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."

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.

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!

spreading the word, AIA Florida edition

The spring issue of Florida/Caribbean Architect, the journal of the Florida chapter of the American Institute of Architects, has a nice article about tin box. Thanks to editor Diane Greer for including us in this issue!

spreading the word, HGTV edition

Much thanks to Kara Franker for her very kind article about the house in HGTV's Frontdoor.

spreading the word, video-embedded edition

This is a copy of the story NBC6 ran about our house as part of their Earth Week coverage. Our one complaint: the story credits David exclusively, when the project was a close collaboration between the two of us. Otherwise, great editing and camerawork, and much thanks to Danielle Alvarez for organizing the story and Carlos Ruiz for organizing the tour of green homes!

spreading the word, continued

Here is a brief text we put together for today's First Miami Tour of Green Houses, organized by Carlos Ruiz and sponsored by AIA Miami and the Miami Association of Realtors:

Our home approaches sustainability as a set of social and ecological concerns. Social sustainability describes the way our house helps foster a sense of community from the scale of family to the scale of the neighborhood. Ecological sustainability describes the range of approaches we use to positively impact the natural environment at the local, regional and global scales.

spreading the word

This morning, our local NBC affiliate began running a story about sustainable building practices as part of their Earth Day coverage of environmental issues. The story might include footage of tin box shot Thursday by a reporter/cameraman - and FIU grad - named Joe. The story is also meant to publicize tomorrow's tour of five area homes chosen for their sustainability, in which we are really honored to participate. Both the tour and the TV appearance were organized by Carlos Ruiz, a local architect and realtor who is building the first two spec green homes in Dade County.

I’m told the camera adds five pounds

Spent the morning with Ronna and DeShawn, two FIU students working on a class assignment to interview an architect who has designed a house for her/himself. Clearly reduced to scraping the barrel, they asked me to talk about tin box. Hopefully we’ll be able to share some of the video soon.

One of the themes that came up during the interview is how important it is to de-mystify the design and building processes. All of the television shows and cable networks spawned by This Old House have helped people understand construction better. Yet we’re still looking for a more insightful popular discourse about design in America. We’re hoping that all of the public outreach we’re attempting – through this blog, site visits and other media – will help make the design process more accessible to a broad audience of designers, builders, clients, financiers and government officials.

another benchmark

We'll know we've finally made it big time when tin box appears in Unhappy Hipsters.