Feature: Green Living
11/01/2006
In the 1960s and ’70s, “green” homes were often synonymous with earth-berm buildings and funky structures covered in nascent solar panels. Aesthetics, it seemed, were not part of the equation.Fortunately, that is no longer the case. The ensuing decades have greatly improved the appearance of green homes, while tremendous leaps in technology have made them as functional and luxurious as traditionally built houses. There is even a term to describe the current wave of green building: “second-generation ecological design.”
Arkin Tilt Architects
“We’re really integrating everything we’ve learned from the early experiments and putting those things together in appealing ways,” says David Arkin, whose Berkeley-based firm, Arkin Tilt Architects, is a leader in eco-conscious architecture. “In our minds, it’s not green design, it’s good design, the way all buildings should be created.” Arkin’s approach—and his expertise in solar energy—made him the architect of choice for Suzanne Johnson, a board member of Sunrise Sustainability Resources Group in Reno, Nev., which advocates sustainability and renewable energy.
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The main stairwell. Photograph copyright 2006 Edward Caldwell. (Click image to enlarge)“I set out to show that you can do a solar home and it doesn’t need to look the way it did back in the ’70s,” Johnson explains. Arkin’s design for her 3,500-square-foot home in Gardnerville, Nev., in the Eastern Sierra, has earned kudos for its bold design and innovative green-building techniques.
The house incorporates virtually all aspects of green architecture: solar power to generate electricity, heat and hot water; highly insulating straw-bale construction and sod roofing; recycled materials used in clever, new ways; less toxic building materials; and radiant heat, considered a more efficient, energy-saving method. The home has no air-conditioning, yet remains a comfortable 76 degrees during a heat wave.
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The architects employed non-toxic materials for the living spaces. Photograph copyright 2006 Edward Caldwell. (Click image to
enlarge)At first glance, the house appears to be traditionally powered, though contemporary in style. With its dramatic peaked roofs, deep overhangs with exposed rafters and large expanses of glass, the structure juts out of the landscape much like the Sierra Nevada beyond.
“The character really grows out of a careful study of the climate and the site and reacts to being against the mountains,” Arkin observes. “It’s a modern design that’s rooted in its place.”
The guesthouse and garage were tucked into the landscape. Their roofs are covered by part of a sagebrush meadow, providing natural insulation.Some of the warm earth shades of the exterior are actually earth itself. The brown, stuccolike finish is created by a cement that contains soil from the site. The same material was also used indoors over the straw bales, an age-old yet highly insulating building method.
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One corner reveals the straw-bale insulation. Photograph copyright 2006 Edward Caldwell. (Click image to
enlarge)Arkin managed to turn what was once an architectural liability—solar technology—into unobtrusive details that easily flow into the design. Photovoltaic panels, which gather the sun’s energy and convert it to electricity, were installed over a trellis. Below a terrace is the home’s water-heating system: glass panels that collect water and raise it to a temperature of up to 180 degrees.
Inside, the sleek interiors make no apologies for their sophisticated recycled materials. In the kitchen and master bath, reclaimed Douglas fir paneling from logs salvaged from river and lake bottoms adds warmth and dimension. Recycled glass appears on kitchen island countertops and in the master bath. Trespa, an eco-friendly material often used in labs because of its nonporous quality, tops the kitchen counters.
Perhaps most important to Johnson, all of the materials used are low VOC (volatile organic compounds), which means they emit low levels of hazardous chemicals. Johnson, now retired from Intel, realized that she had a chemical sensitivity early in her career while working as a chemist. “I feel healthier living in such a building,” she says. “It was really worth the effort. It’s like a haven.”
Arkin Tilt Architects, 510.528.9830, www.arkintilt.com
Paula Baker-Laporte
Developing sensitivity to many commonplace building materials drove Paula Baker-Laporte, a Tesuque, N.M., architect, to write her first book, Prescriptions for a Healthy House (New Society, 2001), with Dr. Erica Elliott, and to reform her architectural philosophy.
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Architect Paula Baker-Laporte crafted a
Southwestern-style green home
for a
couple in Tesuque, N.M.
Photograph by Robert Reck. (Click
image to enlarge)“I realized I was just a small piece of a much larger picture, and I got really motivated to change my practice,” she says. “The answers lie in a holistic approach to human health and the built environment.”
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The master bedroom is cooled naturally by sun-fired clay brick. Photograph by Robert Reck. (Click image to enlarge)The 4,126-square-foot adobe home Baker-Laporte created for a London family in Tesuque is a testament to many of her ideals. The homeowners requested a traditional Santa Fe home made entirely of nontoxic natural and local materials, with healthy home-building methods. “They simply wanted as healthy a house as possible,” says Baker-Laporte. Fortunately, traditional adobe architecture requires relatively benign construction techniques. The walls, which provide passive heating and cooling, are made from sun-fired clay brick that is not stabilized with tar, a less toxic process. Inside, the walls are covered in a clay-based plaster from Santa Lucia. Nichos, or small niches cut into the walls, display statues or other works of art. Elegant archways and exposed wood abound. “Those soft, rounded, massive walls are typical of the vernacular here,” Baker-Laporte observes.
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The courtyard. Photograph by Robert Reck. (Click image to enlarge)In contrast to the geometrical shape of the inner courtyard, the home’s outer perimeter is organic, taking its shape, color and many of the materials—and its workforce—from the surroundings. “Local craftsmanship greatly reduces toxic manufacture,” says Baker-Laporte, “and creates high-quality employment that boosts the local economy.”All the beams are from local sources, and doors and cabinetry were handmade locally by Wood Design and Alma de Santa Fe. A blacksmith from southern New Mexico, Jim Pepperl, crafted the wrought iron hardware, and the granite work was by Stone Pro. Floors are sandstone or earthen—a clay-based mixture made from local soils that is poured and troweled, then sealed with natural oils and beeswax—by Dennis Overman. Such floors are extremely soft underfoot, yet surprisingly durable.
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Recesses were built into the plaster-clad exterior. Photograph by Robert Reck. (Click image to enlarge)“Because there are a lot of breathable materials, when you walk in the house you really feel embraced by it,” Baker-Laporte says. “Not only are the materials locally found and handcrafted, but you’re supporting a building culture in the area that also embraces human beings.”
Paula Baker-Laporte, 505.989.1813, www.bakerlaporte.com
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Stan Field
In Northern California’s Silicon Valley, Palo Alto architect Stan Field has made another aspect of green building—recycled materials—the hallmark of a Silicon Valley home designed for Sam Tramiel, one of the founders of Atari, and his family. Having recently arrived in California from Israel, Field became intrigued with the beauty of Northern California redwood. Soon the materials began to drive the architecture. “It wasn’t only the recycling, it was more the idea of getting in touch with the materials and letting them speak,” he says.
Field discovered old redwood wine vats in Sonoma County and used them for the exteriors of the Tramiel house in combination with zinc, known for its anticorrosive and thermal qualities. “I wanted to weave the two languages together to create almost a handmade building,” Field explains, “where the nailing pattern of the wood spoke to the zinc and the joints of the zinc spoke to the wood and there was this interplay.” The resulting 5,500-square-foot structure is less a single-family home than a collection of three interconnected buildings resembling a small village, each with unusual domed and vaulted roofs.
Inside, the light maple wood suggests a more refined interior shell in juxtaposition to the hand-hewn feeling of the exteriors. An elegant suspended staircase rises up from the entrance hall, lit with natural light from the glass-enclosed entry below. The front door was salvaged from the home that previously occupied the site.
Field believes the use of recycled materials and other green-building techniques is becoming more commonplace as people become aware that architecture is much more than just buildings.
“It has a responsibility and is part of the environment,” Field says. “The more architecture can be in sync with its environment and its ecology, the more it’s going to enhance one’s quality of life and sense of value.
Field Architecture, 650.462.9554, www.fieldarchitecture.com