Thursday, January 13, 2005
C2C Home Exhibition aspires to healthier living
From the RoundTable blog
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Lewis, a Roanoke architect, was instrumental in organizing the C2C Home competition. As the express mail poured through our doors prior to the holidays, we were extremely grateful for the wonderful group of volunteers who helped us with the unpacking and processing of nearly 630 designs received from the C2C Home competition registrants. On the final day alone - architects have a proud tradition of working until the last possible minute - we received more than 400 shipping tubes from all corners of the Earth.
But what would the containers reveal about how architects, interior designers, engineers, landscape architects, contractors and others think about the future of housing in Roanoke? First of all, how could designers in Tehran, Sydney, Rotterdam, Tokyo and Blacksburg have any idea how to develop the design for a house on a vacant lot in our fair city? More important, why were these thousands of talented individuals and teams from all over the world even interested in the design problem set before them?
The questions are important because before you visit the exhibition of the selected entries at the Art Museum of Western Virginia, you will want to start the journey into the mind of a C2C Home entrant. Without some type of primer on what you are about to experience, you may simply come away from your museum experience dizzy and bewildered. (I cannot guarantee that this won't happen anyway.) Rest assured, once back on Campbell Avenue, your equilibrium will return.
The museum's showing of the selected entries is not to be confused with turning the pages of that home plan book you leafed through in the check-out aisle last week. These designs are diverse. They are thought-provoking. Many are exceptionally well thought through. Some are elegant. Some are startling. Some will seem untenable as buildable solutions, yet still manage to provide at least the kernel of an idea worth considering. They represent time spent looking for solutions to what may have been an impossible design assignment. They can be viewed as an enormous investment of intellectual capital brought to Roanoke through the vision of the Council of Community Services. At the very least, they deserve our thoughtful consideration.
As in any art museum exhibition, we need to ask ourselves: What is this artist trying to say to us or ask of us, and why is it important? In our conversation with the artist whose work we contemplate, we will often come to understand that it is ultimately up to us to decide what it's "all about." When the art (architecture is considered "the mother of all arts") represents the ideas of something as approachable as the design of a home, we can all relate, or as one of the museum's docents told me, "I live in a house!"
You may find yourself asking the same questions as you stand before each of the entries on display: What is that? Wouldn't that be expensive? Would you live in that? Where would I put my recliner? Am I supposed to learn something from this?
While we can all agree that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it is an extraordinary fact that thousands of individuals spent - in a number of cases, at least - many thousands of hours trying to create homes that respond to the fabric of Roanoke's neighborhoods. Add to the challenge the idea that these homes are intended to be economically viable in areas where an increase in property values would be welcomed by many. At the same time, the designers have taken the ideas embodied in the book "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things" and attempted to bring those ideas to reality in their projects.
Having distilled the book down to one sentence, co-author Bill McDonough describes the challenge: "Our goal is clear: a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world, with clean water, air, soil and power - economically, equitably, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed." And why not? It certainly makes more sense to produce designs that avoid future contamination and the costly cleanup necessary to safeguard human and environmental health than to assume we will have some cleanup to do simply because our designs do not take into account fundamental issues of health and safety.
Our tradition of cleaning up messes rather than averting them to begin with is long and storied. The devastation to human health and the environmental degradation brought to us by lead paint and asbestos are just two examples of many. Right now, the city of Roanoke is in the process of spending $2 million on lead paint abatement in houses in the city to clean up a mess created by the paint industry. This does not begin to address the cancers, brain damage, lung disease and other disorders and deaths of people in Roanoke and across the United States at the hands of industries that continue to bring products to market without conducting a thorough analysis of the effects of these products. McDonough would tell us this is a design failure.
We are still reading about the groundwater contamination caused by the toxic materials dumped in Bedford's landfill and the high concentrations of lead in children's jewelry. We see the dangers of producing and transporting hazardous materials like chlorine and oil. So what will our children and grandchildren contend with because we thought no further than what price tags tell us about the products we are buying? And what are these products we are buying and putting in our homes today that are slowly poisoning us?
Even the most cursory background research will yield useful information. As an example, go onto the Internet and type "vinyl health" or "formaldehyde health," and spend some time reviewing the results. Major industry battles are under way that rarely make the evening news or the morning paper. Some of these revolve around the use of vinyl and formaldehyde in building products. We cannot afford to remain neutral in a debate that affects our health and that of our families, friends, neighbors and the planet we call home.
As consumers, we have the power to pull ourselves out of this mindless cycle of toxification. We cannot assume that simply because a manufacturer, store clerk, architect or builder says a product is safe, it is. Clearly if we don't ask, we won't be told. If we rely on the "experts" to protect us, we will most assuredly be disappointed. We must educate ourselves to these challenges and we must become consumers who demand the truth about the items we purchase. When we talk with our checkbooks, industry will listen.
We have the opportunity to evaluate the projects on display from Friday until Feb. 13 at the Art Museum of Western Virginia, keeping these challenges in mind. We need also to understand that in many cases we are viewing ideas that are in process and as yet unrefined. In still other cases, the submissions on display were selected because they excelled in a given area. For example, a submission might more fully explore the future of cradle to cradle product design without its designer giving any thought to what the house would look like in a traditional urban neighborhood setting.
Our challenge is to enjoy the thought and effort that the international design community has given to our community through this competition and to work to understand why it might be important to our future.File l The Roanoke TimesNell Boyle, a volunteer with Cradle 2 Cradle, unwraps one of hundreds of home design entries back in December for the C2C design competition.
