rabbits are the ideal pet for small spaces, such as dormitory rooms, apartments, and your parents' basement. Their vegan diet also aligns nicely with many Millennials' cruelty-free lifestyles.

garden, artfully posed harvest edition

It's been a good season. For about six weeks, this was our weekly haul from the front yard. Definitely better than mowing a lawn.

salad

With our garden supplying prodigious amounts of greens, tomatoes, and other vegetables, we've been enjoying a lot of salads. Holly found a brilliant method for making, storing, and transporting up to a week's worth of salads, using Ball jars, and it's been really easy to do. The key is layering...

garden, el niño edition

The massive El Niño event we're going through has produced enormous amounts of rain in Miami this winter. Normally this is our dry season, with lower humidity levels and very little  precipitation. The Winter 2015-16 season, however, has been very wet. Our cistern is full, which means all our drinking water needs are met, and our gardens are bursting with crops. The raised beds in front of our house are filled with greens...

garden, feral edition

So, while I was in Ethiopia and Tanzania conducting research toward the next book (or two), the garden kind of went feral. It's been very hot and dry in Miami, which has stressed a lot of the plants. The greens have bolted and the sweet potatoes have wilted, but a few plants really thrived. This pile of tomatoes came from a volunteer plant (possibly a Roma hybrid) that plunked itself in just the right location.

introducing mud hut

We’re pleased to announce that, today, we’ve begun transitioning from tin box to mud hut. Our new venture is rooted in a concern for timeless methods of construction, which utilize materials and building technologies that are inherently sustainable and carbon neutral. We plan to build a new home utilizing locally-sourced bamboo for the framework, with a fiber-reinforced mud infill (hence the new moniker, mud hut). We will adapt the traditional Miccosukee palm thatch roof to fit the house, though we’ll need to reinforce it a bit to support our photovoltaic panels.

Because Miami is poor in clay resources, the mud infill will be made largely from cow manure, mixed with straw for reinforcement. The dung needs to be mixed while wet, which can be a smelly job; luckily, we have two teenagers who have yet to start earning their keep. We expect resistance from the municipal building authorities, of course, who are famous for their irrationally anti-telluric biases.

dealing with greens

Our weekly shares from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group we belong/subscribe to are huge. It takes about a week of cooking to get through this pile of fruits, vegetables and greens. One advantage to joining a CSA is being confronted with unfamiliar plants, and learning new recipes. And sometimes, we just have to improvise...

garden, avocado-as-substitute-for-egg-salad edition

Eureka. This week we invented a cholesterol-free (and vegan) substitute for egg salad. We simply mashed up half of one of our enormous avocados, added a chopped stalk of celery and some chopped pickles, seasoned it with vinegar, turmeric, paprika, pepper and salt, and served it on slices of country white bread from Zak the Baker.

In our next version, I think we'll mix in small slices of very dry tofu, to add protein and calcium, and to take the place of the egg whites.

garden, sweet potato edition

Clearing out the summer cover crops to make way for the fall planting season yielded us a few sweet potatoes and a lot of basil. These ended up in a simple curry, adapted from a recipe on Epicurious. This is simply a sauté of red peppers, onion and garlic, to which the potatoes are added (along with coconut milk and water), as well as snow peas. Their recipe calls for Thai green curry paste, for which I substituted red, and cilantro, which I replaced with Thai basil from the garden. I also added some dried hot pepper from the garden, since online recipes are never, ever hot enough. It's a relatively quick, filling, comfort-food-like meal, and goes great with Basmati or Jasmine rice.

garden, cow pea edition

Admit it: ever since you first saw Casablanca you've wondered, "just what does a hill of beans look like?"

More importantly, why would anyone have a hill of beans, and what would such a person do with a hill of beans? In our case, it starts with climate and soil, and ends with lunch...

community supported agriculture

We're fortunate to have a number of excellent sources for locally-grown produce here in South Florida, including weekly farmers' markets and numerous growers who participate in community supported agriculture (CSA) programs. CSAs are a terrific way to support local growers; community members purchase shares which entitle them to weekly package of that week's harvest. One of our favorite local farms, the Little River Cooperative, has launched a new CSA. They offer pick-ups at two locations: the Upper East Side Farmers Market (Saturdays, 10am-2pm, at Legion Park, Biscayne Blvd. and 66th Street) and the Grove Green Market (Thursdays, 3-8pm, Coconut Grove Playhouse parking lot, 3500 Main Highway). Check them out!

garden, future fruit edition

A number of plants in the back yards are flowering or starting to fruit. We hope to enjoy some summer crops. At left is the lone flower on our passion fruit vine, which has the triple benefits of offering a beautiful butterfly habitat plant (the streak on the left is a zebra longwing butterfly), producing stunning flowers, and rewarding us with delicious fruit. This vine does not produce much fruit, however, despite growing thickly (and quickly) on a sunny fence. We should look into figuring out how to get more flowers and fruit out of it.

What else is growing?

day job: edited volume edition

Four years ago, my friend Elie Haddad hatched the idea of editing a survey of architecture built around the globe during the last half century. Elie,  who I first met at the (then) Boston Architectural Center and is now Dean of the School of Architecture and Design at Lebanese American University, approached me with the idea of compiling what we hoped would become a standard text for scholars, teachers and students interested in the great diversity of architectural production in the contemporary world. We enlisted twenty collaborators, found a publisher (thank you, Ashgate!) and slowly assembled a book that carefully examines the broad range of approaches to the built environment that characterize this age of pluralism and globalization. The first copy of A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture just arrived, and I can't wait to start sharing it with colleagues and students. You can find a copy at Ashgate's website, or ask your local bookstore to order a copy.

photography

Been meaning to upload these photographs of tin box taken by Dana Hoff, a gifted South Florida-based photographer who frequently works for the American Institute of Architects. Several of these images were published in the Architect Magazine article, "Home Inspection," last September. They are far, far better than our instamatic shots, I have been told.

garden, banana edition

Harvested our first bunch of Ice Cream bananas today. It'll be some time before they ripen and we get to find out just what, exactly, an Ice Cream banana tastes like. Typically, bananas will ripen once the bunch is cut off and hung indoors. We harvested our first bunch of bananas (the more commonly eaten Cavendish variety) back in the fall, and they took several weeks to start ripening. Interestingly, the Cavendish bananas we grew stayed firm long after their peels turned brown, unlike the ones we typically buy in stores.

the garden at mid-winter

The winter solstice is a good time to take stock of the garden at tin box. It's been a weird winter with unusually high amounts of rain (we're still using rain water from the cistern for all our indoor use, about a month later than we could last year) and very hot temperatures (over 80 degrees most days). This has made it difficult to grow cool season vegetables. Nonetheless, we're starting to harvest green beans (left) and tomatoes from volunteers, those self-seeded plants that grow from last year's crops.

spreading the word, USGBC edition

Next Saturday, November 16, the Miami-Dade branch of the US Green Building Council (USGBC) is organizing a tour of sustainable houses in South Miami and Coral Gables. They've graciously invited us to participate, and the USGBC bus should get to tin box around 1:30.

Besides the opportunity to compare strikingly different techniques for designing ecologically sustainable buildings, the tour will also offer insights into how public policy can make communities more livable, enjoyable and sustainable. Among the people speaking on the tour are Jennifer Korth, the Grants & Sustainable Initiatives Administrator for the City of South Miami, and Jenny May, the Chair of the Coral Gables Green Task Force.

You can register through this link.

gnome

Can one garden gnome propitiate the gods of football and gardening? Can one Gartenzwerg assure our first successful crop of collard greens and the Philadelphia Eagles' first Super Bowl victory? Who but a fool would challenge the fecund power of Priapus, Greek god of fertility and patron of gardens, and his minuscule descendants?

Much thanks to Adam, favorite brother of tin box, for the awesome birthday present!

press

We're very fortunate to be featured in Residential Architect magazine, in a terrific article by Ben Ikenson on net zero construction. The article is illustrated with one of the amazing photos of our house by Dana Hoff, commissioned by the editors. Great thanks to Bill Richards, the Director of External Publishing for the American Institute of Architects, for commissioning the article.

thoughts on stairs

How many great stairs do you encounter in your everyday life? How often do you look forward to climbing and descending a staircase? Stairs offer clear advantages from the viewpoint of sustainability – they consume less electricity than elevators and escalators, and they add some nice exercise to our overly sedentary lives. But too often stairs are hidden away in fire-rated shafts, with that combination of concrete block walls and fluorescent lighting that just screams “maximum security prison.” Build better stairs! Make them a joy to climb, to descend, to pause and to share.

Art Fallout 2013

On Saturday, October 5, we’re participating in Art Fallout 2013, an annual cultural event in Fort Lauderdale. We’ll present our ongoing thinking about the sustainable management of water resources in a talk, “Precipitating a Solution,” at Glavovic Studio. (If you’re not familiar with Margi Glavovic Nothard’s work, do yourself a favor and check out the remarkable housing, urban landscapes and cultural facilities she’s built.) We’ll be on a panel with John Sandell, a multifaceted architect who teaches at Florida Atlantic University. We’re going to talk about our experiences with tin box, and extrapolate outward to consider how cities and regions can approach water and waste more sustainably.