CNU 17 in Denver....

CNU just wrapped up it's yearly Congress in Denver. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it this year due to office schedule, but wanted to post this video that's a quick primer on New Urbanism....

High Line realigned....

As I'm sure many of you are aware, the High Line opened early last week in NYC, converting an abandoned elevated rail corridor into a linear park. At full rehab, the corridor will extend a park/ greenway through NYC for 1.5 miles. Look forward to visiting this park in the near future. In the meantime, here are some interesting web finds on the High Line...

Animation Fly-through of the design - friendsofthehighline


Sundance Channel Digital Shorts - High Line Stories

Curbed High Line Construction Chronicles

Images from the Opening (courtesy uskyscraper)

Images from the Telegraph

Sitephocus June 09 update

Sitephocus has uploaded our June update featuring Chicago and Denver. A sample of photos are below with some descriptions. Check here for the full update page and list of sites.

Riverfront Park, Denver



Northfield Stapleton lifestyle center
Townhomes at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lodo, Denver.

South Loop Power Center, Chicago

Another South Loop Power Center, Chicago. I think the Whole Foods is LEED Gold. Context within the overall development must not have mattered as even though the project is near downtown, it's completely auto-centric.

Crown Hall on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus.
Recently completed Nichols Bridgeway by Renzo Piano, linking Millennium Park with the Modern Wing addition at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Some seasonal update shots of the Lurie Garden from spring of this year and fall of last year.


Crown Fountain, Millennium Park

Cloud Gate, aka The Bean, Millennium Park
Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago by Renzo Piano.

Allium planting at the Art Institute's gardens
Lakeshore East Park birdseye view and fountain detail


Aqua high-rise condo development at Lakeshore East
Buckingham fountain panoramic in Grant Park

Belgard AquaBric Demonstration

We received this video link earlier in the week from one of our local reps showing the intense rate of infiltration pervious pavers can accommodate. The area was flooded at a rate of 530 gallons per minute and only stretched over a 150 sf area. The video does more than I can say, be sure to pass it along to your local Public Works departments (the guys who really need to see it!).

Arciplay Playground Designs

For those looking for residential playground equipment, either for yourself or for clients, Arciplay.com has plans for playgrounds in a more contemporary flavor. Plans run about $100 and come with a complete material and hardware list. Only one design is available at this time, but look forward to seeing future concepts.

drawing courtesy arciplay.com

May '09 update - Columbus, OH

We uploaded May's update earlier in the month. My apologies for the delay in getting these up in a blog post. Sites visited include the Arena District dowtown, including Burnham Square and North Bank Park, Easton Town Center, and South Campus Gateway near the OSU campus. I also caught the Creekside Gahanna just outside of Columbus, a suburban redevelopment into a town center for Gahanna. Hopefully soon I can get back up to C-bus and get one of the guys at MSI to give me a tour of some of their other projects (involved in the Arena District, Burnham Square, and North Bank Park, as well as Creekside Gahanna).


Nationwide Arena and Arena District



Historic facade reused as arch/ gateway to a park in the District

Burnham Square multi-family project

North Bank Park

Easton Town Center

Cap at Union Station - bridge over I-670 providing a valuable pedestrian connection between downtown and the Short North area

Creekside Gahanna


South Gateway near the OSU campus

Sacramento's K Street Ped Mall...

Sacramento is looking at reintroducing vehicular traffic to their downtown pedestrian mall in the hopes of boosting traffic to the area's retailers. Unfortunately the article didn't point out a few successful and thriving malls that still exist, though typically under very unique situations.

Here are a few we've covered on sitephocus....

Boulder - Pearl Street Mall

Charlottesville - Main Street Mall

LEED and Sprawl...

When will the USGBC take land use into account, docking projects that follow conventional suburban, auto-oriented patterns? Maybe energy from commuting could be factored into the points system if USGBC is so concerned with Energy conservation. The City of Lakes Urbanism blog highlights one such project near Minneapolis attaining LEED Platinum, yet surrounded by sprawl.

Sitephocus April 09 update

Sitephocus recently uploaded our April update from Alabama. Sites include the A&P Development in Montgomery, The Waters in Pike Road, and the Beach Pavilion in Gulf State Park (Gulf Shores). We also included the conservation development Serenbe, located just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Sample photos are below and you can find the rest of the update here.

Serenbe






Atlantic and Pacific Development (A&P)



Beach Pavilion - Gulf State Park

The Waters

Green Building not Performing? USGBC facing criticism...

Are green building requirements set by the US Green Building Council's LEED rating systems not performing to the energy efficiency projections as advertised? A couple of recent reports are saying not. Released by NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, the first report claims 30-50% energy savings over the ASHRAE 90.1-2004 Standard is virtually impossible to achieve within the ten-year payback cited in the study.

As has been touted elsewhere in blogs and articles, the study has a few holes in it. Most glaring is the application of similar buildings systems in varying climates. As the CoStar group puts it in their review of the study, "You don’t build the same building in Florida that you do in Chicago, and then plop it down all over the United States." Buildings and their systems at all levels should reflect climatic and site conditions, making it very difficult to assume a single building would perform similarly in different regions of the country.

Another study by Henry Gifford, and potentially more damning to the USGBC organization, offers a critical look at a report commissioned by the USGBC to analyze the actual performance of LEED Certified projects and energy efficiency claims of 25-30%. Some interesting info that will be interesting to watch play out, were the statements mentioned in Gifford's article pointing to the USGBC skewing information in the report to be misleading. A quote by Brendan Owen of USGBC definitely raises some suspicion:

I was really kind of cringing about what kind of data we would get. And, when Mark and I started talking about what this survey, and what this study was going to be, he asked some pretty pointed questions about what were we going to do with it, and in the back of my head it was, you know, if it’s bad, we’re certainly not going to tell anybody. And, and we’re going to fix the problem and that will be good. But I knew he wouldn’t let that happen, so in the front of my head was, if it’s bad I’m going to let Cathy [Cathy Turner, the senior analyst15 for the New Buildings Institute] publish just her graphs, with no explanation, and it’ll be so statistically impenetrable to anybody who could actually articulate what was going on, that it wouldn’t matter, because they, you know, could only talk to somebody else who could understand them, and there’s not many of those out there. So, the fact of, the delightful fact of the results of the study being what I would consider to be overwhelmingly positive considering how bad I thought it was going to come out, are pretty remarkable.

In regards to statistics in the report, Gifford points out ways in which the information presented is flawed and doesn't tell the entire story, from a relatively small sample pool, to comparing buildings built post 2000 (LEED) with those from much earlier time periods (as far back as 1920. I'm not an architect or engineer, but can tell you I doubt my 1928 Craftsman was built to the same efficiency standards as those of today, though with a little work I could probably be more efficient as older homes had to respond to climate without technology. Hopefully at some point I'll be able to insulate the walls, something common in modern construction. These studies are presumably reviewing commercial structures, so I digress.

When comparing the median value of the LEED buildings to the average of the non-LEED, the USGBC study found that the LEED structures use 69,000 BTUs per squar per year vs 91,000 BTUs for the non-LEED buildings (a 24% reduction). This reduces to a 15% reduction when comparing buildings of like age. However, when comparing mean to mean values, the actual usage for the LEED structures shoots up to 105,000 BTUs (a 29% increase).

Mr. Gifford as provides some great commentary on the current approach of projects going after the most visual aspects of green building vs. going the simpler route (and sometimes more effective). He also recommends that buildings be rated on actual performance and that certification could be revoked if a building didn't operate as efficiently year to year. Many other great tidbits including solar panels facing North and light sensors not turning off the lights.

If anyone has seen a rebuttal from USGBC, please let us know. I'm interesting in hearing what they have to say or if this may bring about change in the performance of LEED and certified buildings. Just did a quick search trying to find any info and saw that Mr. Gifford was attending a forum discussion of NESEA last night (3/10/2009) with Brendan Owens of USGBC and a video on youtube of a presentation by Gifford on his findings (haven't watched it yet, but thought it would be of interest). Any info on the forum, pass it along and I'll update this post.