Melissa Hope Matlins

Summertime at the Union Square GreenMarket is high season for both produce and people watching, as evidenced by my two photos from a prior Saturday. I do have a thing for radishes and there are lovely pink and white french breakfast varieties to be found there. Its also a bit cute to see city-born babies ogle their first fields of green, even if it is a plant shop atop pavement.

I make a really simple salad of chilled and thinly sliced radishes, dressed with salt/pepper/olive oil/balsamic vinegar/lemon.

Looks like Washington D.C. will be taking the honors as the first stateside city to launch a real bicycle sharing program. After a pilot program in NYC last summer, I was hoping that my hometown would take the lead. Its hard not to get excited about these sleek looking racks and wheels though, very European.

This weekend The Washington Post marvelously captured the general public’s paranoia about new street furniture, bicycling, sharing, socialist enterprises, and new things in general, when they wrote of the new bike racks:

“Yet another homeland security device?
Actually, they are being installed to make us more like people abroad rather than protect us from them.”

Remain calm.

image: via The Washington Post

It pains me to mock sustainability initiatives, even when they are as unambitious and misguided as this one. However the launch of the “green” metrocard, green only in color, has come a little too fast on the heels our failed congestion pricing plan for me to pass up the opportunity. The congestion pricing plan was a holistic, transformative solution, and a prime example of the type of visionary thinking required to combat global climate change. The MTA’s proposed renewable energy initiatives can barely be called a patchwork solution. A close look at the language used shows that the initiatives aren’t even actionable.

For earth day, ONE day, the MTA will burn time and money to stock all vending machines with special “green” metrocards. Not cards made with recycled content. Not cards that are recyclable. Heck, if they are purchased as unlimited cards, they aren’t even reusable. Just special cards. With green logos. For earth day. They didn’t even bother to put a tree or a globe on them, how insensitive to our planet!

The poorly designed cards are meant to be a symbol of MTA’s renewable energy initiatives. Initiative goals include things like drawing a whopping 7% of MTA energy needs from renewable sources. Before 2015. Seven years from now. Other points are not so much goals as suggestions from the MTA to themselves, using language like “will evaluate ways to utilize water harvested from the subway system” and “will examine the feasibility of providing 14% of the power (at one bus depot!) from wind turbines.” Far be it from me to stand defiant in the face of progress, but who wants to buy yet another slip of plastic to commemorate these lackluster initiatives?

Via: Gothamist

FEMA claims that the temporary trailers provided to Hurricane Katrina victims cost only $14,000. Independent investigations by the GAO show that the real cost is more like $229,000 when you factor in transportation, on-site construction and maintenance. To this already staggering number we can now add another hidden cost - health problems caused by formaldehyde off-gassing of the trailer materials. A new congressional report points the finger at FEMA for downplaying reports of formaldehyde exposure. FEMA claims that their tests concluded that air quality inside the trailers was safe “as long as things were properly ventilated.”

Maybe a better architect, or a FEMA architect, could tell me exactly how you are supposed to ventilate an outsized tin can with four tiny window openings inside four tiny rooms in a humid climate like Louisiana. Sustainably-designed buildings often undergo a “flush-out” period of several weeks to optimize air quality. They are also designed to ventilate naturally, and feature nifty things like fully operable windows, on two adjacent walls even! And porches for shade. A lot of people think that green building is a luxury that only the rich can afford, or that disaster housing cannot be decent housing. A quick review of Rural Studio’s work on the “20K house,” and Shigeru Ban’s cardboard-tube disaster housing illustrates that this is patently untrue. In times of need, architecture can become a redemptive, and sometimes even inspirational force.

Via: The Daily Green and MSNBC

Have you ever noticed an out-sized evergreen tree in your neighborhood that appears to be sprouting antennae? I think we all know that most evergreens don’t grow to be 131 feet - the height necessary to transmit a cell phone signal. Fake evergreens like this one are literal lightening rods for aesthetic and environmental criticism. Ericsson, along with designer Thomas Sandell, have designed a lean, green answer to these great pretenders - The Tower Tube.

Modular concrete construction is used (instead of conventional lattice or tubular steel construction) reducing environmental impact by 40 percent due to material, transportation and energy efficiencies. Natural air convection creates a chimney effect, cooling the interior. All equipment is housed within the slender 16 foot wide structure, eliminating the need for a equipment shed at the base, or an unsightly security fence. It looks like it is time for the cell phone tower to come out of hiding.

Via: Metropolis Magazine and Ericsson

Baby its cold outside, and in case you were wondering how to build an igloo, your friends at Architectureweek have you covered. With a pole, saw, shovel and a little luck, the step by step instructions will have you warm and toasty in no time, and you will even learn some basic principles of physics and sustainable construction in the process. However unless you are in Alaska, Canada or a more exotic locale in the high northern latitudes, you may be out of luck. Suitable dense-packed, dry snow has yet to make its seasonal appearance in my hometown of New York City.

Via: Architectureweek, image by Amelia Bauer

The developers of Dubai World have announced their ambitions to meet sustainability goals for all new construction. Initial requirements will be based on the USGBC LEED rating system. The Dubai World master plan un-ironically includes a fanciful cluster of private islands off of the coast that mimic earth’s land masses. The price for your own private island? Starting at $10 million.

The construction of the islands is expected to finish this year. While moving over 326 million cubic meters of sand is an impressive undertaking, it doesn’t seem particularly green. This looks a lot like dredging to me. There must be some truth to the statement from developers of the World Islands that this feat “will not be repeated again.” New environmental regulations will ban building activities “within 50 feet of the sea.”

Via: BDC, construction photos via: Private Islands Online

Dear New York City, Why can’t you be more like Beirut?

Their municipal infrastructure has been severely crippled by over 20 years of civil war, but the Lebanese people have their priorities straight. These jumbo-size recycling cans on the street where one of the first things we saw on our walk through Beirut.

Now, how much space do you really, truly need? As this diminutive house shows, sometimes it is good to think small. At an aptly named website, tinyhouses.net, mini-dwellings, for both temporary and permanent residence, are featured. My personal favorite is the HELP (Housing Every Last Person) house pictured here, developed by Carib Daniel Martin and Rob Bragan in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This compact 8 foot x 12 foot structure comes fully equipped, and even sleeps three!

More information on the HELP House here

This week, July 7-11, steal a New York City bicycle, if only for a 30 minute free ride. The Storefront for Art and Architecture invites you to re-imagine your city with public bikes for the taking on sidewalk corners. Why not? bike-share programs already exist in many cities in Europe - Barcelona, Stockholm, Olso and Vienna to name a few. If you want to learn more, an exhibit of eight successful bike-share programs is on view at Storefront - 97 Kenmare Street. Get inspired by public presentations of European bike-share program organizers.

Looking for a place to lock up your bike while you do a little shopping perhaps? You may experience the same problem I had when I rode up to the Union Square Greenmarket last Saturday. Bikes were locked to every conceivable piece of street furniture, and not a bike rack in sight. I now know that bike racks need to be requested, through the NYC Department of Transportation website. Only 3,000 have been installed to date, so let our city know where and when you need one (though I think Union Square is obvious!), and it will benefit all.