Spring Cleaning - Keeping Ideas Fresh

There is a long tradition of spring cleaning.   Opening the doors and cleaning out closets.  A time for cleansing diets, and getting in shape.   Pruning back bushes and renewing the garden beds.   This is a cycle which is common to most processes.  Taking the opportunity for a fresh look, to re-examine the conditions and rethink the solutions.  It may be that nothing needs to change -  the clothes go back in the closet,  the healthy lifestyle is re-instated,  and the landscape stays the same -  but there is re-affirmation of the choices, of the system.

Not doing the spring cleaning can have some consequences.   Humans are not robots, and thus not always consistent and certainly not perfect.   We fall into habits, we let work overtake us, we let things slide.   For example, I’ve been sucked into the vortex of my dissertation work to the point that the rest of the world started disappearing from my awareness.  This is like hibernating in a cabin for the winter.  While it can be amazingly productive, at some point the air gets stale, ideas become more scarce, and output falters.   Coming out of the woods for some fresh scenery is a good thing.

It may also be opportune for the construction industry to take an occasional re-think.    Asking the question ‘why’ is a good way to start the process.  Why are we using this type of material, or system?  What are the needs and is this the best solution.  What outcome do we expect?    And if we’ve used this  material/ process before -  did we get the results?     Is there an opportunity to simplify, to become more efficient?

Rethinking the Root Cause

In the Toyota System, this process is called kaizen.   This is a process of continuing improvements,  with regular awareness and observation to seek out opportunities for improvement, and then periodic concentrated efforts to build even better mousetraps.   It has the benefit of a more frequent element of this ‘spring cleaning,’  which reduces the likelihood of complacency in the interim.    It keeps systems more agile, more resilient to absorb unexpected events, and  better prepared to adapt to radical changes.    It keeps ideas fresh. 

Spring Cleaning -  a tradition worth keeping.

Ingenuity and Tinkerers – Revisited

The art of construction has increasingly become a matter of assembly of manufactured goods.   For example, door framing  used to be the art of accommodating specific site characteristics in a careful balance of fitting the frame and scribing in the door.   Now doors are pre-packaged with frames, and installed as an assembly.  While that definitely speeds up new construction, it is also how I ended up with a garage full of old doors.  The ‘contractor’ didn’t have the skill, nor interest, in framing up the salvage hardwood doors.    This is a classic example of the shrinking craft, which result in less flexibility or adaptability, which are the skills needed for ingenuity in the field.

One theory is that mechanical skills were learned on the farm, where a ‘can-do’ attitude was out of necessity.  Even after the influx to suburbs and cities of the mid-century, kids could at least ‘tinker’ with mechanics on their cars, learning from their dads (or not).   Girls learned the construction of clothing, or assembly of food items.   But we lost much of that in the 80’s and 90’s to the disposable nature of goods, with electronics sealed tight behind snap-in plastic covers.  And so I bemoaned the loss of ingenuity.

Not so fast.  It seems that innovation is in our DNA.   One of the students who has earlier enlightened me about environmental engineering, again opened my eyes to the world of innovation – as they know it.   For example, bicycles.    Bicycle components are incredibly accessible, and ripe for tinkering.   Many college towns have bicycle co-operatives, where students join forces  of tools and time to work on their own bikes, and help out others.   And, they experiment, share ideas, form on-line communities, post YouTube videos.  Fixed wheel (fixies), cargo bikes, longtail bikes, folding bikes.   There is also a bicycle jousting event, which is the source of many innovations.

The plastic boxes of electronics have also been cracked open.  Kids buy the old play box consoles, and tap into the electronics for other uses.   In fact, this is perhaps the main hotbed for innovation.   Open source software is based on communal input for programming.    There are scores of ‘work-arounds’  which are developed for other software .  Blog sites provide the communal transfer of knowledge that once took place working on a tractor.

ICF Pitch Roof, Walls, Floors

So the gene for innovation is not extinct.   Perhaps it is just the structure of the construction industry which has made is less available to experimentation, to tinkering.  There are certainly several fine examples of materials which have invented, such as ICFs.  Can we bring this same innovation to the assembly process, to the constructability, the details?   Do students in construction management programs need a shop to hang out in, where they can experiment and invent?   Or have a prototype building day during the latter part of the design, for trades people to be able to physically show and share construction techniques, and identify opportunities for collaboration. Creating these opportunities could be a drawing card for our industry to attract these ingenious minds,  and keep the craft in construction.

Mycological Solutions – Fungi

Perhaps the greatest barrier to progress is the limitations we have set in our minds. But once that barrier is broken, the world is full of possibilities. This would be the viewpoint of Paul Stamets - President of Fungi Perfecti, a mail-order business supplying “mycotechnologies. ” In a fascinating TED talk, Paul presents 6 ways in which mushrooms can save the world. Here are few of his, and other researcher’s ideas:

Oil Bioremediation – A special strain of oyster mushroom is highly efficient at breaking down the PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) found in oil and petroleum. In one experiment, it took just four weeks for the mycelia to build a network, break down the contaminated soil, and grow large oyster mushrooms. In turn, these attract innumerable flies and insects, which brought birds, who carried in plant seeds, and the soon the toxic waste was a heavily vegetated pile. And it greatly outperformed the control experiments with enzymes and bacteria. Think of the potential for petroleum waste and spills.

Oil Generation – On the other hand, researchers at Montana State University have discovered a fungus that's capable of producing an fuel additive with an octane rating of 95, that smells like eucalyptus! It could be added on a ratio of 8 eucalyptol to 1 gasoline!. There have been some great inroads, an even pilot commercialization of algae for fuel, but a recent high school experiment with growing algae strains from Yellowstone found that the fungus from the sample kept taking over, eating the algae. Not only was it amazing that it could survive in the acidic habitat, but when it dried out – it “just oozed oil.” Oil which contained a ratio of oleic and steric acids that’s nearly ideal for biofuels. The experiments are still low yields, and have many control conditions to be determined, but could this provide the economic solution for the conversion of algae to oil?

Urban Storm Water Treatment – The EPA has recently funded research to explore the treatment of contaminated water from e-coli and other strains of bacteria - the leading cause of critically impaired waters nationwide. Stamets conceived this technology after an outdoor mushroom bed made of woodchips and mycelium removed bacteria from an upland animal pasture on his small waterfront farm , much to his and the Health Department’s surprise.

Permaculture - The by-products of mushrooms cultivation unlock nutrients for other members of the ecological community, which boosts the life cycles of plants, animals, insects (bees), and soil microflora. This can reduce the populations of nematodes which are a recurring problem with gardeners and farmers. Fungi can also provide the host for fly larvae, and provide food for salmon.

There are many other uses: packaging which is grown from fungi and is fully compostable; medicinal uses for pox and viruses; using a special strain of non-sporulating metarhizium species to treat termites, who become mummified , feed the queen, and create an environment which repels termites; treating the mites which are threatening bee colonies.


There seem to be plenty of opportunities, yet relatively little research. Does it not have enough of a commercial potential? Do we have a hard time believing in biomimicry, or natural solutions to nature’s problems? It comes back to the limitations of the mind, where we look for innovations, how we break past the habit of making improvements to the “devil we know.” Certainly, these field seems ripe for the picking.

Efficiency of Space

Space. This is esoteric core of design. Space is the area in which we live. A square foot specification is often allotted by function. Walls define the shape, windows define its light, HVAC defines its air. Green building programs, such as LEED, ask us to use less space, in order to reduce our environmental footprint. The trick is to carve out square footage and room sizes while not comprising on function.

Taking a page from the book of ‘lean,’ I would look for the least used floor space. An interesting exercise is to track your daily activities by time and function. What room do you use the most/ least? What are the functions? Take bedrooms, for example. In most cases, they have one function – sleeping - and other nocturnal activities. For this, you need a bed. You also need closet space, and dresser or two. The room can be designed around these items, with enough space for circulation. Gone is the master bedroom with the extra sitting room area, and all that extra open floorspace – good for waltzing around – a highly unlikely activity.

While this seems so simple, we can all recount stories of old houses where it was hard to squeeze a bed in. For example, the room I’m staying in now has two doors into the bedroom. As one of these leads to the front door, I have to wonder about the motive…. As it is a small room, the bed can only fit into one corner, squeezed between the window at the head and the door at the foot. All fine, except that sits on top of the heating vent. Had a bed been drawn on the houseplan, the HVAC could have been design accordingly.

The argument against designing houses with specified furniture locations is based on the inability to predict occupant styles. But reducing room size reduces options, and such scenario setting is possible for certain rooms. It can also challenge the design to address function in a more creative manner. In a study of council housing in the U.K., the occupants complained of insufficient living space but the excess of the spare bedroom. Had these rooms been connected with a large double door, or slider door, the problem would be resolved within the same square footage. Rooms with higher functional uses might benefit from more thought to storage, to circulation in the rooms, to sound, light, air. View lines are important.

Dealing with existing space shortages can also be dealt with using some functional analysis. Often, a house has sufficient private space (bedroom) and is short on public space. My sons resolved this problem with some clever double billing of the two bedrooms in their small apartment. By using roll-up sleeping pads, the rooms were cleared for daytime use as a computer room, and a laundry room. In my own two room apartment, a sleeping sofa doubles as a bed and living room furniture, whereas a dining table doubles as my office desk.

Certainly there is much fat to be carved off from building floorplans. Not just shrinking existing blueprints, but redesigning with the human as the central focus. Because we aren’t really designing walls or floors, we are designing space.

Every Last Drop of Water

John Wesley Powell once predicted that future wars would be fought over water. While not a full scale war, there are certainly sparks flying as Las Vegas seeks to dip its tentacles into the aquifers of land in Southern Utah, to support the every growing bounds of the city. Well diggers are doing a booming business, as ground source water sinks ever deeper and farmers try to keep up. Droughts only make the matter worse. Water is a scarce commodity. So how do we squeeze out every last drop?

The basic steps of sustainability are the same. Squeeze every drop out of the existing sources of water through careful use of the water and re-use through graywater. But a next step might be to rethink the very source of water. We are used to drawing water from wells and reservoirs. But water comes from rain, which comes from condensation of moisture in the air. Could we duplicate the same process?

Marc Parent has been developing this concept in France. Using a wind-turbine to both pull in the air, and then power the cooling conditions which naturally occurs in the clouds, his Eole Water systems has been tested to produce up to 1000 liters of water a day. The first commercial prototype has been shipped to Abu Dhabi for testing in the harsher climate of the Middle East.

There are a host of similar products which are essentially dehumidifiers. The difference, of course, is the point of perspective. Rather than thinking of water as a nuisance to be removed from the air, the air is seen as a source of water. Several of the systems are just attaching purification systems and producing drinking water. Could this be designed into the plumbing system for a house? Combined with a graywater system.

A similar water harvesting scheme was developed by this year’s Dyson Award winner. Edward Linacre, of Melbourne, invented a method of harvesting water by condensing water out of the air. His system, the Airdrop, uses solar power coupled with convective current to pull the air down into the ground, using the earth’s cooling to condense out the water, which gets fed directly to plants. This is an excellent example of biomicry, inspired by the Namib beetle, which collects the dews from the skin on its back.

My personal favorite are the simple systems which can be implemented in high altitude rural communities, such as Fogquest. Using a vertical polyethylene mesh, the moisture from the fog condenses and runs down into a trough and central collection. This is a beautiful solution and creates abundance of water. As it is communally owned, it is fair, and it is contagious – i.e. if you were in an area with fog, you would be inspired to install this system.

If water can be condensed out of the air, and systems made economically feasible, then the remaining question of sustainability is the potential environmental repercussions. Can we squeeze out too much water? At this point, the question certainly seems far-fetched, but so did the possibility of running out of oil, or coal. But in the meantime, I’d be much happier if Vegas collected water out of the thousands of air conditioners, installed graywater in all the systems, wetlands for the municipal waste, and then – if it needs more water, to pull it out of the air.