""
RSS feed
To talk back:
Send email to my first name at my last name dot com
-Keith Pelczarski
Random Nuttiness
Why go nutty?
Recalling London
Drink me
RageBoy Speaks!
More equal
Wonder Woman
Raging King, Fear Driver
31 Flavors
Refreshing?
On the edge?
Good Morning, Sunshine
Where is that post?
Interesting Voices
Randy Cassingham
Jonathan Coulton
Kevin Fox
Vince Hanks
Mark Hurst
Jason Kottke
Jeffrey Martian
Kerah Pelczarski
Max Pelczarski
Dave Pell
RageBoy
ResearchBuzz
Doc Searls
Tracy Sigler
Oliver Thylmann
Sites of Note
All Music Guide
Boing Boing
Financial Engines
The Fray
Google
Google News
How Stuff Works
Internet Movie Database
Memepool
Metacritic
The Motley Fool
Netflix
The Onion
Slashdot (/.)
Going Green
Sorry for the recent paucity of posts. I've been busy exploring a new career in green design/building. That's right, after a dozen years in a variety of financially related jobs, I'm getting back to my tree huggin' roots. For those of you just catching up, I resigned from my marketing role at Financial Engines in August. I love the company, I love the people, but I didn't really love the job. It was one of those, "It's not you, it's me" kind of situations, except that I actually felt that way.
Anyway, I before I quit I set up a walkabout of sorts for myself to help me figure out what to do. Kind of like getting hopped up on peyote and wandering around the desert looking for my spirit animal, except without the hallucinations, dehydration, and spirit animal.
(On a side note, I'd be worried to find out what my spirit animal really is. You know, people always identify with noble, intelligent animals like bears or wolves or dolphins, but I'd worry that I end up with a barnacle or banana slug or mud skipper for my spirit animal. Oh, the stress that faces sports marketing people when they name teams....)
But, I, uh... digress and stuff. Ahem.
Where was I? Right... green building.
The green building walkabout was supposed to have four prongs:Well, as it turns out, I did all of those things except for the first one... 3 out of 4 ain't bad, and I can always go back and volunteer for HfH when I know more. (As it turned out, I spent a lot of extra time with my son Max... a damn fine use of time in my book. He's very psyched that I'm going to be a "construction man.")
- Swing a hammer for Habitat for Humanity
- Take a two-week design/build class at the Yestermorrow school
- Attend the "Doing More with Less, by Design" conference at Taliesin West
- Attend Greenbuild 2005 in Atlanta
After spending some QT with the boy, I shipped out to Vermont for Yestermorrow's two-week Home Design/Build class in October. Wow! What a good experience! Basically, we would work on design in the mornings, work on a building in the afternoon, and then go back to the studio for more design, lectures, and presentations at night. Intense, but not too intense since it was all so enjoyable. The instructors were three Jersey Devils Jim Adamson, Daniel Johnson, and Mark Three Stars.
Here are some pictures.
The students were very diverse, so much so that at times it felt like the cast of a reality show. We had the elderly raconteur, the army infantry commander, the infantryman, the NYC punk rocker, the Peace Corps doctor, the school teacher, the quiet sailor, the man with tools, the southern boy turned New Yorker set designer, the tree-saving activist, the nutty blogger, and the interns -- a french canadian fermenter, a San Franciscan environmentalist, and the one who kept us all straight. There were times when I wanted to kick some folks off the island, so to speak, but overall it was a very fun group.
During my time in Vermont, I learned old-school architectural drafting with the mayline at a table in the studio, learned how to frame walls along with lots of other building skills, and met lots of great locals at the Hyde Away Tavern.
I knew that I would enjoy the design part of the class, and I did. I also thought that I would enjoy the building side, but I was surprised by just how much I liked it. So, the next step on that front is to get some building experience under my toolbelt. I've been talking to some local design/build folks and I may have an opportunity soon.
After my Yestermorrow experience, I spent some time kickin' around the house, and also had some QT with Max. It was pretty sweet. After two weeks of that, we all headed down to Phoenix for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation's fall conference.
The conference was entitled, "Doing More With Less, By Design" and was held at Wright's Southwest studio, Taliesin West. It was inspirational on two levels: 1) the conference itself featured some excellent speakers, and 2) Taliesin West was pretty kick ass.
Here are the photos.
Beyond being inspirational, the speakers freaked me out a little, in that they painted a picture of our collective future that was pretty bleak. In the end, I wasn't sure whether I was most afraid of running out of oil, running out of water, or global warming turning my house into a nice scuba diving destination.
To be fair, there were lots of positive, progressive presentations that didn't give me waking nightmares. Kidding aside, my favorite presenters were:
Werner Sobek
Structural Engineer/Architect who lives in a glass house. Werner was impressive as both craftsman and presenter; very talented, and very entertaining. His design on the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart and the design of his own house were both quite good.
Tom Martinson
Tom gave an interesting talk which touched on a number of design dichotomies in America: glorious design vs. crazy design, deep design vs. cosmetic design, practical vs. fashion conscious, and innovative vs. superficial. I think his point was that we're pretty messed up but we have the potential to do dome great things.
Traci Rose Rider
Traci spoke eloquently on the importance of educating the next generation of architects, specifically green architects. She also had the misfortune of asking me if she could join me as a loner at a cocktail table. Despite that, she was nice enough to laugh at stupid jokes. Oh, she's also the chairperson for the Emerging Green Builders and DWELL thinks she's a Nice Modernist. I'm just happy that she returns my calls and introduced me to a lot of interesting people at the Greenbuild conference.
Speaking of the Greenbuild conference, that was the last stop on the walkabout. It was in Atlanta, which was suboptimal. Downtown Atlanta is just plain dead. The conference wasn't dead, per se, but since the focus of most sessions was toward comercial builders, the presentations weren't terribly interesting to me. The expo floor was cool, though, and I picked up a lot of interesting material samples and information.
Rather than bore you with the details now, I'll save Greenbuild for another day. It'll be linktacular!
:: Keith 02:09 [link] :: ::