Buying a Home

So today I spent a really long time (not that long but it felt long) washing my NEW (that is 10 years old) car! Why? I am driving up to St. Louis tomorrow. Yes that is 10 hours long. So in-between spraying Windex on my windows and swinging the foot mats? against a wall to clear the dust (from 10 years accumulation), I realized that, like stepping off that plane by myself to go to college two years ago, this was just another step towards real life.

Now onto owning a home. It's quite a serious topic to think about so early in my career, but I thought it would be interesting to try and think about it when I did not want to wash my car instead of when I actually need to. It is the mind set I am trying to develop as I enter into my later college years: Plan ahead, persevere, and only then will you improve.

With that, I would like to leave myself with these two interesting innovations: 1) from the buyer's view and 2) from a city's view.

1) Echoing Carl Elefante's "The greenest building is the one already standing," Dave LeBlanc's "Architecture Lover's Manifesto"

And I quote:

1. In this age of soaring energy prices, I will ask myself if I really need 4,000 square feet and more bathrooms than people in my home. No matter how green I buy or build, 2,000 square feet will always be more efficient than 4,000. If I falter, I will repeat this quietly to myself: "I didn't have an entire basement playroom when I was a kid or my very own bathroom, and I turned out fine."

2. I will consider buying an older home over a new one. Older homes are usually in established neighbourhoods; this means I can walk to do some errands, just like my grandparents did. Even if I must replace a furnace, a roof or windows, or even take down a wall, I am still celebrating the fact that the greenest building is the one that already exists.

3. Before I demolish, I will Google "embodied energy."

I am posting this article in response to my having a car, but it is also in response to the forests in my home that are being cut down in order to erect living communities. Why do we need new homes when there are houses all over New Orleans that are empty? Why do we need homes our country has so many foreclosed homes?

2) The UK Pylon Design Competition

It ends in 7 days, but the UK Pylon Design Competition isn't about buying a home necessarily, but how we power our homes. It's about innovation, it's about design, it's about community, and it's all in the UK's aim to ensure an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050. Why? Because they're part of C40 and they are one of tens of major cities around the world joining forces to become more efficient, to become more green, and to become better cities. Competition Description:

This new RIBA Competition invites architects, engineers, designers and university level students of these disciplines to come up with proposals for a new generation of electricity pylon. As well as exploring the design of the ‘object’, this competition also seeks to explore the relationship between our energy infrastructure and the environment within which it needs to be located. The challenge is to design a pylon that has the potential to deliver for future generations, whilst balancing the needs of our communities and preserving the beauty of our countryside.

I look forward to seeing how the winning design of this competition will be implemented in the UK.

So that's all for right now, I have some other thoughts I will be talking about later.