Saint Augustine, FL

Hampton, NH (I went to highschool here)

Architecture 2030

Edward Mazria from Architecture 2030 spoke last Friday at the School of Architecture. I first became fascinated with his “Passive Solar Energy Book” from the 80’s as an undergraduate student 10 years ago. Passive Solar energy was my first introduction to ecological design and provides a great example of ancient technology mixed with practical building orientation principles to save both heating and lighting. His talk however was focused on Climate Change and he gave out some striking sustitics that really made me think about where global energy is going.

Global energy demand is: 48% Buildings (heating and cooling 40%, building 8%)
27% Transportation
23% Industry

He focused his talk to his audience of architecture/design students for them to see the key role they play as designers to come up with innovative ways for buildings to be energy efficient. He also shocked us with US costal maps he has done of the effects of 1 meter of rising sea levels. (AL Gores maps were 3 meters and just one meter will do unbelievable damage) I found his mix of energy facts, sea level maps, and challenge to designers to be inspiring despite the reality of the climate crisis nightmare we face today.

Architecture2030.org

Migrating Animal Fence?

Border Fence

So we have all heard that homeland security has been work on building a "Secure Fence” to stop the flow of illegal immigration and drugs since 2006. The 1,952 mile (3,141 km) border between the United States and Mexico covers both desert and urban areas. Not only is this wall cutting off small towns that have always visited each other it is preventing animals from reaching water sources, migrating, reaching potential habitats.
Smugglers will always find a whole in the fence but will migrating animals?

US/mexico "Secure Fence Act of 2006",

town center?

Main Street.

I spent a lot of my teenage years with my friends in our market square. I grew up in New England and lived in Belfast, ME as a child and Portsmouth, NH as a teenager. We always lived in walking and biking distance to down town and school. It was something important to my mom who wanted me to be independent and not have to drive me everywhere. I greatly appreciated this freedom and could easily walk from the park, to a friend’s house, to my part time jobs, to the store, and to school. My mom dug up the sidewalk around our house and planted vegetables. We had compost in the back as well. Having grown up this way I see the benefits of urban living with amenities at a close walk or bike ride away. My small city also had grocery stories, individually owned businesses in town, a post office, and library all with in walking distance. I have been think about the design of Austin and its town center a lot. Everything is so spreed out!

$400,000 a year on grafiti?

I read the other day in the Daily Texan that the City of Austin spends $400,000 a year cleaning up graffiti around town and plans to prosecute graffiti artists. There is a task force to hunt the artists down and identify their tags to then fine them. I am not a fan of poorly done graffiti in bad places though I enjoy well-done work as well as the uncontrollability of street art. Philly started their amazing city mural program as a way to control graffiti around the city. The program was designed so that caught graffiti artists would have to do community service and help with city murals along side artists and volunteers. Amazing murals now cover the city.
It would be great if some of that $400,000 could go into Austin murals! Austin has a weird history of not supporting public art mural projects and even racist blotters covering up Mexican American murals around the Holly Power plant (John Yancey gave me a bit of history about it last year). I am happy to say that the 2 youth mural projects I have done at Kealing Jr. High have not suffered any graffiti tags over the last 2 years. It has shows me that youth can handle a paint brush and respect each others work if given the chance.