michelle kaufmann designs

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When friends who are visiting San Francisco ask for a recommended hotel, I usually have different categories with different criteria and it becomes a matrix of qualities that the particular friend might be most interested in. However, now it is simple. What hotel do I recommend? The Good hotel by Joie de Vivre.

The Good Hotel is designed with a conscience. “Our philanthropic and positive approach is designed to inspire the good in us all” they state on their website. And it works. I recently had brunch with Lee Schneider of DocuCinema (www.docucinema.com) who is staying there and he was talking about the “social engineering” and power of good design to inspire positive change.

Not only does the hotel incorporate sustainable materials such as reclaimed and recycled woods, blankets made from recycled soda bottles, empty Voss water bottles used as a chandelier, and water conserving solutions that tell a story (like the sink above the toilet that takes the used water from the sink to use for the toilet rather than wasting drinking water for the toilet), but there are also making it easier for people to act in a manner that is sensitive to the environment, but still with beauty. They offer bikes for use for free during one’s stay, and evoke a strong sense of community through interesting touches like the photo booth in the lobby where you can post your photos on the wall and computers for the One Laptop per Child program throughout. The concierge can help hook you up with volunteering programs throughout the city if you wish.

Rooms range from $89 to $149. Super affordable by SF standards.
Smart design, eco-friendly, with a conscience? That is way better than good; it is great.

www.jdvhotels.com
photos by Christian Horan

by Kevin Cullen

Water is the next Oil.

Really? When was the last time you got a look at an ocean? Or at least saw a photo of one. Pretty vast, no? Too bad about all that salt… and affordable desalinization seems decades away, at best.

One of the worlds largest aquifers, the Ogallala, located under the Great Plains, which supplies around 30% the nation’s ground water used for irrigation, is estimated by some to be on track to be wrung dry in 25 years.

While the average household in the US uses between 200-300 gallons of water a day, the typical family in Africa gets by on FIVE GALLONS.  Crazy.

The water conservation war is on and you can help stem the flow, starting with your home water usage. Fix leaks and drips promptly as they can waste thousands of gallons of water. Check to make sure the aerators in your facets are in good repair and not blocked by debris. They can be unscrewed and cleaned if need be. Make sure you are using low-flow shower heads. Shopping for a new toilet? Look for a  dual flush model, capable of saving thousands of gallons a year and readily available from most manufacturers. Turn off the water while brushing you teeth!

Is your kitchen sink or that upstairs bathroom located far from your water heater? Do you turn on the water and go check your email while waiting for hot water to FINALLY get to the sink or shower? Help is available in the form of an inexpensive and easily installed recirculating pump. This pump, located under your kitchen sink or in a bathroom vanity cabinet, is activated by the push of a button. Once started, the pump draws water from the water tank through your hot water line, while pushing the unheated water back through the cold water line. Once the hot water reaches the sink or shower, the pump is de-activated and voila, hot water with zero water down the drain!

Michelle and I use the Chillipepper brand recirculating heat pump in our Glidehouse just below our kitchen sink. And we have converted several friends and family as well.

Anyone with basic plumbing skills can install a Chillipepper. Or pick up the phone and have your local plumber do the install.

photo above by John Swain Photography.

Last Thursday we had a fabulous Re:Vision Salon on “Urban Agriculture” with Josiah Raisin Cain (Chief Design Officer with Design Ecology) and Urban Re:Vision. Urban Agriculture has become one of the hottest movements in the  sustainable design world. And rightly so. As Josiah described, the ideas with Urban Agriculture “are close to exploding” given recent media, products, planning and design focus. Josiah spoke about some unsettling (and for me, unknown) facts such as the average miles travelled for the average meal in the US (including miles for processing food) is 3000 miles. That is completely absurd as well as unsustainable. Another crazy fact he shared is that it takes the amount of water equivalent to one person’s showers for a year to produce one pound of beef.

Urban Edible Gardens solve many problems simultaneously. It helps reduce gas, cost, water (depending on system used), while increasing social justice and community connection. Challenges typically include space and scale. However, there are alternative ways of imagining our cities. Josiah showed projects with successful green roofs with edible gardens like this one at Trent University.

The green roofs reduce storm water runoff, act as increased insulation, increase oxygen, reduce cooling loads, and provide local food. They can be on the top roof of the building, or be on intermediate roof gardens, like this project by Daniel Libeskind.

And of course, you could do on your decks and walls of decks as well.

There are alternatives to the deep soil-based gardens that make sense when we plant them in the ground. There are Hydroponic systems and Aquaponic systems that use much less water by providing their own nutrients. Companies like InkaWall (Paul Giacomantonio from Inkawall was at the Salon) offer systems like this “BioCloth” that is 1” thick and can be hung outside or inside and produces food that hangs off of the cloth, using much less water than would be required if they were planted in the ground using traditional methods.  With proper lighting and ventilation, these can even be planted inside of a building as well. You could grow your own food in your downtown loft.

We have incorporated green roofs and used hydroponics boxes for planting food at the Smart Home exhibit (the mkSolaire) in Chicago.

Josiah spoke about how “slick” our current city buildings are. Water slides right off of them, creating many expensive problems for the city with storm water run-off. By integrating green walls and green roofs, it has the added benefit of making the buildings more “sticky”, and reducing storm-water run-off issues for cities, and reducing the costs required to sove those problems.

It all is so delicious visually, socially and physically. It also seems accessible and feasible. Hearing Josiah, Paul and others in the group speak about their project’s successes with green walls, roofs, and integrated urban gardening systems, I am excited and can’t wait to be incorporating some of these technologies into communities I am working on.  As Paul noted, “Urban Gardens can create prosperity where there is currently zero.”

For more info:
Urban Gardens at the Smart Home in Chicago
Trent University Green Roof

Fytowall
Inka Wall
The ABLE project
Elliot Coleman
Sky Vegetables

Photos by the very talented Paige Green. www.paigegreenphotography.com

I absolutely love this sink/toilet combo by ROCA. Not only is it aesthetically simple, minimal and clean, but it is also functionally so as well.  The water that is used from the sink is stored below the sink and then used again for the toilet water. This gets double function out of every drop of water. The typical notion in using drinkable water for toilets is so wasteful and so outdated.

While I have been quite fond of this sink/toilet combo, many that I have seen are functional, but not beautiful. This is a great example that you can have it all.

www.roca.com

I am at West Coast Green getting ready to give a few talks this afternoon. The weather is lovely and the company is inspiring. It is great to see friends and colleagues and find out what everyone is doing. The world is green building world is changing so fast, and coming to West Coast Green each year is a great way for me to measure the change. So much is happening, and I remain more hopeful than ever.

Currently, I am sitting in Josiah Cain’s Integrative garden that bridges the various buildings of the conference.

Josiah Cain, acclaimed Landscape Architect and visionary (who I have worked with on living roofs and rain harvesting projects)along with Natural Builders created this xeriscaping garden filled with native plants that require little or no water, and also treats the rainwater. It makes usable, treated water from rain water. This garden is a beautiful example that a garden can provide visual delights as well as beneficial for the environment and your home.

Josiah is Chief Design Officer at Design Ecology, and I worked with Josiah when he was with Rana Creek for the green roof that was on the mkLotus at West Coast Green 2 years ago.

West Coast Green is open through tomorrow, Saturday October 3. I highly recommend a visit.

For more info: www.westcoastgreen.com

photos by David Hedden

I am getting on a plane today to head back to Iowa for a family reunion. One of my favorite parts about flying over the midwest states is looking out the window and studying the patterns of planting and irrigation. Lately, I have been fascinated with Center-Pivot Irrigation systems (where there is an overhead sprinkler system along a pipe joined by trusses, mounted on wheeled towers that move in a circular pattern. During seasons that they are being used, they create colorful (usually green) circles in the landscape.

What has been particularly interesting to me, however, are the patterns of the brown circles, which are usually indicative of areas where they are no longer planting (either the land is no longer suitable for plantings, or they have to move due to lack of water).

I have been obsessed with moving around google earth and scanning different parts of the world and looking at their pivot irrigation patterns and when they say about  the land, water and people.  It becomes a visual depiction of how much water we are using everyday.

This has been the focus of a new painting series I am working on. So far, the paintings have been looking at the very different patterns and colors of irrigation systems in places like Oklahoma versus deserts in Saudi Arabia. While I am not really a painter (especially when I am spending time with my friends who are professional painters like Brian Andreas of Storypeople), it is a process that I enjoy when studying something. For some people, they explore through writing, or song. For me, it is sketching: sometimes with pencil or pen, and sometimes with paint.

I look forward to finding new patterns on the flight today for new paintings.

Going green is always more enjoyable when it can be made easy, and it can be beautiful.  My friend Sally Dominguez has done just that with her company Rainwater Hog. As she says, “Space is precious. Water is too.”  So this Australian designer and architect came up with a solution for capturing rain water and storing it to be used for irrigating your landscape, or using it for toilet flushing water. So much smarter than wasting fresh, drinkable water for these usages.

Sally’s approach was to make the “Hogs” as modules, so you can use however many you want/need for your particular space. You can add on easily in the future. Their long slim size makes them perfect for making an outdoor wall, or even placing them between framing members below your deck.

Recently, we put a Hog below our deck in our courtyard.  It fit perfectly.

Sally also has Hogs that can be used to store drinking water. So, if you are headed to Burning Man, you might consider taking a Hog, rather than a bunch of water bottles!