Green Building
In the US Bob Vila’s name has been synonymous with home improvement for more than three decades. He now showcases many of his ideas on his website, BobVila.com. A pioneer of the adaptive reuse movement, Vila helped bring “green” thought to the forefront, and in more recent years he has focused much of his efforts on investigating sustainable building and design. Inhabitat interviewed Bob about the need for green buildings. From that interview we quote Bob as saying:
“I’m always saying now that I’m 35 years into this that we’ve started calling it “green” and referring to everything as “green this” and “green that” in the last few years, but the basics are still the basics that we’ve always been talking about — at least I’ve been talking about — for many, many years going back to the very beginning of This Old House. Conservation, preservation, recycling, all these things that we were looking at 30-35 years ago in the realm of historic preservation are green. Because obviously rather than tearing down and throwing away, we’re recycling, refurbishing, reusing and saving all those manpower hours, all that energy, and all those materials that initially went into the construction of whatever — whether it was a log cabin or a federal mansion in Virginia.”
“Over the years the things that I’ve been most involved in trying to promote have had to do with energy conservation, and I guess what has opened everybody’s eyes to this was the first Arab oil embargo, and the spikes in energy costs that we saw back in the ’70s. My son was born in the ’70s and a lot of people don’t remember that we were dealing with heating oil that went from 30 or 40 cents to $1.00 and $1.25 very quickly. So issues of energy conservation and smart energy use have been at the forefront of what I’ve been promoting for a long time — coupled with other simple technologies like insulation. And in terms of new home building, that’s kind of an area where I think a lot of people are excited about just due to the possibilities. But there is still much to be said about old technologies, if you will, the stuff as simple as how to site a house so that it takes advantage of passive solar gain.”
“One of the things that has always concerned me is the inappropriate waste of product. I think the era of everything going to a landfill has changed sufficiently so that the idea of recycling rather than just throwing away has a firm grip on the industry. You see it here walking the streets of Manhattan, where you’ve got so many rehabs and office and residential buildings going on constantly, and you’ll see all of a sudden that you’ve got metal being sorted out very carefully. The products that are being taken out of a building are clearly going to get recycled one way or in another. That’s a big difference just, I think, in the last 5 or 10 years.”
“The one piece that we have on the website in the green area that involves an architect called Allan Shope, a very well-known architect who made his career really building mansions for millionaires. He got sick of doing that and in the last 5 or 10 years he became very involved in the whole concept of zero-carbon footprints and recycling materials. We shot some footage of his own personal Earth-bermed house. He’s a great example of people in the profession examining all these possibilities that involve not just good design from the energy perspective, but also the whole business of recycling and reusing materials that have been abandoned or that have become obsolete, and figuring out how to give it a new life. “
“In terms of sustainable and natural sources of energy, I think wind power is something that is fascinating to see on the individual level. Where I am in the summer in Massachusetts, I’m surrounded by a number of small farms and you’re starting to see wind generators go up. Even though it’s a big initial investment, it’s a great example of people just individually looking at alternative energy sources.”
“ Energy audits help people understand the importance of tightening the house, keeping the drafts out, insulating, updating heating and air-conditioning equipment — all of the above. But I think when you talk about programs in the last couple years that have not gotten anywhere, they’ve been victimized by politics. We’re sadly living in a world where we seem to have bred an enormous amount of Americans who are kind of refusing to understand or accept the importance of science, or the reality of science. “
