A Good 'Green House' Effect
By Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 9, 2006; Page WE47
Visitors to the exhibition "The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture and Design" might momentarily forget that they are in the National Building Museum, and not a high-end home design showroom. "I looove the recycled glass tiles," one young woman could be overheard whispering to her male companion, who appeared to be studying the relative merits of bamboo flooring vs. eco-friendly carpet tile. "Wouldn't they look great in the second-floor bathroom?"
The consumer-friendly nature of the show, which boasts sponsorship by the Home Depot Foundation (as well as appliance manufacturer Bosch and Benjamin Moore Paints, among other in-kind supporters), is intentional. Think of it as a follow-up of sorts to the museum's 2003 "Big & Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century," which showcased only large-scale projects. Here, in what might be called "Small & Green," the emphasis is not on what the owners and designers of giant skyscrapers are doing but on what individuals like you and me can do to save the planet
IFor starters, you can turn off the running water while you're brushing your teeth, or get that leaky kitchen faucet fixed. You don't want to know how many gallons are wasted by a fixture that drips once every second (but you'll soon find out: up to 10 gallons a week).
The show is filled with such practical tips, which vary from ideas that will save both money and energy (turn down the thermostat) to those that might require a trip to the bank. It even begins with a full-scale, walk-in model home: the so-called Glidehouse, a handsome, prefabricated modular living space designed with both the environment and Architectural Digest in mind by California architect Michelle Kaufmann, who not only lives in one herself but sells the things from her Web site, http://mkd-arc.com/ .
Helpfully, almost everything has a tag or two attached to it, from those that tell you who makes the nifty pine-and-bamboo Schaschlik knife block (Greener Grass Design) to those that drop gentle hints as to why you might want to look into whether your own kitchen cabinets contain formaldehyde or other toxic chemicals.
Like most of the Building Museum's shows, the core of the thought-provoking display is an assortment of models and photographs, in this case highlighting examples of green residential design around the world, broken down by terrain: desert, waterside, forest/mountain, tropics and suburb. Many, of course, are impractical for the average Joes and Janes who will drop in to the show. How many of us, after all, can afford to build a vacation getaway on Bruny Island, Tasmania, Australia (site of 1+2 Architecture's Walla Womba Guest House, whose raised steel frame respects natural drainage patterns), or the striking Solar Tube of Driendl Architects (located outside Vienna, Austria, and featuring innovative ways of capturing and storing the sun's warmth)?
There are, however, also examples from the other end of the economic spectrum, as with the Colorado Court apartment complex by Pugh + Scarpa Architecture. Covered with almost 200 shiny blue photovoltaic panels, the 44-unit low-income residence in Santa Monica, Calif., catches the light glinting off the water, making an environmental as well as an aesthetic statement.
And that's the real point of "The Green House," which sets it apart from the house-porn shelter magazines it can at times resemble. Not that you could never live like this, but that, in fact, you can. And that, by doing the right thing, sustainable, ecologically sound design doesn't just have to feel good. It can look fabulous, too.
