Tag: Living Building Challenge

Unmoored

From what I am hearing from people from every which direction, it seems we are all bobbing up and down in a sort of aftershock. It’s like the worst of the storm has passed and as our overtaxed survival instincts go into hiatus, we find ourselves in the midst of the realization that our ship has sunk and we now find ourselves at the mercy of the cold, turbulent water with very little energy or wherewithal to fight the undertoe. Perhaps that sounds dramatic, but I think it is better to speak it out loud, give it the name and recognition that it deserves. The trauma is real. To not acknowledge it is to deny gratitude to our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits for all of the overtime they have been putting in. 

I, like everyone else that I have heard from, am feeling it. Luckily, I have been super fortunate to have been receiving a ton of reinforcement that validates my experience. Our systems have been overtaxed and it is going to take time for us to recover. In the meantime, be gentle with yourself. Take it slow. Lower your expectations and demands. Be realistic. Nurture, nurture, nurture. Sleep more. Repeat. 

If you haven’t been getting these sorts of reflections on where we are in this moment, please seek out such reflections. Step one is just being aware. This morning Shannon and I listened to Krista Tippet’s On Being podcast interviewing clinical psychologist Christine Runyan. It’s helpful. It puts things in perspective. It reminds us of our very real humanity which begs our attention. Here is the link:

https://onbeing.org/programs/christine-runyan-whats-happening-in-our-nervous-systems/

Or here is another one addressing similar issues by Brene Brown:

https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-on-the-queens-gambit-revisiting-ffts-and-resting-our-tired-brains/

That said, I have to admit to not being in great writing shape these days. But I’m not fighting it. I’ll simply be here when and as I can and trust that the tides will change. 

In the meantime, I have to say that this bobbing up and down with the current has proven to be interesting these past few weeks. It’s like this. It’s like knowing that I used to be on this great ship that has been smashed to smithereens and the mission/grand adventure that I was on right along with it. It’s in the past and it isn’t coming back. But just as I come to terms with this idea, some remnant of the ship comes floating by. It’s not just wreckage either. It is, rather, somehow in and of itself whole. Something different than it used to be perhaps, but also still a projection of that old thing into the present and moving on into the future. 

What I am saying is that things change, yes. Sometimes they change catastrophically. However, there is also a wholeness between past, present, and future that can never be undone. Everything that is has always been there and will be there all along. Even though we only perceive a minuscule portion of the All That Is, if you will, in any particular moment doesn’t mean that it isn’t there just the same. But let me give you some examples.

When Shannon and I left Houston and moved to Vermont, it was in no small part out of frustration. We felt we had been banging our heads against a wall that was never going to budge for way too long. It was time to let it be. In truth, we had been making significant progress on that wall, but it is difficult to see that when your nose is right up against it and your head and heart hurt.

One such endeavor was The Fly Flat, the multi-award winning project that my last Race to Zero competition team at Prairie View A&M University designed. We had pushed hard to move that project into PVAMU’s first full fledged design-build project. We had laid all of the groundwork, ensured that the facility in which we would be constructing it was fully equipped to do so, secured community partners, pedaled the project to countless national partners for technical and financial support, etc. But when push came to shove, the university wasn’t ready to take it on and wouldn’t be any time in the foreseeable future. It was heartbreaking. Sometimes the best thing to do in these cases is to just walk away. So we did. We let go. 

No sooner had we moved to Vermont, than the City of Houston got in touch with me wanting to  build the dang thing! A year and a half of red tape and in the midst of a pandemic, the project was finally given the green light. I just issued the construction documents a week ago. It’s not out of the gates yet as what we are attempting to do is not so simple. We are attempting to change the course of affordable housing in Houston. There is a ton more work to be done to try to birth it into reality. That said, I do understand that no matter where it goes from here, it has and will have impact in ways that we may never fully understand. 

Here’s another example. I have mentioned before the Living Building Challenge Studio at The Monarch School. This was the first project to be designed to achieve the Living Building Challenge in Texas. I (Architend) designed it, Shannon (Tend Building) built it, and our good friend Amanda (GreeNexus) handled the LBC certification process. We poured everything we had into making that project a reality- time, sweat, money, persistence, and on and on. Then the school went through a major life-altering administrative transition and what started as an impossible dream drifted back into impossibility. It was heartbreaking. Sometimes the best thing that you can do is to walk away. So we did. We let it go.

A few years ago The Monarch School contacted me to see if they could resurrect the LBC certification. I directed them to Amanda and left them in her good hands. I, myself, remained guarded about it. I wasn’t about to get my hopes up just to be crushed again. So I didn’t think about it. On the very same day that I was issuing the drawings for Fly Flat, Amanda texted. She had just been notified that the LBC Studio had achieved LBC Petal Certification. Even though not the full certification that the building is capable of, this is a massively, huge deal. Redemption. Finally. Elation. Finally. Ten years later, to be exact. 

It is so hard sometimes to deal with grief head on. It’s just too much. Life goes on and we have to find ways to keep playing along. It’s not that I have given up on anything that lies within my vision. I haven’t. I have faithfully kept plugging away at it in any and every way that life makes available to me. I do trust that even when a particular dream doesn’t seem to materialize, it does ultimately come back around in some way that will perhaps be recognizable, perhaps not. I could site countless examples from hockey to architecture to urban planning to regenerative design to personal relations. Every bit of it is still swirling around in this vast ocean, rising and falling just like me. There is something to the letting go, to being unmoored. And when some piece of your life goes floating by, ah… the joy. 

Living Future

So I just returned from the Living Future unConference ’19 where I was a speaker. But let’s back up, because you may not know what Living Future is. It is the conference of the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), the organization which was founded to oversee the Living Building Challenge (LBC) in 2009. The LBC was itself created and implemented by the Cascadia (Pacific Northwest) Green Building Council in 2005. It represented the major leap that the building industry must take in order to truly achieve a viable future for humanity in the time with which we have to do it. It brings to light, in essence, that half measures just won’t cut it. But rather than ranting off into a technical explanation of what the various certification programs of ILFI do, I’ll just share their mission and vision in their own words:

“The International Living Future Institute’s mission is to lead the transformation toward a civilization that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative. We are premised on the belief that providing a compelling vision for the future is a fundamental requirement for reconciling humanity’s relationship with the natural world.”

For those of you familiar with my work as an architect and Shannon’s work as a builder, you know that we designed-built the first project in Texas to seek LBC certification, the Living Building Challenge Studio at the Monarch School in Houston. That project is still on track to be certified and we believe will eventually get there. It is not an easy thing to do. There are currently only twenty buildings in the world that have achieved full certification. In this case, additional funds are needed for the rainwater harvesting and urban farming components of the project. Fundraising is difficult when you are also having to fundraise to provide a very expensive education for students with neurological differences such as autism. And yet they persist, because they know that the challenges that they are addressing are not just simply sociological, they are fundamentally ecological. Thank God for people who are able to see that we have to treat the root of our problems rather than just the symptoms. By the way, here are a few photos of the LBC Studio, which serves as the hub for environmental education at The Monarch School:

It was actually the Living Future unConference that introduced me to the Regenesis Institute. I subsequently went through their Regenerative Practitioners training. I have been working with them ever since not only to implement regenerative practice in, well, practice, but also to pilot this training at the university level. So it was only fitting that I return to the Living Future unConference to present the culmination of five years of work at Prairie View A&M University to do just that. Along the way I have picked up colleagues at other universities who I have mentioned before- Jonathan Bean and Mary Rogero- who I come to adore even more every time I get to spend time with them. I first presented both the regenerative frameworks with Jonathan and Mary in an effort to start a dialogue about how we need to reframe architectural education and practice. I then presented The Fly Flat project along with my PVAMU students. I don’t know why this always surprises me, but the work resonated with our fellow conference attendees so much that they expressed deep gratitude for the work that we are doing, which at least one person expressed in tears. Ah, and if I haven’t shared images of The Fly Flat, our affordable, net-zero, resilient infill housing solution for low-income minority neighborhoods in Houston, here are a few:

Now for the conference takeaways. Keynote speakers Bill McKibben (should need no introduction) and Mary Robinson (also should need no introduction, but is the former President of Ireland and has led many initiatives on human rights and climate change via the UN and her own foundations) both reminded that we are down to only 11 years to change course, while noting that events of the last few weeks finally feel like we are headed toward a breakthrough. For example, New York City just passed its Green New Deal. Mark Chambers, the NYC Chief Sustainability Officer, spoke about the fact that their ability to move forward with such a bold policy- which includes 100% renewable power for all city buildings and requires all new construction to have either a green roof or rooftop solar- was only possible because they understood that they first had to implement social equity policies such as free daycare, a more realistic paid maternity leave, and a $15 minimum wage. In other words, they understood that they had to make it possible for people to care about climate change by first addressing their fundamental survival issues. More importantly, we have to understand that social issues and environmental issues are the same issue. Sociological and environmental challenges will only be overcome simultaneously. Incidentally, that is also what is so powerful about our LBC Studio and Fly Flat projects. They address the entire social-ecological system at once.

Eleven years isn’t much time to work with. The thought of it is overwhelming. When people ask me what my prognosis is, my honest response is always an honest “ugh.” There is no guarantee how this thing is going to go. We are in need of a paradigm shift. Yet, what I know about paradigm shifts is that they are sudden, instantaneous even. One moment the world is one way, and the next it is completely different. This is hard for us to imagine. It helps to realize that the transition is not actually sudden, it’s just that it is invisible until its not. The signs of the paradigm shift that we are in need of are everywhere if you happen to be looking for them. Even better is to participate in any and every little thing that is shifting the field in the direction of supporting our new reality. Bill McKibben would ask that you volunteer your time to protest. Charles Eisenstein would ask that you become conscientious of how every minute action in your daily life might support and celebrate your inherent connection to nature. Greta Thunberg would ask that adults would, well, adult. Whatever you choose to do, Mary Robinson would ask that you remember the words of Nelson Mandela:

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

And in response to someone who once asked him how he remained an optimist:

“I’m not an optimist, I’m a prisoner of hope.”