MY SEMESTER AT ECOSA INSTITUTE fall 2011

Visit to a house in Flagstaff made of shipping containers that...

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 01:56:00 -0500

Visit to a house in Flagstaff made of shipping containers that my teachers here designed!

On our way home from the airport we took a detour up to Jerome,...

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:41:00 -0500

View out from Jerome, shadow of the hill

hillside town = lots and lots of stairs

amazing kaleidoscope store!

On our way home from the airport we took a detour up to Jerome, a small mining town built into the side of a hill now largely filled with tourism and art.

TUCSON | Highlight #4: Brad Lancaster & Bicas Brad Lancaster...

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:52:00 -0500

Brad Lancaster!

fire pole down from roof hang out space

garden: edible, rainwater fed, shading

public display of the past

reclaiming & beautification of sidewalks

curb cutting

washing machine water directed to plants

Bicas!

TUCSON | Highlight #4: Brad Lancaster & Bicas

Brad Lancaster is a rainwater harvesting guru who took us on a tour of Tucson for one of the days. In addition to showing us how he has created a rainwater harvesting system at his house, he explained many of the community initiatives he has been a part of. In contrast to some of the other speakers we have had, he is addressing the problems in a more condensed urban neighborhood.

Some of his community work includes curb cutting in order to divert polluted street run-off, which would normally go to storm water drains and then into rivers, into vegetation. These are often planters that are pushed out into the road or within the center of an intersection, narrowing the street and/or creating a round-about, therefore slowing down traffic within neighborhoods. Through working outside on these projects, making the public spaces like sidewalks more enjoyable spaces, publicly displaying pictures of what an area used to look like, and providing community resources (like his outdoor rainwater washing machine), Brad attracts the attention and support of the community. As Brad was talking to us outside within the trees planted along his block (see picture above), a neighbor Brad didn’t know stopped as he was biking by and asked if we were involved in these changes that had been made. A perfect example of how simply putting yourself and your work out in the public can connect people and create community.

Bicas is a local bike coop in Tucson, offering community workshop space and tools, classes, used parts to buy, a work-trade option, and more (similar to Free Ride in Pittsburgh). We rented bikes from Bicas for a bike tour of Tucson led by Brad - the pace of biking and the ability to quickly stop and hop off to see something made it a wonderful way to tour a new city!

TUCSON | Highlight #3: Camping, Traveling & Dust Storm

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:38:00 -0500

Setting up camp

Ecosa bus = old airport shuttle

My first dust storm!

TUCSON | Highlight #3: Camping, Traveling & Dust Storm

TUCSON | Highlight #2: Rick Joy Architects

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 17:30:00 -0500

Beautiful rammed earth building

pretty cool mailboxes

TUCSON | Highlight #2: Rick Joy Architects

View out my window last week!

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 17:19:00 -0500

View out my window last week!

TUCSON | Highlight #1: Sonora Desert Museum We spent three days...

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 09:42:46 -0500

TUCSON | Highlight #1: Sonora Desert Museum

We spent three days in Tucson a couple weeks ago. It was a tiring trip physically and mentally as we were on the go the whole time and had information flying at us non-stop, but it was amazing!! Will posts bits and pieces the next couple of days!

The Sonora Desert Museum was more like a zoo and botanical garden than a museum, but it was beautiful! Mostly outside, it had tons of plants and animals that are present in the Sonora desert and lots of interesting information about them. Could spend a couple more days there!

Hike in Prescott National Forest a couple weeks ago!

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:49:00 -0500

view from up in a tree!

Hike in Prescott National Forest a couple weeks ago!

Should we live in and use structures that are dead or...

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:30:00 -0400

http://rootbridges.blogspot.com/

http://www.archinode.com/bienal.html

http://pooktre.com/

Should we live in and use structures that are dead or alive?

Check out these living structures - from houses, to bridges, to chairs. Giving a presentation on this stuff this tomorrow. Wood or steel bridges rot, rust and break down over time, while bridges made out of live roots only get stronger over time. Does it (or should it) matter that root or tree structures can take a 10-15 years to become fully functional?

Some interesting links to look at:

living root bridges & ladders, mushroom packaging, living tree structures, living houses, “arbor-tecture,” some more tree structures

Took a tour of Tony Brown’s (the founder, director, and...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 03:46:00 -0400

Tony's drawing

Constructed wetlands water filtration

Waste water wetland system

Debris from wetlands goes into compost

View of Thumb Butte from inside

Operable closure to trap or block heat

Took a tour of Tony Brown’s (the founder, director, and one of our main teachers) passive solar house. He designed it and did most of the work on it himself, or traded for labor or products. It was amazing! So functionally directed-ly beautiful!

"Change is the only thing we can count on."

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 03:25:00 -0400

Last week Jesse Hernreich came to talk to us about permaculture and the way in which you can (and should!) embody permaculture principles in everything you do. Permaculture is an ecological design system that can be applied to all aspects of human efforts, such as building homes, growing food, creating communities, etc. Its principles include things like designing aspects to have multiple uses (stacking functions), observing a lot, starting with small and slow solutions. Learned TONS from her - both large scale themes as well as technical information. She is great! She studied ecological design at Prescott College and now has her own permaculture farm in southwestern Colorado (we’re trying to plan a trip out there!). To continue with my listing trend.. here are some of my favorite things she discussed:

Permanent culture & permanent agriculture.

Sustainability is simply a baseline. Regenerative living systems have the ability to evolve and renew themselves; generative systems are able to sustain livelihood without any energy contribution to evolution and are vulnerable to change; degenerative systems are those that are unnatural or incomplete and create wasted energy, or pollution. What do we want to be “sustaining”?

Sense of place. Culture is developed from a place, and as designers we are working on and must always be conscious of this sense of place. It is important to find out as much history as you can about the site (or whatever topic) for both the physical and cultural significance of what has occurred there.

Permaculture is common sense that we have forgotten.

Designers must be a temple of non-judgement. Clients are going to want what they want - how we adapt their desires is up to us.

Change is the only thing we can count on.

Design for convenience. The point of permaculture is not to return to drudgery - the point is to make it easy for us to treat the environment with a regenerative ecological lifestyle.

There is a time and place for everything. Things like advanced technology are definitely useful, but should be used only when appropriate.

Everything gardens.

A spontaneous sunset hike at Thumb Butte!

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 12:07:00 -0400

A spontaneous sunset hike at Thumb Butte!

A little behind on writing about the project we have been...

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 03:27:00 -0400

A little behind on writing about the project we have been working on (and it’s due Friday!)- so here goes. The first assignment was to construct a 20x20 foot cube to half inch scale out of available materials (cardboard, chip board, foam core, etc.), trying to be accurate and well crafted. After complete, we were told to now use the cube to construct a sculpture for a 50x50 foot clearing within trees. We were restricted to only making cuts that crossed an edge and had to use the entire cube and add no additional material. After complete, we were told (surprise!) to now use this concept to create a house of no more than 800 square feet for an artist couple’s second home, the premise being they saw your sculpture and thought it would make an awesome place to live. After working on these designs for a week or so with no information about the site, we were finally taken to see it (with Jesse Hernreich - who is awesome!). The site, just a few blocks from our studio, is a 50x150 ft lot with a steep slope with houses on both sides.

The point of this process of going from a conceptual sculpture to house, and taking the site into account later in the process (not a typical or practical way to go about designing a building) was to force us to keep our minds open to changing what we have already designed when we gain knowledge of additional factors and to get away from the typical formal idea of “house” - and it was definitely successful in these intentions so far. Throughout the project we have been instructed on different aspects of the process by a variety of people, including architectural drawing, permaculture and landscape architecture.

Included a few photos of the early stages and will post the final project at the end of the week!

On Thursday Ben Mancini from EV Solar Products in Chino Valley...

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 13:49:00 -0400

On Thursday Ben Mancini from EV Solar Products in Chino Valley came in to talk to us and on Friday afternoon we went to his store to see everything in person. Ben has been in the solar industry since 1980 which allowed him to give a great perspective on how the industry and attitudes have changed over time and the various factors that have influenced it. He was an amazing resource to learn from- he designed his own off-grid passive solar house and is currently working on converting a car to electric. He explained various methods of solar water heating, space heating, and solar energy from low tech to high tech.

The overarching themes he expressed were that solar energy isn’t the same as getting energy from fossil fuels and it, therefore, shouldn’t be treated as such; it isn’t successful or the most efficient method to try to convert existing system to solar or to keep with the standard form of “appliances” to produce energy from the sun and instead needs to take its own form. He also expressed that using very “advanced” technologies that take lots of energy and exotic material to produce that run on solar power often seem to defeat the purpose of using the sun as an energy source - instead we should be thinking how to do more with less and definitely think of passive solar options before active. Thanks Ben!

CURRENTLY READING: Ecological Ethics - Patrick Curry We had a...

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:21:00 -0400

CURRENTLY READING: Ecological Ethics - Patrick Curry

We had a discussion about the first half of Ecological Ethics this morning, the purpose of reading this being that if we don’t have a grounding in what our own (and an understanding of others’) ethics regarding the environment are, it is really hard to set boundaries for ourselves. The conversation was great - lots of questions arising with a variety of possible answers. Here are a few of the major topics of conversation to ponder:

Was women’s suffrage a change in ethics? Did men wake up one day thinking women should have the same rights as men?

Does it matter how we get to a better world or just that we get there? If humans improve how we do things for our own benefit, and that happens to also benefit the environment, is that a bad thing? What is the importance of intention?

Should we establish our own ethics before we are put into a situation in which we would use them to make a decision, or should our own ethics be born from how we react to experiences?

Does nature truly work on the concept of competition or cooperation? Should we still be relying on the Darwinian survival of the fittest theory, or is there a new evolutionary model we should instead be thinking about?

Is it better for everyone to change their ecological ethics and/or reconnect with nature or is it better for governments to establish laws that force us to cause less harm to the environment? Bottom-up or top-down or change?

Should Ecosa (theoretically) accept a grant from Walmart?

Took advantage of Labor Day off to camp in Flagstaff and then...

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 01:08:00 -0400

Took advantage of Labor Day off to camp in Flagstaff and then hike to Beaver Creek for a cool down swim with a bunch of the other students. The diversity of backgrounds and experience everyone has is amazing, both students and professionals in environmental sciences, history, archeology, architecture, interior design and lots lots more!

Just returned from our aboriginal living skills course with Cody...

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 05:49:00 -0400

Just returned from our aboriginal living skills course with Cody Lundin, which was a three day hiking and backpacking trip in the Verde Valley canyon. Quickly uploaded a video to give you a sense of where we were (more to come later!).

Before leaving, we were instructed to use the trip as a way to reconnect with nature and to observe. But further, I believe that the purpose of this trip was broad: to teach us about how people lived sustainably in the past by actually living that way (or pretty close to it) for a few days, to understand a true reliance on nature, to be sensitive to the amount of a resource (water, energy, etc.) we have within us and have available to us, to bond as a group, to understand how every action we make affects nature, and lots more I can’t put into words right now.

packing list:

2 hats & 2 bandanas

3 shirt layers

2 pants layers

2 shoes

1 pair of socks & 1 pair of underwear

2 water bottles

1 blanket & 1 sleeping pad

1 baggie of sunflower seeds & 1 baggie of trail mix

1 knife & 1 bowl

1 trash bag

camera & notebook & pen

[READ: no tent, no sleeping bag, no toothbrush/toothpaste, no sunscreen, no cell phone, no bathing suit, no toilet paper, no raincoat, etc.]

A few of my major takeaways (developed after a debrief with everyone this morning!):

1. Sense of community - We had to rely on each other to complete daily tasks from the path we decided to take to building and fire and cooking food to warmth at night. The food part really struck me, as today we have such little connection to where our food comes, and especially who works to make it available to us.

2. Literally leaving no trace behind - Tasks like sweeping the campsite area to be free of foot prints, crushing and dispersing the coal from the fire, and not moving plant parts to where they would not naturally be were really brought to our attention.

3. Using the materials readily available - We learned how to make discoidal knives by hitting two stones of the correct shape together at the right angle, how to make super strong rope from processing plant fibers, how to use coals for sun block, which plants were good for eating. And more, it caused us to become very observant of and sensitive to the details around us.

4. Always being in “conservation mode” - With limited resources available, it was necessary to always conserve energy within us individually and as a group through things like finding cooler shaded microclimates whenever possible, having two people go to the river for water instead of all going, and taking our time on tougher terrain. Further, we had to take advantage of the resources like food and water when we came across them, because it was unknown when we would be right next to the river again or come by a certain plant again.

5. Units of measurement - Without watches, we judged how much daylight was left with our hands like this and thought of tasks we needed to complete more by the calories or physical energy they would take, as light and energy are what we were relying on.

6. Sense of history - Often through out the course Cody would say something like, this is the same river along which people traveled hundreds of years ago or this is how they would create a strong rope for many purposes. In this way, I felt a true sense of history that can’t be accomplished through reading a text book.

7. Lack of hunger & abundance of energy - During the debrief, one of the common themes was that none of us were really very hungry or very tired throughout the trip. This was often attributed to the lack of over stimulation or multitasking we often experience and the necessity to accept this sense of slowing down.

8. Favorite place - At one point, some of us climbed up a steep wall of the canyon to go into ancient ruins way up in a cave. The sense of design history along with the beautiful view was amazing (pictures to come soon)!

9. Connection to design everywhere - In every task, we were constantly challenged to think about how things were “designed” through how the factors like the direction of the sun and the flow of drainages played into where we chose to set up camp, to the shape of the fire pit.

Well, that was more than a few…

But while going on a backpacking trip doesn’t necessarily come to mind as the first thing on a sustainable design curriculum, it was an amazing way to jump into the real meaning of “sustainability” from someone who understands it by living it.

Welcome to Arizona!

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 04:25:00 -0400

I am spending this semester in Prescott, AZ at Ecosa Institute, learning about sustainable and ecological design in a non-traditional design education environment. After being frustrated about the talk of “sustainable design” in school as well as publicly in the field of industrial design, but lack of hands on or in depth teaching of it, I arrived here!

On this site I will be documenting my experience here including project development, everyday observations, and questions or thoughts that have sparked my interest (and hopefully more informative photos/videos rather than lengthy paragraphs soon!).

First day observations & impressions:

1. The people are incredibly friendly! Lots say hello or smile on the street and I got a nice intro to Prescott from some long-time residents on the shuttle from the airport.

2. The cicadas are really really really loud.

3. While having breakfast at a coffee shop, I think I heard the word “gal” more times than I have in my entire life.

4. Nature is beautiful here: saw awesome lightning, a huge rainbow, and a beautiful sunset above mountains all during the 2 hour drive from Phoenix to Prescott.

5. It is monsoon season: there is an afternoon downpour almost daily!