q. i. f?

phone-shot of north tower from Wilson Ave.

Took advantage of a Baltimore Heritage tour offering to get acquainted with the Baltimore Basilica — that is, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the United States’ first Roman Catholic cathedral — today for the first time. I wish I’d bothered to do it long ago. As cathedrals go, around the globe, this one’s not an especially impressive specimen, really. But it’s hardly without architectural or historical interest. In fact I think it probably ought to be acknowledged as quite a fine instance of the problem of the church in the modern world, expressed in the occasion of a building. I’d like to return to the subject. (Also, before long, with any luck, to the building.)

I’ve officially taken a seat on the New Green Economy bus. Ended several years as a self-employed carpenter/remodeler about a month ago, and I’ve gone to work for a company in the energy-efficient-building trade. The first step in this direction for me was late last year, with a bit of state-sponsored training that certified me as a ‘building analyst professional’ with the Building Performance Institute, a New York-based organization that has had the U.S. lead in this field for a few years. Now I’m crawling around in people’s attics & crawlspaces every day, examining HVAC & related equipment as if I knew all about it (a lot to learn in this dept.), informing folks that here, here, & here — surprise! — their houses are blowing a lot of the heating & cooling dollars they spend into the outdoors, and developing a new intimacy with expanding foam sealants.

So far, enjoying it all thoroughly. Blogging, though — with reading & what creative exercise there was, generally — has suffered more than I’d like. Hoping to recover something here before long.

It’s not clear what the executive order’s direct impact might be on the 17 million people who live in the bay watershed, but it could lead to new requirements for upgrading sewage treatment plants and other utilities and limits on developers and on farmers and homeowners who fertilize their fields and lawns with nutrients that seep into the bay.
   The announcement came at a meeting of the Chesapeake Executive Council, the body of elected officials from the 64,000-square-mile bay watershed that has overseen the cleanup effort. The group, whose members include the governors from five states and the D.C. mayor, conceded last fall that their states were woefully short of goals established in 2000 that were to have been met by next year.

From a Washington Post article this week, about President Obama’s action giving new protected status to the bay and its tributaries, thereby shifting responsibility & enforcement power from the state governments in the region to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Herbie Hancock & the Headhunters, Chameleon

mosaic tile, the little black dress of the bathroom

A way of putting it that would never, ever have occurred to me. From Remodelista (which I glance through faithfully every day via email subscription), yesterday’s ‘roundup of baths with black tile flooring’.

Cameron Sinclair presented his organization’s history & progress at MICA tonight for two hours, non-stop talking, to anybody who showed up to listen. Wasn’t all that well advertised — I learned of it word of mouth — but the hall was packed. If you get a chance to hear him about Architecture For Humanity and Open Architecture Network sometime, my feeling is it’s worth working your schedule to attend. Stirring stuff.

Baltimore has plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the great green hopes — and few are more outspokenly so than Morning Sunday Hettleman, president of the Maryland Environmental Justice Coalition. Hettleman argues that efforts to clean up the environment and rebuild the inner city since the 1970s have often left working people, and people of color, out in the cold. “Billions have been spent in Baltimore, supposedly to help us, and still it looks like a bomb went off. Where did the money go?” she asks. “The money went to consultants who live in Baltimore County. The money never made it down to the people.”
   Sitting in her drafty home in Waverly — weatherized, badly, by a city work crew, she notes — Hettleman and Dale Hargrave, a local contractor, make their prediction for the green economy, using history as their guide. “If you come back here in five years and ask, ‘Where did the green jobs go?’” Hettleman says. “Well, they went down I-95. They went down I-83. They went down I-695.”

From an article in the April Urbanite.

Bay states subject to the TMDL will rely on Low Impact Development (LID) in place of traditional best management practices to reduce sediment, nutrients and peak flows from new construction sites and from redevelopment in urban areas.
   To use LID techniques — which include permeable pavements, green roofs, rain gardens, swales and other devices that allow the storm water to seep into the ground — builders will need to obtain more information about the building site than has been required in the past. Many builders have limited experience with choosing and installing LID devices and estimating the associated costs — including the risk of their failure — and providing for their maintenance.

In an item from its news service this week, the NAHB alerts builders & developers in the six-state Chesapeake watershed of sweeping changes ahead, as federal agency EPA looks toward applying TMDL regulatory status to the natural system’s region as a whole.

Frankly, the difference is so great that one wonders whether we inhabit the same world. No one talks about designing a sustainable building in Berlin because it is so ingrained in the culture.

Canadian architect of Berlin’s Canadian embassy, quoted in a piece about design/construction practice & regulatory environment for commercial and other large-scale building in the leading Euro countries and in North America.

My first Nikon SLR aged with dignity. As the black paint began to chip, it revealed little glimpses of the brass body beneath, like denim fading to the texture of cashmere. I still have my father’s portable typewriter; the keys are rusted together, the ribbon is tattered, and it will never compose another letter. But I can’t bring myself to part with it. It lasted him half a lifetime.

From an article in Metropolis that begins, ‘There are two kinds of industrial designers.’ (Of course there are.)