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.