Good Art Review Site

In doing my earlier posts (Here and Here) on the Impressionist show at the Kimbell, I found this worthwhile Dallas Arts Revue blog HERE with great photos.  Take a look!

No new photos, but the Kimbell building addition is proceeding...  The world's deepest hole is now almost filled with basement stuff of the new building: work and storage spaces and what I hope will finally be adequate visitor parking.  Concrete is just now starting to rise above ground level.  It's hard to see much through the construction fence of chain-link lined with blue tarp, though I did notice that the two huge white tents that I'd thought were for fund-raising parties are now being used as construction staging areas.  The workers will be glad of a little shade as the weather heats up.  I'll try for photos through the fence on my next trip.

Meanwhile Kimbell-addition architect Renzo Piano's lovely museum in Dallas, The Nasher Sculpture Center, is having problems: the still a'building new Museum Tower, 40+ stories of condos that get their multi-million dollar cache' from being in the Arts District and, specifically, from looking down on the Nasher's garden... well, it's reflective new glass west wall is reflecting light into the Nasher's carefully solar-screened-till-now skylights - cooking the art - and baking the garden too.

LA's reflective stainless steel Disney Symphony Hall had a similar solar oven effect on its neighboring condos; the symphony building got (essentially) sanded to become less blindingly reflective.  Not sure how this problem will get resolved yet in Dallas.  I'd suggest adding non-reflective brisolei screen to cut the reflections and, incidentally, save the condo owners a ton of air conditioning money.

West facing glass in Dallas?  In our supposedly "greener" age, how did that sound like a good idea?

A Nice Spring-y Squidoo Page

Here's a recent webpage on the spring subject of gardens: Easy Green Yard

Public domain photo

Beating the Heat with Architecture

Now that Dallas/ Fort Worth has officially beaten the 1980 record for Nastiest-Hottest-Summer, this might be time to make suggestions for how Architecture and Allied Design Disciplines (sounds like a band of super heros!), how these noble arts can help keep you cooler NEXT summer:

Remember Maintenance:
Have your air conditioner checked early next spring - before you need it.  Change or clean air filters.  Try to shade your outdoor A/C unit!  Make sure air can flow around it (clip those bushes.)

Likewise, make sure doors and windows fit snugly and aren't leaking expensive A/C to the outside.  (This will keep out roaches too - a bonus.)  When you replace windows or doors, get the best insulated, best performance new ones you can afford.

Use Fans:
Moving air feels cooler.  With a fan, you can turn up your thermostat and save, since a fan uses less electricity than a compressor.  Ceiling fans are a good idea, but portable ones work too.  (Try an old-fashioned hand-powered fan like Scarlett O'Hara's: relief at hand when trapped in, say, a hot restaurant.  People will stop staring after a while - then ask to borrow it.)

Find Shade:
Plant a deciduous tree on the south or west side of your house - watch your A/C bill drop.    Save trees.  Water trees.  Trees are our friends - go hug one.  Any time you stop the direct rays of the sun striking your home (at 107 degrees it's assault and battery!), you save energy to cool it.  So plant vines on the west wall of your house, or tall shrubs, or a tree.

When you can, add awnings, blinds, patio covers, pergolas, porches (wonderful, traditional porches!), or sun umbrellas to shade your house or the area around it.  Blinds on the outside of a window help more than blinds on the inside.  Either way, shut them when you're not home or in the afternoon, when it's hottest.

Think Light and Cool:
Light colors reflect light and heat better - dark colors absorb it.  One of the best energy saving things you could do would be to climb up and paint your roof white!  So can you?  When you re-roof choose light-colored shingles.  Paint your house a light color.  Buy white blinds.  Light colored pavers stay cooler than dark ones.  Ditto lawn furniture...

Insulate:
Check your attic.  Add insulation.  This is relatively cheap and easy, paying for itself quickly in energy savings.  Walls are harder to insulate after a house is built, but sometimes it's not that tough - worth checking.

Image borrowed from Star Maker Machine where there's a song about a porch

Psychology:
There are a number of tricks our ancestors used to feel cooler... or to think they felt cooler, which works just as well, right?  Fans are a big one.  Moving air!  Also simplify your rooms: put away the knicknacks, take down heavy curtains, give your home the bare style of a lake cabin.  Definitely remove rugs, if you can, because walking bare foot on bare boards or especially on tile, seems and is cooler.  Shade your room by drawing blinds or dimming lights.  Lighten colors - cover the red velvet coach with a white(ish) cotton throw. "Cool" colors like blue and green translate into a few real degrees on the thermostat compared to "hot" ones like red or orange.  I bet one of those desktop fountains with trickling water would help.  Dress coolly.  Drink icy cool drinks with mint in them.  On your porch.  (You know, at dawn, when it's only 90 degrees.)

Architectural Materials and Recycling

Two related architectural happenings:

First, I went to a luncheon seminar called "Demystifying Resins" given by 3Form.  This doesn't sound exciting, but samples of their materials were!  We studied various kinds of plastics (many with high % of recycled content) made with combinations of beautiful translucent color, cool textures, and/or embedded materials like grasses, flower petals, or anything you like, really.  Very exciting to a designer.  My favorite panel had strips of white-with-color-fleck paper from recycled 3Form catalogues.  (In this photo the background looks white, really it's clear.)

image borrowed from 3Form's online catalogue

Second, I learned about a program call ZeroLandfill to recycle or upcycle architectural materials to artists... 

Theaters take note!  

On September 16, 23, & 30 design firms with reusable architectural materials like tile samples or carpet, etc. can drop off these materials at Corporate Floors; on the next days, September17, 24 & October 1 & 8, from 12:00-3:00 artists or others in the community (non-profit-theaters-cough)  can haul 'em home for reuse.  Most materials will be sample sizes, but sometimes small pieces can be useful: I can testify that tile samples make great mosaic table tops!

image borrowed from ZeroLandfill

More info if you click the Dallas ZeroLandfill Facebook page, but I'll get back to you with, you know, like, an actual address as soon as I find one.

New Generation Lightbulbs

There's been a rumor going around about the banning of incandescent light bulbs - those nice old, heat producing bulbs that make the warm yellowy glow of the table lamp placed in the center of Granma's front window.  All that heat means they're terribly inefficient and ungreen.  Are those darn unflattering fluorescent bulbs are only choice?  Will there be a black market in incandescent A lamps?

Take heart nostalgia lovers and owners of antique lamps or antique buildings!

In fact, the old bulbs are being replaced by fluorescents, (the most energy efficient substitute), but there will also be modified incandescent-lite choices that meet the new code requirements.  Read more about it at FastCompany.

ADDENDUM 1/22/14

Since this was written those compact fluorescents have gotten better and cheaper, though still in need of special disposal - don't just throw 'em in the trash!  But now it's LED lighting that seems the best choice.  It's even more efficient, cleaner to dispose of, and with such mutable color that now we can all potentially colorize our homes with a remote control.  Fun stuff!

Bill Gates's House

Researching for a theater set, I went hunting for photos of Bill Gates's house.  Although it's listed on architects Bohlin Cywinski Jackson's website as "private client" it's identified elsewhere on the internet...  Besides, who else could afford this?

An interesting (and large) "green" house in the unostentatious regional wooden style.  Inside, it has some rather deconstructivist detailing.  Click on the link below the photo to go to an Examiner article that has more photos.

Question: is it still "green" when a single family house reaches 50-60,000 SF?

image borrowed from the examiner.com "Celebrity Homes"