PreservationNation

During the last few years, I’ve been to more than my fair share of conferences on sustainability and preservation. But last week, I had the chance to attend a symposium that was really the first of its kind. The Midwest office (Region 5) of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hosted a Green Historic Preservation Symposium, at which nearly 300 preservationists, green building, and assorted other environmental types gathered to discuss the intersection of historic preservation and sustainability. This is the first such federally-led symposium that I know of, and EPA deserves much credit for taking the lead and hosting this gathering.

The full-day event included sessions on incentives for greening historic buildings and the disconnect between green building rating systems and the value of building reuse, as well as a lively discussion on the difficulty of encouraging the retrofit rather than replacement of existing windows. An afternoon exercise led by Carla Bruni, a consultant to the Chicago Bungalow Association, helped participants focus on some of the key advantages – and obstacles – to greening historic buildings.

Most importantly, the day opened up what I believe will be an extraordinarily valuable line of communication between the EPA and the preservation community about a range of issues that affect the environment and preservation – from the possibility of creating Energy Star guidance specific to historic buildings, to working together on any number of issues with the EPA, Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development through the Sustainable Communities Program.

With my recent work on the National Trust’s life cycle assessment research, which will evaluate the value of building reuse compared to new construction, I’m also particularly eager to see the EPA’s continued participation in efforts to improve life cycle data for buildings – something that is badly needed. There are too few in the environmental and green building community who consider the environmental costs of our disposable building culture, and EPA could help significantly to improve the data and tools needed to understand the impacts of building construction.

As I understand it, the EPA will be issuing a summary of the symposium in the next few weeks, as well as posting power points from the various presenters. I’ll provide the link on PreservationNation.org once the EPA has them online. Meanwhile, feel free to share any ideas you have about how the EPA and preservation community might work together to promote building reuse and the greening of our historic buildings.

Patrice Frey is the director of sustainability research for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The beginning of a new year brings all kinds of interesting top ten lists, including the Earth Advantage Institute’s top ten green trends to watch in 2010.   Many of items to make the list aren’t too surprising – for example we should expect to see more net-zero buildings and more sustainable building education.   But I was happily surprised to see Earth Advantage’s prediction that we will see more efforts to understand the  environmental impacts of building materials is 2010.

“With buildings contributing roughly half the carbon emissions in the environment, the progressive elements in the building industry are looking at ways to document, measure, and reduce greenhouse gas creation in building materials and processes. Lifecycle analysis (LCA) of building products is underway by third party technical teams, while others are working with federal and state building authorities to educate staff, create monetized carbon credits, and develop effective carbon offset policies. This effort will be heightened once a federal cap-and-trade mechanism is launched in this country.”

While there’s been a lot of focus on green buildings in the last decade, most of that was directed to understanding how we can make buildings more efficient in their operation or location.  There hasn’t been nearly as much focus on understanding the environmental impacts of the materials used to construct or rehabilitate buildings.   Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) — that somewhat daunting sounding term —  is the process by which we can understand the environmental impacts of a product through all phases of its life, including extraction of natural materials, manufacturing, construction, use and disposal.  LCA evaluates several different aspects of products, such as  the carbon released and energy used by the product, as well as other factors such as toxic emissions released into our air, water and soil.

The Department of Energy funds and houses the U.S. Life Cycle Inventory Database, and is thankfully ramping up its efforts to expand the availability and quality of data for all kinds of materials – from those used in packaging to housing.   Organizations such as the USGBC – which is moving towards a life-cycle based rating system – also have a strong interest in improved understanding of the environmental impacts of materials.   And, as Earth Advantage notes, there’s increasing interest in this subject because of the potential to turn carbon savings into money under a federal cap-and-trade program.  All of this may seem kind of nerdy, and kind of wonky, but for those of us who really want to understand the environmental impacts created by constructing new stuff  – namely buildings –  this is great news.

We at the National Trust for Historic Preservation are also stepping up in 2010 and making our own contribution to understanding the environmental impacts of building materials and construction, thanks to a generous grant from the Summit Foundation. Last summer, we held a symposium on Life Cycle Assessment and historic preservation with experts on both subjects to  identify the research and tools needed to better understand the environmental value of reusing buildings.

After working through the recommendations from the symposium, the National Trust issued a Request for Qualifications for a research study to quantify the value of building reuse, and we’re now in the process of interviewing candidates to complete the study.  Our research will evaluate the environmental  impacts of building reuse compared to new construction using a number of typical scenarios, such as the demolition of a single family home and replacement with a new, green home.    We’re hopeful that we’ll have results to share by the end of the year, and that these results will help to shed light on why we should care about reusing buildings.

Stay tuned to PN for more info.

Patrice Frey is the director of sustainability research for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Written by Fabian Bedne

The storefront that encloses Jorge Solari’s living room is made of various systems welded together and recycled glass.

When I was a kid my dad would send me around the neighborhood to buy old newspapers. I walked around our streets in Buenos Aires asking the superintendents of the apartment buildings if they had old papers to sell. They instructed me to wait and came back with pounds of them. After I paid, I took the newspapers to dad’s store. He wrapped the merchandise he sold with Kraft paper, and using a layer of old papers saved him money.

In Argentina, and I am sure all over Latin-America, on-site labor is more economical than processed and/or manufactured construction materials. So carefully removing and reusing materials is the only way to keep costs down. Another difference between these two markets is the credit system. Doing business with credit abounds in the United States (or it used to until recently), and businesses could not survive without it. In Argentina money has to be saved in cash in order to be able to buy a car, a house, or whatever. Credit exists, but it is so expensive that is not used the same way as in the US The resulting paradigm shapes the difference between the way the built environment is created in the industrialized world and everywhere else.

Recycled wood and steel are exposed on the underside of the loft above Jorge Solari’s living room.

When I finished college at the University of Buenos Aires’ School of Architecture, I started an architectural office with another young architect, Gabino Regunega. Our objective was to explore traditional construction with a twist. We did a lot of reusing by visiting salvage yards and purchasing old iron railings, wood doors and windows, traditional ceramics and wood flooring. Then we figured out how to recombine then in our projects. Our crew – a welder, a carpenter, and masons – were amazingly skilled at retrofitting materials.

When we wanted certain details such as using bricks of different colors, we climbed the pile of discarded bricks at the yard to find the hue we wanted. A concrete mix that was supposed to be light was achieved by destroying old bricks and adding the desired-color bricks. By reusing the same untreated wood again and again, we created the framing for concrete structures like beams or columns. To prevent the wood from rotting, these forms were painted with oil discarded from automobile oil changes.

Recycled doors that connect to various areas.

Over time my office evolved into a design-build business. With a new partner named Jorge Solari, who also graduated from the same university, we did remodeling and new construction for many years (until I moved to the States). My partner saved any material we removed and practically built his whole house with them. His house is beautiful.

Fabian Bedne was a local Tennessee Scholar at the 2009 National Preservation Conference in Nashville.