At the time of this writing, nearly two hundred homes have been built and sold in just three years, and several new phases of presold home construction have begun. As intended, we delivered exclusive modern design to the general home-buying market at incredible value.
We transformed the production industry, raising it to a caliber previously witnessed only in custom, multimillion-dollar homes. With our design success, we discovered a whole new demographic that sought our modern architecture. The buyers loved the Alta Verde homes, the media loved them, and a dozen national design award committees did as well, honoring all of us with “best in class” industry accolades for design excellence from organizations such as the National Association of Home Builders. Our design partnership with Andrew Adler and his belief in us had paid off.
A closing note on any innovative yet affordable residential architecture.
A colleague of mine revisited the Levittown homes of the 1940s for a piece published in the New York Times on the fiftieth anniversary of the once-groundbreaking mass-production tract homes. Regardless of some architectural embellishments added on by homeowners over the decades, he reported that he could still see the basic shape of every home, repeated house after house. This bothered him at first, but only briefly. It occurred to him that he was looking for the original design, and therefore he saw it and was pleased. But does this bother me?
Five-foot saplings were now fifty feet tall. That’s fine. But my colleague saw changes to the original designs: new coats of paint with a garage added here, a sun porch there, even some roofs raised to allow second floors.
In some cases, I feel that homes are as alive as the inhabitants. The architecture molds and gets broken in like a pair of jeans, to reflect the evolution of one’s lifestyle. But on the other hand, I have witnessed, unfortunately too many times, the devastation of beautiful Midcentury homes by thoughtless remodels and additions in the seventies and eighties—just as one example.
Are my homes at Escena intended to be works of art, or do I now let them go into the untrained hands of the purchasers of my homes? What happens at a restaurant when a diner customer asks the Michelin-rated chef to substitute A-1 for his classic béarnaise sauce?
My ego, matched by the developer’s, would like to see our Escena home designs remain pure. The homeowners, supporting the concept that they have purchased a work of art, have expressed little interest in adding their own brushstrokes of color to what are essentially pieces of modern art and sculpture.
To ensure our philosophy, we even added clauses to the sales contracts and community guidelines that prohibit architectural alterations. Sure, the landscape will change and grow, but certainly no second stories, added trellises and entry features, or guest-bedroom additions are allowed at our community.
Unlike many other residential developers who allow homeowners to choose from many options of paint colors, kitchen countertops, bathroom tiles, and so on, with Alta Verde Group, we decided that we produced the best compositions of residential design. If the home buyers do not like the model they see, they should consider looking at another one. If that doesn’t work out, perhaps they should visit a competing developer’s community. Our confidence has proven acceptable, as Alta Verde outsells all other developers in the region combined. Month after month.
No, I have not created Fallingwater or the Palace of Versailles, where such iconic designs are worth preserving forever. We have merely offered the newest ideas to an industry of production homes starving for fresh designs. But I do believe that in many cases, and perhaps in mine, that the original vision of an architect should be respected. The rest is up to history.
GREENWASHING
All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.
VICTOR HUGO
Saving the planet has become an intense topic of popular and political debate. What you may not know is that for decades, the means to this end has been deceptively marketed to consumers, often to the detriment of the cause. The architecture and building industry has been as complicit as anyone.
Since the environmental movement of the ’60s, and the founding in 1970 of both the first Earth Day and the EPA, most people have been aware of myriad things they could do to make the world an ecologically sounder place, from recycling to using unleaded gasoline. Madison Avenue has exploited our desire to do good—or to be seen as doing good.
In the 1980s, a researcher discovered that those ubiquitous tent cards in hotel bathrooms asking us to use the bath towels a second or third day were an attempt to appear environmentally conscious when the real intention was to increase profit by saving on hotel operating costs. (I also wonder if those cards cost more in nonrecycled card stock and non-petroleum-based ink than any possible operational savings.)
The term “greenwashing” was coined as a result and now applies to marketing attempts intended to deceive the public, to give products a “green sheen.”
It got so bad that the Federal Trade Commission had to step in. Here is just one passage of the green guidelines set by the FTC: “Overstatement of environmental attribute: An environmental marketing claim should not be presented in a manner that overstates the environmental attribute or benefit, expressly or by implication. Marketers should avoid implications of significant environmental benefits if the benefit is in fact negligible.”
In my world, there has been a concerted effort by the government to issue guidelines, incentives, and certification to architects and builders for “green” buildings. I am a LEED-accredited architect, meaning I have passed a lengthy and detailed test created by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). On its website, the USGBC defines LEED as follows: “LEED, or Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, is transforming the way we think about how our buildings and communities are designed, constructed, maintained and operated across the globe. Comprehensive and flexible, LEED is a green building tool that addresses the entire building lifecycle recognizing best-in-class building strategies. At its core, LEED is a program that provides third-party verification of green buildings. Building projects satisfy prerequisites and earn points to achieve different levels of certification.” The USGBC site goes on to list a point system for achieving silver, gold, or platinum LEED status for a building, with every possible aspect taken into consideration, from advanced cooling systems to ecofriendly building materials, from low-water-use landscaping to, yes, the ubiquitous solar panel.
In the best and sincerest way possible, I believe in being a steward for the environment, both the physical and the social. Aside from the exciting flights of artistic fancy in architectural design, architects are trained to provide, at a minimum, shelter that takes into consideration life, safety, security, and human welfare.
This broad and simple premise covers many subcategories such as aesthetics, budget, construction techniques, and material research. Specific to this discussion, I believe that practicing as a professional in the field of architecture means the responsible acknowledgment and handling of our environment, society, and culture for the next and succeeding generations. This position is a matter not just of ethics or virtue but also of common sense and decency.
Here’s the catch.
Building “green” has become a necessary bragging right and sometimes a misleading marketing position to attract customers. Greenwashing can take the form of companies who change the names of their products to sound greener, add a green banner to their website, and then call themselves leaders in the green industry. Such companies spend more dollars in creating the spin and aura of being green than in bona fide research to support the supposed environmental benefits of their projects.
For example, some architectural products now sold as green are the same as their “pregreen” ancestors. Precast-concrete items are now marketed as “Enviro Sand Resin” or “Eco-Panels” that can achieve a “10-Point Green Premiere Certification