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1.what is green?
The above articles were a series published in the Peninsula Pulse newspaper, Door County, Wisconsin. |
On The Green: By Virge Temme, AIA Chapter 7: The Hunt for Hidden Treasure Maybe it's all the pirate stories I heard as a kid, or the tales of Ali Baba woven by my second-grade music teacher..but the quest for hidden treasure has always drawn me in. I'm not an antique collector by any means. But I am smitten with finding good bits of architecture that can be incorporated into new construction. In college I discovered my very first architectural "find", salvaged from a burned-down Victorian home in central Illinois. I found this lovely piece of carved trim at a salvage warehouse in Champaign, Illinois only to learn that it came from the very same mysterious dark green home that had enchanted me when I was a little girl. This bit of trim is now a cherished work of art on my wall. From that salvage yard also came the 1890s trim and stair rail for the home we were remodeling at the time. The experience opened for me new horizons. The Japanese embrace the concept of wabi-sabi.the discovery of beauty in old things. Western society advises brides to wear "something old" as part of the balance for good fortune. And green architecture also recognizes the advantage of salvaging old, or formerly used, items as a means of enhancing sustainability to new homes. The late Sam Mockbee, a gold-medal architect, brought the practice to a pinnacle with his work at The Rural Studio. He and his young architecture students designed and built homes for low-income residents in Alabama. They used conventional building materials coupled with such unconventional goods as salvaged carpet squares and licensed plates for exterior walls, car windshields for skylights, and discarded tires rammed with earth as building foundations. All these were brought together as truly elegant architectural works of art. In Milwaukee, the Urban Ecology Center - another gorgeous piece of architecture- also incorporates salvaged goods such as maple flooring saved from a demolished grade school, metal decking that once served as a portable landing strip for the Army, and colorful chairs that were once the fiberboard spools that held newsprint at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal. In my own practice my clients and I have often used discarded items from one project to enhance another. Large multi-paned windows from one client's demolished home are now filtering light into another client's painting studio. Wooden French doors and cabinets were salvaged and reused by another client as a means of bringing forward memories from his old home to the new one. Trusses have been salvaged and designed into new homes. Wall studs, rafters, flooring, refurbished plumbing fixtures, concrete block and stained glass windows have all been salvaged for use in new homes and additions. It is these items that provide character, richness and a sense of continuity. Salvaging has become a chic, mainstream practice, with even high-end homeowners strolling through salvage yards and combing the Internet for architecture antiques such as vintage tiles, light fixtures, doors, windows and fireplaces. Often the motive is finding a lower price. More often, the desire is for richer character than would be found in a new item. Seekers are cautioned, though, to make certain the items are not stolen, as this is becoming a problem in such salvage-rich areas as New Orleans. There is no question that salvaging can sustain our sense of history, continuity, and character. An often overlooked value in these treasures, however, is that these bits of salvaged goods can also reduce the environmental impact of construction. This is the second tenet of the environmentalist's mantra: "reduce, reuse, recycle." If an existing item can be reused, instead of manufacturing a new one, then landfills are less affected, energy is saved, and the air and water of our planet could become at least a bit less polluted. |