Eco Brooklyn » Review

Design Revolution Book and a New York Living Machine

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Mon, 07 May 2012 01:43:43 +0000

I read the book Design Revolution, 100 Products That Empower People by Emily Pilloton to see if any of the designs could apply to a New York green contractor.

The book is organized into eight sections:

Education

Enterprise

Water

Energy

Mobility

Food

Well-being

Play

There were plenty of great ideas that could be applied to a New York city home – cool solar panels/wind harvesters in the form of leaves, composting toilets that normal people would use, all sorts of bike ideas, and a food composter that looks like an espresso machine.

The most interesting thing for me was the Eco-Machine, designed by Todd Ecological, a company founded by John Todd. An Eco Machine, also known as a living machine, uses plants and microbes to filter waste water. This has direct applications for New York ecological landscaping and green construction.

A Brooklyn brownstone, instead of passing its sewer to, say, the Gowanus Canal it would pass it to a series of water gardens in the yard. These gardens would be beautifully designed to fit into the an environment used by children, adults, pets and Williamsburg hipsters.

The key is in the design of combining function and aesthetic, something a good eco-landscaper could do. The end result of the Brooklyn Brownstone living machine is a lush yard full of healthy plants and a NY sewer system that is not overloaded.

This is not unrealistic. It is very practical and possible. It is also illegal. Great ideas move faster than massive bureaucracies like the Department of Buildings and Department of Environmental Protection….

A living machine system in Florida

As an ecological landscaper who uses gray water and rain water runoff to feed the garden the idea of a living machine takes it a step further. Very exciting stuff and something I plan on implementing at an undisclosed brownstone near you.

Japan Style and Green Building

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Thu, 03 May 2012 23:49:42 +0000

The book Japan Style – architecture + interiors + design, by Geeta Mehta and Kimie Tada contains lush photographs by Noboru Murata and is an inspiring insight into how traditional Japanese buildings are deeply green.

Green building is a symbiosis of many levels that forms a harmonious whole, and architecture in older societies like Japan is filled with a complex structure that covers an astounding array of natural, social and spiritual perspectives.

The book does a great job at showing these levels.

I am especially drawn to the book because the homes are on small lots in urban environments, and as a New York green contractor I know very well what it means to build green on small urban lots.

Unlike your typical New York homes, the Japanese homes in this book are expansive and deeply connected to nature. They are not expansive in size, in fact the homes are minuscule compared to US standards, rather they are expansive in style.

And this is the genius of traditional Japanese architectural design. The photographs show rooms and vistas as broad as a mansion, yet the square footage is not. This real feeling of space and airiness is achieved through intelligent placement of openings onto the garden, the use of fine building materials and a sparseness of design that was modern many centuries before Modernism became popular.

So much of Japanese traditional building echoes today’s green building ethos. The materials are all natural. The floor plans are small. Rooms are used for multiple uses. There is a deep connection between the home and the natural surroundings around it, both in terms of design and materials. The buildings follow the credos of “Less is more” and “form follows function”.

But most importantly for me the design is based on the understanding that our home is, like our body, a temple full of spiritual power. This element turns a collection of building materials into something more than rooms and walls. By being built with an understanding of the spiritual element of design, these homes not only give protection to the body but give support to the soul.

Green building is about natural materials, low embodied energy and energy efficiency. But it is a sack of bricks without the meaning behind it, which has many levels, from political, ecological, social, cultural and yes, spiritual. This meaning is something the traditional Japanese builders, with the benefit of a deep and old culture, drew from and imbued into their work.

The result is a home that nourishes on so many levels. My green contracting work in NY is a world apart from traditional Japan, but in this postmodern world where green building is both simultaneously drawing from cutting edge technology on one side and centuries old techniques on the other, there is a place for traditional Japanese building techniques on my tool belt.

A green builder, if anything, is somebody with a large tool belt.

A Little Book of Coincidence

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:42:56 +0000

A Little Book of Coincidence of the Solar System by John Martineau is one of those beauties of the universe that in one hour can make you realize how perfectly placed everything is, that everything is in perfect harmony with everything else and that there are wondrous mysteries to life that maybe we will never know.

But we can try.

And his book does a great job at showing some of those mysteries.

As a green builder I am especially interested in sacred spacial relationships, that is, spacial relationships that keep coming up again and again in the universe and in nature.

These spacial relationships resonate with us, and as a builder if I can implement them in the green renovations we do then I am creating a space that is in harmony with the universe.

This seems a grand ambition for a humble New York green contractor but if indeed we are all connected then the universal numbers are applicable anywhere, even in a Brooklyn brownstone.

Martineau’s book is an amazing insight into the solar system’s planets and their relationship together. He shows that their proportions, orbit sizes, distances to each other and relationship to the earth have astounding “coincidences”, which is another way of saying we have no idea why.

Check out this site for a detailed insight into some of the relationships. It points out countless relationships, for example:

Of all the truly amazing relationships, perhaps the best are the proportions between Earth and Mercury, and the Earth and Saturn (j), where both the orbits and physical sizes of the planets are related (both to 99% accuracy) — in one case a Phi-ve (five) pointed star, and a 30 pointed star for the other. Multi-pointed stars might seem to be stretching the point, but 30 is the first number which can be divided by 2, 3, and 5, and is the number of the outer trilithon divisions at Stonehenge. Coincidentally, Mercury and Saturn are the innermost and outermost of the medieval planets (those which can be seen with the naked eye). But you can also do the latter with a fifteen pointed star (i.e. five times three). So there!

Furthermore, the diameter of a circle based on Mercury’s aphelion (closest point) to the Sun, also happens to be the distance between the mean orbits of Mercury and Earth.

An even more famous coincidental arrangement is that Saturn takes the same number of years to go around the Sun as there are days between full (Earth) Moons (to 99.8% accuracy). Score one for the Lunatics!

Or another quote from the same site:

Stonehenge, by the way, is the most visited place of any kind in Europe — every year more people visit the site than were present on the face of the Earth at the time it was constructed. Small wonder that visitors are drawn to the geometric masterpiece. If for no other reason than that if Mars is sized so as to define the thickness of the inner bluestone horseshoe, then the Earth and Moon are sized as shown in the upper left figure. In the below first figure, all of the inner planets are sized (with Venus being slightly smaller than Earth, equivalent to the width of the main trilithon circle). Meanwhile the second figure gives the orbits of Jupiter (h) and Saturn. Note: The architect(s) of Stonehenge apparently knew the physical sizes of the inner four planets!

And the accompanying images from the book:

Or how about this image from page 27 of the Coincidence book. It speaks about the relationship between Venus and the Earth. The image below shows the paths that the two planets take (as seen from above in space) as they move around the sun over an 8 year period.

Such geometry is astoundingly beautiful on many levels, especially visually, numerically and musically.

In terms of distance from the Sun you have Mercury, Venus then Earth. Musically, one Venus day is exactly two thirds of an earth year, which translates to a musical fifth. On the other side of Venus is Mercury. Two Mercury years is equal to one Venus day, which translates into a musical octave.

Numerically you have the Fibonacci series of numbers, which has a close relation to the Golden Ratio and phi. The Fibonacci numbers are 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21….The Golden Rule is extensively seen in ancient architecture as well as in nature. The nautilus shell is a classic example.

The Taj Mahal is one of many architectural buildings that are built along this universal relationship.

So back to the Coincidence book, the author points out that over the eight Earth years or thirteen Venusian years the two planets “kiss” five times, meaning Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun. 5, 8, and 13 are all in the Fibonacci series.

These are just a couple examples from the book which goes into much greater detail, all the while giving you a sense that we are just scratching the surface of “coincidences”.

What does it mean? I think the answer lies in our own mythology. For the image above of the dance of Venus and Earth it may be worth looking into the Eastern meaning of the lotus flower.

The author gives no answers, but simply shows what is there based on astronomical calculations.

For me it is inspiring. A green builder is building in harmony with nature. The planets are a good reference point for that. To truly be a custodian of the Earth we need to look at it from beyond, from the Solar System at the very least.

Handmade Houses, A Century of Earth-Friendly Home Design

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 02:08:55 +0000

The book Handmade Houses, A Century of Earth-Friendly Home Design, by Richard Olsen is inspiration for any green builder.

With a clear focus on Big Sur homes Olsen highlights homes that were built along the same style as the Slow Food Movement, where meaning, lifestyle and experience are just as important as the finished “product”, that is if it ever gets finished – which is rare since how can you finish an experience, it just melds into another.

The green building movement as embodied by modern forward thinking perceptions of society and the environment are very much founded in the 1960′s and 1970′s hippie and counter culture movements that founded so much of what we are today.

Call it 70s hippies’s can-do attitudes, where you Turn on, tune in, drop out, the homes in Olsen’s books are more about a lifestyle than about construction, and if it is about construction it is about building a lot more than just structures but rather the culture that needs those specific structures.

The homes are all “dropped out” in the wilderness, often with views of the Big Sur. They have the vibe of being built by somebody who smoked some really good grass, took a walk on the beach, found some driftwood and said, “Man this wood is beautiful, lets make something out of it.”

And thirty years later they are almost there, their homes an evolving work of art that are full of memories from raising children, hosting friends and living life.

An example of one person's creative home making

The book is an inspiration for me, a New York green contractor. My parents were hippies. We lived in homes like this during my childhood and I draw from that when we build.

My own house, the Eco Brooklyn show house for ecological building, could be in this book. An old hippie architect MISHA SARADOFF walked through it and exclaimed with glee, “I love it! You are doing everything WRONG!”

WRONG in terms of budget, formal architectural theory, schedule, and everything else that matters in mainstream capitalist construction. Misha once talked me out of becoming an architect for the same reason.

The Brooklyn green show house lower duplex with fire escape catwalk, cement floor and earthen walls

Stairs from old growth pine, clay wall and a boulder we found while digging out the cellar. We call her Lucy.

But the show house is RIGHT from the standpoint of Olsen’s book. More work of art for the living than house, the Eco Brooklyn show house, like the homes in Olsen’s book, is part experiment, part evolution of human need, part creative expression, part collection of found materials.

Olsen shows a cool list of books to create the historical context of green building and the culture the surrounds it.

My one critique of the book is that it portrays itself as an international look into handmade houses, but the truth is that the view is California white centric. Even the homes in other countries might as well be on the coast of Big Sur.

Certainly these homes are worth looking at but to the book as a history of “Handmade Houses” from the past century and not even mention the MILLIONS of hand made homes across the globe by poor dark people is myopic at best.

But the book still has value. With this kind of book you can see the home as an expression of the people who live in it. In this case it is not the home as a commodity that you buy off the shelf. All these homes are unique, just like people are unique. The homes are an expression of people seeking happiness in the world as themselves, something you can’t buy but have to discover for yourself.

The book is about design, history and aesthetics, the main aesthetic being Wabi Sabi. The book is not about building techniques. You don’t have any discussion about energy efficiency, construction ratings or any of the other things people are obsessed with today. The book takes a larger look at cultural trends, specifically the green building trends that can be traced to the 70′s.

Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, Funky Forts: And Whatever the Heck Else We Could Squeeze in Here

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:15:58 +0000

The book Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, Funky Forts: And Whatever the Heck Else We Could Squeeze in Here is a cross between Malcolm Wells and redneck literature.

The author, Derek “Deek” Diedricksen, is a scrappy young guy who took his love for kid forts and turned it into a deep study of how to build tiny shelters on a budget.

The book is full of scribbles and rambles (very much along the humor and style of Malcolm Wells) on how to build your own back yard or forest hideaway.

As a New York green contractor I appreciate his creativity among all else. At Eco Brooklyn sure we eco-renovate New Yorkers’ homes and commercial spaces but what we really do is find creative ways to re-purpose garbage.

We come across a dumpster and we’re like, “Here is a cool piece of garbage, how can we turn it into something useful? I know! Lets make a counter out of it!”

And the next thing you know we are putting it into a two million dollar brownstone and making it look like a million bucks. You can’t buy that at a store.

The Weather Underground Movie

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 04:07:29 +0000

Since the Occupy Wall Street events this fall I have immersed myself in information that questions existing paradigms and searches for solutions to current problems. I’ve always done this, and as a green builder I do it on a daily basis, but the recent Occupy Wall Street events has given my ongoing education a focus and timely reference point.

This evening I watched a poignant documentary “The Weather Underground“, which chronicles the efforts of a small group of white students in the late ’60′s and early 70′s who planted bombs around the US to raise awareness of the atrocities of the Vietnam war.

The movie is powerful because these people are smart, conscientious individuals who did not take their acts of violence lightly. The movie explores their insights into the successes and failures of using violence to combat violence.

The conclusion? Well, there is no easy response to the Vietnam genocide and how we should have stopped it. Are some acts so horrible that violence to stop it is justified? Most police and military forces would say yes. And yes. And yes many times over until the threat has been obliterated.

Whether that threat is a black man in the ghetto or an Arab half way across the globe we, “we” being those who are not in the police or military view finder, find it acceptable that the “threat” be killed regardless of whether they deserve it.

Or maybe it isn’t acceptable but we let it happen every day without so much as a pause in our lives. We accept the party line that the military is looking out for our interests even if we know it is a lie. Such a convenient lie it is.

And maybe these people are threats, if our interests happen to be cheap oil, cheap sneakers and large amounts of easy to digest entertainment.

But when it is a civilian who does something violent to try to stop violence such actions of counter brutality are not allowed nor socially acceptable. Civilians are expected to meet violence with non-violence. A civilian who meets oppression and violence with counter violence is called a terrorist time and time again.

Why is this? Is it just the people in power trying to keep it so?

This strikes a chord with my life. My father was not part of the Weather Underground but he did belong to a similar group during that time. He was accused by the government of setting off pipe bombs, one in front of the Berkeley court house that was sending draft resisters to high security prison and another in front of the Bank of America that was the main financier of Napalm.

Idealistic hippie or dangerous terrorist? Interpol and the FBI felt the later and I spent my first 17 years traveling the world under my parents’ wing as political refugees.

Did my father make a difference? He made a difference to me. I wouldn’t be a passionate green builder dead set on making the world a more ecological place if it weren’t for him.

The hippies dropped out and opened their minds to new ways of being, some good, some not. Either way they learned a lot, if anything how to learn itself, and passed that learning on to their children, most of whom dropped back into society with that knowledge.

So what do we do now. We don’t have a Vietnam to rage against. We have the less visible but more dangerous ongoing destruction of the planet. Us humans are destroying the planet with such violence and heartlessness that any informed green builder knows they are almost symbolic in their effectiveness against the machine of destruction.

Yet like the Weather Underground, an isolated small group that did little to stop Vietnam’s war machine on the surface, green builders must see that symbolism is powerful. Green builders are archetypes where success is not measured in trees saved but in torches carried.

And as long as the torch is being carried, no matter by how small a group and no matter how large the darkness, we will have hope. It is in carrying the environmental torch that we stay alive, regardless of how much ecological destruction is around us.

I don’t see much use in meeting violence with violence. Trying to kill the corporate machine is like trying to kill a monster with endless heads. The success and downfall of capitalism is that it has no moral judgement. You can’t kill something if it is heartless.

But meeting violence with passion, now that is a winning strategy.

I have looked deeply into the soul of our society and have concluded that we are fucked. We are on a crash course with ecological destruction for the sake of greed, power and the blind genetic imperative to spread the human seed as far as humanly possible.

And so I have thrown up my hands and decided I have two options. One, build a pipe bomb and, like the Monkey Wrench Gang, try to wreak as much havoc as possible against the machine of ecological doom. Or two, create a reality where my existence is not part of that machine.

Not a reality like the mind numbing lala land of mass media and material consumption, which is the current solution to numbing the pain we feel as we destroy our own global body.

But a reality that looks at reality with brutal honesty and takes one step, no mater how difficult and painful, yet so amazingly liberating, to a greener personal life. That existence may be lonely. It may be difficult. In fact it may not work at all.

But you just get back up. And before you know it a day has gone by where you didn’t take part in anything too destructive. You may have even helped grow something green, as simple and small as that may seem.

But then a strange thing happens. I have seen it happen in my life and I have seen it happen in every successful revolution in the history or humanity:

You meet somebody else who is holding the same torch as you.

A friend. A person who speaks your language in the babel of destructive insanity. Even if it is a passing in the darkness it is enough to keep the flame alive and even brighten it.

And all of a sudden you aren’t as freaky and alone as you thought you were, not that it matters because by then you are pretty used to your way of life. It takes balls and stubbornness and a deep passion to stick to what you know is right. And sometimes what you thought was right is wrong and you have to continue seeking.

But you learn it is the seeking that is important so you aren’t too worried when you fuck up. Well, worried maybe a little, but you get used to making mistakes and learning from them.

Then you meet somebody else. Over time you have a little group of people who experience life like you. You may be in the belly of the beast but together you have your own parallel universe. This is not a universe in reaction to something bad. This is a universe in creation of something good. You aren’t there in opposition anything but rather in search of the very best way you can be.

And in the end, who cares if what you discover is right or wrong. Or right again. Because over time you live what is true to you and what you do today becomes yesterdays history, your history, like a stick to lean on as you walk into the future.

So yea the Weather Underground may have been stupid kids in a stupid society or visionaries in a stupid society…..but at what point does that torch become society and back again?

We are society and society is us. We are the machine that kills nature to grow and we are the nature that is killed. It ain’t easy sorting it all out but god knows we try. And so did the Weather Underground. And for that I salute them with pride and honor to be part of their tribe, no matter how confused we are.

Bringing Passivhaus to Harlem

Dan Hunter — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:41:41 +0000

Check out this great article about our Eco Brooklyn’s Passive House in Harlem. GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, a great online source for building, designing, and remolding green homes, sent Richard Defendorf to our Harlem site to check out our work. Read his write-up of all the techniques we used to seal our passive house!

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/green-building-news/bringing-passivhaus-harlem

Who Can Afford to Build Green?

Eric Ansanelli — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:03:23 +0000

Eco Brooklyn recently obtained a copy of McGraw Hill’s Green Building: Square Foot Costbook 2012. Construction cost data books are intended for use by planners and builders who would like to get a quick, rough idea of how much a job might cost.

I think it’s pretty cool that green building is at a point where resources like this are being published, making it easier for conventional builders to consider getting into more sustainable practices. The book only offers a few dozen individual case studies, but this is still valuable information – when you consider that not knowing what costs to expect scares many builders away from switching to green. Or what also happens is the contractor overbids on the job to cover the unknowns, thus making it too expensive.

To some, green building is still some mysterious high technology developed by experts that people would purchase if only it wasn’t so darned expensive. On the other hand, as a New York green contractor, we feel green building is a common sense, affordable approach toward radical efficiency, developed side-by-side with an informed client. In short, it isn’t complicated or expensive.

McGraw Hill’s Green Building: Square Foot Costbook 2012 helps people understand this by putting numbers to the jobs, lifting the veil of mystery over what something should cost.

We want to see the green building industry grow not only in demand but also in supply. Our goal is to turn NY green, which is part of our thinking globally and acting locally strategy. So more green building companies may mean more competition but it also means a greener NY, which is what we really care about.

The demand is there so we don’t worry about there being enough business.

Hopefully this book will help non-green contractors be more confident on bidding on green jobs. The more of us there are working towards a greener world only helps Eco Brooklyn further our goals of sound ecology and social justice.

courtesy of Nausicaa Aquarium, France

New Green City: A key element to Green design and construction.

Dan Hunter — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:21:21 +0000

On a beautiful fall day in early October, Eco Brooklyn, a New York City green contractor, took to the South Plaza of Union Square in downtown Manhattan to check out New Green City, an event hosted by GrowNYC. The event hosted many contributors, ranging from non-profits and schools to entrepreneurs, government agencies, and corporate sponsors. All sharing programs, services, products, and insights as to how to make New York City, New Green City through solar, wind, and agricultural terms. The tents were wide spread over the south side of Union Square, with a large crowd through most of the afternoon.

Two really great tents were Ethikus, a online community of ethical and sustainable shoppers, that also offers deals and discounts to these great local shops in downtown Manhattan, and The New School’s Eco-Lectures focusing on sustainable foods, Eco-Farms and solar energy, giving out great information these subjects. With a ton of other great tents thanks to GrowNYC, everyone in New York should take advantage of these great green companies.

Aside from the goal of a New Green City, at Eco Brooklyn we believe that the ultimate goal should be a total green city, built from the ground up with recycled and reused materials, and making zero energy homes. Although the companies at New Green City don’t specialize in building, they do make great strides in lowering energy use and continuing the discussion of green policy, which are things that can not wait but happen immediately. Not only did New Green City bring together lots of outsiders to the green movement, but also created the opportunity for great minds in the green industry to collaborate, furthering our knowledge and reach as a green community. Eco Brooklyn will definitely have a tent next time, or next year, but until then, these are great ideas and options for making NYC a greener place.

The Majestic Plastic Bag: A Mockumentary

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 01:48:48 +0000

Here is a great clip pretending to be a nature show following the “life” cycle of the plastic bag from strip malls in California to the great garbage island in the Pacific. Narrated by Jeremy Irons, it is really great.

What I love about the clip is how it not only shows the tragedy of our consumer society, but almost more deeply it shows the joke of nature shows and in turn the way most people regard nature. Meant to get us closer to nature, nature shows allow us to stay at a safe distance and watch nature conveniently in an “improved” version, with slow motion, close ups and with the days, weeks, even months where nothing much happens edited out.

Only in this case it is a plastic bag we are watching as it “majestically migrates” thousands of miles in under four minutes thanks to the film maker’s skillful editing.

I’m reading Timothy Morton‘s book Ecology Without Nature and he talks about this romaticization and distancing of nature, a tradition deeply rooted in our culture thanks to the Romantic movement and even earlier… coinciding exactly with when we started really reeving up our destruction of the planet…a coincidence? Not at all.

Definitely worth looking into further, if anything worth looking into your own perception of and interaction with nature. Does your romanticization and abstraction of “nature” effect how you interact (or lack of) with “real” nature in your life?

This separation is very dangerous on many levels. There is a general belief that because we hold nature on a pedestal we are doing it a service, even helping to save it….but any feminist will tell you that the pedestal is the first sign of dis equality, because if there is the pedestal then the dualistic law of the universe requires there also be a stool – the pendulum must never stop swinging.

So as we elevate nature above (and away from) us in reverence one day, we inevitably will lower it below us is contempt another day. In both cases nature is “the other” something not connected to us.

You see this so often in dominant culture’s views towards minorities. Take the Spanish Gyspy, “so beautiful” in their flamenco dress, so “soulful”, so “full of life” in their singing and dancing. What is inferred but not said is that they are all these things UNLIKE the non-gypsy Spaniards, again the distancing by putting this exotic animal called Gypsy on a pedestal apart from the rest of the population.

And what happens next? You guessed it. The pendulum swings and this exotic animal that is so not like the rest of us becomes dangerous, dirty, thieving, drug dealing, the worst of society….

And all the while the “real” gypsy stands by scratching their head, dis-empowered, unseen, unheard and misunderstood. This is why it is so important to them to be called Roma. It is an attempt to define their own identity instead of the mainstream imposing a completely random one onto them.

Unfortunately the real animals in this world can’t tell us their real names. They stand there as we impose our definitions onto them through literature, movies, and yes documentaries.

The first step is to stop judging. Nature is not good, not bad. It is. Until is isn’t. And hopefully our mind’s ability to objectify will be overtaken by our equally powerful ability to understand through compassion before all of nature isn’t…and this has to happen NOW because things are really getting catastrophic.

Here is the video.