Ecology 101
Your article “It ain’t easy building green” [November 9, 2004] provides readers with another educational tool to help shift the general thinking toward more ecologically sound building practices. The article gave a great representation of local residential and commercial examples. Highly important among these are “green” schools. Not only do the buildings provide optimal learning environments, but also model the use of sustainable design and materials to future generations. How better to learn about something than to experience it?
Over the past three years the Free Union Country School has been working hard to refine plans and raise money for an Arts/Classroom Building utilizing sustainable design, materials and construction methods. A design team led by VMDO architects Rob Winstead and Jim Kovach won a design competition in June 2003. Working closely with the faculty and staff of Free Union, the team has since then rendered a building that not only educates, but facilitates learning.
Both Free Union Country School and Charlottesville Waldorf are fulfilling their roles as educators in a way that reaches beyond the immediate populations to generations to come. Two small, independent schools in the same community, working toward a common goal offer credibility to one another and their aspirations. These projects speak highly of our community and its vision of a sustainable future. I appeal to the community to support these projects and the promise they give for a cleaner future.
Jay G. Fennell
Development Coordinator
Free Union Country School
Getting greener
It was good to read about some of the “green” building activities in our area, in your November 9 issue. It is encouraging for people to learn how to lessen the environmental impacts their buildings have on our community and ecosystems. We are getting there.
I’d like to add some additional information as to how we can be even greener and more sustainable. Where the building materials come from and their associated embodied energy (what it takes to make such a material product) needs to be considered.
For example, bamboo made into flooring, as mentioned in the article, is a fast renewable plant as compared to hardwood trees. It makes a very durable “green” floor. But some consideration should be made to the fact it takes large amounts of polluting fossil fuel to ship it from the Southeast Asia to Charlottesville. Our community should know that responsible hardwood flooring from Virginia is possibly a more sound choice. It is not oceans away, but here.
There are three organizations in Virginia I know of that provide environmentally friendly wood flooring and other wood products from either restorative forestry practices or salvaging local trees that have been knocked down by windstorms. They are Appalachian Sustainable Development (ASD), Next Generation Woods and Logs to Lumber.
Example: ASD makes it their mission to improve the health of forests and these more robust forests provide a more sound future income to Virginia landowners and aesthetic pleasure as well. Basically ASD will leave the best and healthiest trees, remove the worst, and will take no more than 10 percent of the forest cover. Their wood products are beautiful and long lasting. ASD also uses solar energy for their wood kiln operation, will use local horse loggers where possible, and they employ people from rural Virginia where the unemployment rate is still about 12 percent!
Use good healthy environmental products, but first consider using responsible “green” products that originate from our local bioregion.
Eric Gilchrist
Charlottesville
Wings and a prayer
Charlottesville developers may be “keen on enviro-friendly construction,” but there exists a serious flaw in the construction industry’s idea of what an “eco-friendly design” is. Eco-friendly should not mean eco-deadly. The incorporation of huge amounts of sheet glass in “green buildings” turns these structures into aesthetically pleasing weapons of mass destruction.
Window panes in homes and schools and entire walls of glass in multistory commercial buildings kill huge numbers of wild birds annually. Extensive studies over the past three decades estimate the annual toll to be between roughly 100 million to almost 1 billion birds in the United States alone. According to biologist Daniel Klem, Jr., of Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, “with the possible exception of habitat destruction, glass kills more birds than any other man-caused avian mortality factor, including the higher-image catastrophes resulting from oil spills, pesticide poisoning, and collisions with vehicles” and tall structures, such as wind turbines and radio towers.
The large windows to be included in every classroom of the Charlottesville Waldorf School make a mockery of the school’s “emphasis in the curriculum on the natural world.” The City of Charlottesville’s new Transit Center that is now under construction will have anything but “a low environmental impact.”
Although the deaths of so many avian creatures may be considered trivial at first glance, it most definitely is not. We should be concerned about their welfare because birds—and many other creatures—provide necessary environmental services for us, such as limiting insect, arachnid, and weed populations, and pollinating our plants.
Architectural plans for “green buildings” that include large amounts of glass demonstrate ignorance of, and/or perhaps a total disregard for, the effect of our actions upon the environment that sustains us. An architect who truly cares about the environment would never design a building that can be expected to take a grim toll upon birds.
The environmental conscience of the nation is awakening, but critical thinking is crucial to avoid a collision (literally) between building design and the organisms we must coexist with in order for the environment to function properly. Unless and until the glass industry is able to manufacture non-reflective tinted glass or glass with interference patterns that birds can recognize as an obstacle to be avoided, architects should incorporate skylights to bring additional natural light into buildings with smaller windows.
Obviously, there is a dire need for students at all levels (including college) to learn about the natural world. Otherwise we will continue to behave as if we live in a vacuum—somehow apart from our surroundings—and our ignorance will doom not only birds and other creatures, but also ourselves.
Marlene Condon
Crozet