On 22nd Street, that is. Check out the specs on these green babies:
Solar system * Living Roof * Recycled glass tiles/slabs * Ultra-Touch® Recycled “blue jean” denim insulation * Radiant floor heating – hydronic heating * Wood floors made from reclaimed mine timbers * Wood floors made from Asian hardwood shipping pallets * High Efficiency water heaters * Double Insulated glass windows * Forest Stewardship Council certified Lumber * Forest Stewardship Council certified veneers and cabinets * Engineered structural lumber * Hardie® Fiber Cement siding * High volume (40%) fly ash concrete * Low VOC paints and caulks.
We at Green Key often lament the shortage of green homes on the San Francisco market. For such an “eco-conscious” city, we really are lagging behind in the residential green building sector. But thankfully there are some developers out there like Lorax Development who are building green.
Official estimated completion date was July 10, rumor has it we’re looking at the first week of August. And the price, you ask? I’ll keep you posted.
–22nd Street [Lorax Development]
–Low VOC paints and caulks [toolbase.org]
–Living Roof [greenroofs.org]
–Ultra-Touch® [bondedlogic.com]
–Forest Stewardship Council [fsc.org]
When Lorax sold the Clipper property, I was VERY disappointed by the one-sided aspect of their choices. True it’s a good way of building a house. True, they try to use better materials, but NO, the house was certainly NOT the best it could have been – if only by considering that once you hire an architect, your plans ARE flawed with ridiculous choices.
From my analyse of the Clipper house, Lorax is a company to keep a close eye on – and hopefully each of their houses will be better and better designed than the previous one (I’m longing to read selling statement about passive air conditioning, TINY bathtub using only a third of water compared to the american monsters etc.. but Lorax has not considered that way yet)
Anyway. Lorax homes are probably excellent houses in SF, but there are some rare talented contractors who can help you remodel a house in a very green way – saving the planet from the often un-necessary “dump the house and clean the lot before rebuilding”
And never forget that century old houses ARE green – if only because no or little building material has been used on that lot over 100years – and often little is needed to make it energy efficient (simply because many floors plans are much more energy eficient than 21th century designs)
The clipper owners have offset the green-ness of their house with a nice shiny new Land Rover LR3.
No doubt hybrid.
I love how some clients refuse to take responsibility for THEIR actions.
Architects NEVER make choices. We make recommendations.
Guess who makes the final choice?
They just don’t get it, do they?
Duggo – in that case it’s a bit different – as lorax is a TEAM that designs, builds and MAKES all the choices on a lot they are ‘flipping green”.
So builder=owner=architect=contractor to some extend, and Lorax is fully responsible for all their choices – including the ridiculous oversized bathtubs (let’s assume $$$ from overbidding might lookvery interesting against “religious” convictions)
PS: duggo, if you have visited the house, you would understand what I’m talking about. Contractor side imposed on the architect some ridiculous choices, and the architect side imposed on the contractor some ridiculous choices… none of them having the guts to stand up for their argument (if we dont give them the benefit of just being plain stupid about some details).
As for architects NEVER make choices – let me tell you something. Once a part of the design has cost an arm an a leg in architect’s fees, NOT ALL CLIENTS can financially back up, destroy what they dont like and start over with the same or different architect.
So ethicaly, yes, you dont MAKE choices. But in the real life, there is nothing you can do about putting your own likes and preferences into the project – only hoping that the client hired you for that reason, and that he/she’ll like it.
So yes, at the end of the day, you MAKE choices – the UNIVERSAL architect choice being the hated-by-me “more window surface” – which is a non sense thermically, earthquake sensibility – not talking about the pain to clean those windows, the danger of heavy weight operatable windows, the increase in noise etc. Again, prove me wrong.
as for the SUV – i’d say that MAYBE the owners couldnt give a D*S* about the greenness – and bought the house because it was oversized, overhip, overfashion? If this is the case, why would they ever bother to buy a car with more than 19mpg?
If this is the case, Lorax is totally out of the target – cf the other post about lowincome green housing.