Last week my wife came home from Nordstrom looking defeated, clutching a $2,800 Gabriela Hearst bag she’d just returned. “The sales associate swore it was completely sustainable,” she said, “but…
I was standing in my colleague Maria’s kitchen last week, watching her flip through utility bills with this huge grin on her face. “Sarah, look at this!” she said, practically…
Man, I gotta tell you something that’s been eating at me lately. Every week I get calls from folks who’ve hired some fancy architecture firm promising “sustainable design,” and then…
I remember sitting in a coffee shop in Tempe last spring, watching a heated conversation unfold at the table next to me. Two interior designers were arguing about whether using…
You know how sometimes you have to get a little dramatic to make a point? I mean, I’ve been trying to teach sustainable design principles for years, and I kept…
I've been thinking a lot lately about why some buildings just feel right while others make you want to flee immediately. You know what I mean – you walk into…
Last month I was helping a friend redesign her living room when she asked me something that stopped me cold: "How do I make this space sustainable without it looking…
You know what really bugs me about most "green building" conversations? Everyone gets so caught up in the sexy stuff – solar panels gleaming on rooftops, wind turbines spinning majestically,…
My friend Sarah called me from Melbourne last month, breathless with excitement about a building she'd just walked through. She's an environmental engineer who typically gets worked up about wastewater…
The other day I was crawling around another scorching attic in Mesa, thermal camera in hand, when the homeowner called up through the access hole: "So what's the secret to…