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!