You know what drives me nuts? Walking into a Home Depot and watching someone ask about sustainable building materials, only to see the sales guy point them toward whatever has…
My neighbour Jake called me last Tuesday, frustrated as hell. He'd just moved into a studio apartment downtown, and his girlfriend was moving in next month. "I need furniture that…
# What I Learned About the Regenerative Design Process After Accidentally Killing My Yard So this is going to sound ridiculous, but my obsession with regenerative design started because I…
I've been thinking a lot lately about something that happened during my consultation with a rehabilitation centre in Portland last month. The director, Maria, walked me through their newly renovated…
Standing in that graduate program coordinator’s office at Parsons last spring, I felt like I was speaking a foreign language. “So you want to study… sustainable design?” she said, squinting…
Last Tuesday, I watched a client cry over a coffee table. Not because it was ugly – actually, it was stunning. Hand-carved walnut with these gorgeous live edges that seemed…
My phone lit up at 11:23 PM with a message from Arjun, my contact at a materials testing lab in Bangalore. He’d sent photos of cracked concrete samples from a…
The other day, I found myself standing in a cavernous warehouse in Portland, surrounded by what looked like giant mushroom bricks. The salesperson was explaining how mycelium-based building materials could…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between renovation and restoration, especially after some conversations with folks in our church building committee. We’re trying to figure out what…
Last month I walked into a potential client’s headquarters and nearly laughed out loud at the contradiction. Here’s this tech company with a LEED Platinum plaque in their lobby, bragging…