Transcriber: F Laffeber Reviewer: Denise RQ
Fifteen years ago, when this photograph was taken,
I would have no idea how pathetic it would become.
I was traveling through Europe's mysterious ruined places,
like Paston and Pompeii,
and I fell in love with the bones of architecture.
It was a beginning of a career, where I would be able, ultimately,
to walk the line between the past in archeology,
and the future in architectural design.
In my mind's eye, when I go to that place, I can be anything that I dream of being,
I'm kind of like an architectural Indiana Jones.
And in life, it gets to play out like that,
because we're constantly trying to figure out some puzzle,
or decode some riddle,
as we discover ways of the old that we can apply to the new,
and make the new better.
One of the things I've puzzled over the most in my career,
is this stuff they call "Green Design".
That is an award-winning green gas station,
and it's not all that green.
It's made out of metal, which uses huge embodied energy.
All of those surfaces?
They serve no purpose except for to stroke the designer's ego.
And you can't tell anything about where it is.
History tells us truly sustainable design has a place that it responds to.
It's made out of really simple, affordable materials,
and it's efficiently designed.
In fact, a lot of the stuff that we call green,
actually isn't all that green.
Double thick walls use twice the amount of wood and materials,
ridged board insulation, which we slap on everything,
is made of petrochemicals, and keeps us dependent on gas and oil.
And these houses that we're building now, that are sealed up,
where you can't open the windows,
I don't know about you, but on a day like today,
I want to open the windows, and air it out.
Right? Seriously. It's not right, and it's not green.
And history tells us that we don't need technology to depend on
to create great architecture.
If I use this right to help me tell time,
5,000 years ago, we started building architecture,
actual spaces that we were intending to build.
If I take a tiny step, we're at Stonehenge.
A bigger step, we're in Rome.
Even bigger step, we're about the Gothic Age.
And it wasn't till here, 700 years later, about 150 years ago, to be exact,
that we started designing with mechanical and electrical systems.
And here we are now.
The entire time that we have been using these systems,
makes up 4% of the amount of time that we have been building.
The other 96%, we were designing buildings
that worked with nature not despite it.
That was the beginning of an aha! moment for me.
The second part of that aha! moment came
when my husband and I went to Chaco Canyon.
And I was looking in this old ruined kiva, this pithouse,
and taking that photograph.
And I realized,
those beautiful curved and linear lines that were laying out in front of me,
an archeologist might document them.
And an archeologist in 1,000 years might document them again,
here, in this house.
It's a 30-year old house, a pithouse derived of Navajo design,
in Taos, New Mexico, called the Moon Lodge,
where my girlfriends and I met for women's group once a month.
I just couldn't believe that I had this moment where I realized
that archeology didn't have to be just about the recording of history,
we could use it as an applied science,
and see if the architecture that we're building today
would really last the test of time.
We can look at our history in New Mexico and see if that actually is true.
Well, we have lots of great examples,
and the first one comes from my aha! moment.
This is a pithouse, probably in Mesa Verde,
and we know that they work.
You probably know that they work.
Because on a hot summer day,
you probably hiked out to one of these pithouses,
or one of the caves at Bandelier
and you're like, "Oh my god, it's so hot!"
and you climb up the ladder, and you go inside,
and it's 20 degrees cooler.
In the winter, it's the reverse; it's 20 degrees warmer,
it can be, anyway.
The difference between the ambient temperature
is much reduced from the temperature you want it to be at,
the temperature of comfort.
So we know they work.
And it didn't work just here and then.
They worked throughout the world and throughout time.
And the best and most compelling example, you actually already know:
that house in the top right; do you know where you know it from?
Star Wars, exactly!
It's the Skywalker's house,
it's a real place, it's a hotel in Tunisia.
Remember, the lesson isn't just
take archeology, write something down; it's [planned].
So, this is a modern pithouse,
in Saijo, Japan, designed by Suppose Design Office.
And there is nothing granola, crunchy, or old about it.
It's beautiful, and sleek, and light.
Another lesson we can take
from New Mexico archeology and architectural history
is a little bit more recent.
It's adobe.
It's the simplest construction material in the world to use,
take some dirt, add a little bit of clay, add some straw
- which, by the way, is a waste material -
pour in some water, get a big stick, stir it all up, lay it out,
add abundant sunshine, which we normally have,
and you have a variation on sundried mudbrick,
that was designed and used in architecture for the first time
4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia.
And again, it wasn't just us, then.
In memorial, people have been using adobe.
One of my favorite examples is this top left one, it's in Ghana.
It's smooth and curvy, and it's really sensual and colorful.
Now we can take a little bit of that,
and a little bit of what we know that works in New Mexico architecture,
we can put them together, and come up with something entirely new,
that represents our time, and our place, and our access to information.
And we can leave our past, we can honor it, by leaving it intact.
Another thing that we have in New Mexico
that is a fabulous thing to use in design, in really green design,
is the courtyard house; now we call them "haciendas".
We got them from the Spanish, they got them from the Moors,
who got it from the Romans, who got it from the Egyptians.
And everywhere you go in the world,
you can find courtyard houses used to heat and cool.
This is a modern courtyard house in a highrise in Korea,
designed by IROJE KHM.
Now they used it as a lightwell,
because they were interested in the aesthetics.
Another architect, like me, might introduce roof catchment,
and aquaponics, and planter boxes,
so that you could collect water, clean it,
and then use it to grow your own fruits and veggies.
The last lesson from New Mexico archeology and architecture
actually spans all of the times we've already talked about:
earth roofs.
And admittedly, we didn't get it right.
Most of them leaked, and they grew weeds.
Now we didn't realize at the time that we could harness that capability,
but at other places in the world, they did.
And now, green roofs are a staple of green design no matter where you go.
And they can look like anything you can imagine.
They can flowery, or colorful, or succulent, or modern,
and in New Mexico, we've perfected it too.
This is what they look like, but it's beautiful,
in its own way.
The truth is, we can have truly sustainable design,
and we don't need technology to get it.
We can honor our past,
and we don't ever have to feel like we're living in something old.
Of course not all of us are getting ready to build a new house,
so what then?
Well, the green answer to that is that we make the best of what we have.
In order to do that ...
well, that's the subject for another talk, probably.
But in the meanwhile, last night,
we loaded up everything that we know about this,
or at least started to,
- it'll probably take us about 3-4 weeks to load up the rest -
on the Archinia web portal.
And we're making this information,
all of the information that we claimed
from all of our projects, all around the world, available for people to use
so that you can take tips and tricks, and apply them to your own house,
and make them work now.
We're doing this, because we believe
that the most effective way to participate in a global change of consciousness
is to share what was once reserved for the few, freely with the whole.
That is how we dare to inspire.
I'll give you one tip.
If there's something you can do, this is the perfect time to do it.
Go out and get five healthy deciduous trees,
the biggest ones you can afford,
and if they are native Ireland fruit trees, even better.
Go to the south and west corner of your house,
plant those trees on the south and west sides,
about 5-10 feet away from your home,
and I just bet that you will love the difference that you feel,
inside and out.
Thank you.
(Applause)