Water is good for you, and the more the merrier, right? Not exactly: it is possible to over-hydrate, as happens in more than 10 percent of marathon runners (the problem is that water and salts in the body need to be in balance).
I write about water from a personal health, earth health and even an economic standpoint in this article for HairLoss.com, a website where I contribute health and fitness articles on an ongoing basis.
Hair is sometimes a reflection of overall health, and in several situations – when a person suffers from anorexia nervosa, bulemia or if they are undergoing intentional rapid weight loss, such as with gastric bypass surgery – there is a clear connection as all such situations can lead to hair loss. This is because the body is perceiving a period of starvation. Its response is to shed what’s unnecessary, to use scarce nutrients for more essential body functions.
I always find life in the extremes to be instructive. Even if a person is not technically suffering from an eating disorder, it bears noting that nutritional deficiencies can affect seemingly unrelated parts of the body. The more I function as a nutrition and fitness writer, the more I am convinced it makes sense to find the natural balance: eat a balanced diet, live a physical life, get the right amount of sleep, make sure you have things in your life that make you smile and laugh and have things you look forward to in the future.
I have to admit it: When my editor asked me to write four articles on meditation – focus on how it works, plus the emotional, spiritual and health benefits – I was skeptical of what it can do. But when I began to interview experts (I guess the word guru legitimately applies here), I learned there is a physiological response to meditation that begins in the brain. In other words, it wasn’t just some mental exercise that was divorced from the physical body (duh - the brain is part of the body). I also learned that most people unconsciously meditate on some level, such as long-distance runners who fall into a stride-breath cadence. You might also meditate while walking, even doing housework; it doesn’t require sitting in a lotus position for hours on end. This is the introduction piece, which is a foundation for the three articles that follow.
The return of a green sensibility is particularly gratifying to architects who trained in the 1970s. This was during the first energy crisis, which shocked us into awareness of poor resource use and its environmental consequences. Architects such as Charles Rose in Somerville, Massachusetts, who I profiled (below) for BG+H in American Builders Quarterly magazine, speaks to this issue. As a writer on sustainability and environmental issues, I am thrilled to speak with designers like Charles Rose who create change, one building at a time.
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“It’s gratifying that sustainability is now in vogue,” says Charles Rose, president of Charles Rose Architects. The Somerville, Massachusetts architect remembers the first wave of eco-friendly design in the 1970s, and its subsequent decline over many years in the interim. But his unflagging interest in sustainability–and eco-friendly projects completed as long as 20 years ago, long before anyone was talking about carbon footprints–poised the firm to win the plum commissions they get today.
Rose-designed projects in diverse locations–from Massachusetts to Maine, New York, Florida, Indiana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Oregon–include museums, schools, corporate offices, and residences that favor the health of the earth and that of the people inhabiting the structures. But it’s the aesthetic of Charles Rose-designed structures that capture the imagination.
Their work is widely published (e.g., Princeton Architectural Press, Architectural Record, INSITE, and The New York Times), while several organizations have awarded honors to many Rose designs. Perhaps the strongest endorsement of the firm’s facility with design is that several clients are themselves engaged in the arts: these include Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, Florida), Gulf Coast Museum of Art (Largo, Florida), Currier Center for the Performing Arts (Putney, Vermont), and Oregon College of Art & Craft (Portland, Oregon).
But all clients, including those outside of the arts, benefit from a distinct, design-centric approach that results in buildings that also function well. Rose cites characteristics of the firm’s process that ensure such an outcome:
These working principles support proper and effective execution of sustainability practices that define the firm’s brand. But as Rose notes, LEED certification is required in the public domain and by most corporate clients. “Sustainability is more than just an overlay,” he says. “It has always been a strong link in our work, a natural part of form and circulation, how the project fits in the context of the local landscape and culture.”
As an example, Rose talks about their work on their work on Vermont’s Currier Center. The 22,000-square foot rehearsal and performance space borrows its roofline forms from the surrounding White Mountains. But the roof eaves also allow maximum light during winter months. The structure’s discrete spaces echo the farm buildings context of the surrounding community, while auditorium doors unfold to a natural clearing that allows outdoor performances in better weather.
Residential clients generally approach sustainability from a personal health and cost containment perspective. Non-toxic finishes, mechanical systems to limit mold, and the use of geothermal technologies often accomplish that.
“Forty percent of energy consumption is in buildings,” says Rose, who is excited about the Franklin Regional Transit Center in western Massachusetts, a Rose design likely to begin construction in 2009 and intended to achieve a net-zero carbon footprint. The 60,000-square foot facility will have 16 geothermal wells plus rooftop photovoltaic cells–all consistent with the firm’s pledge to achieve “the health, well-being and the aesthetic experience of place.”
The transit center may be in vogue today, but it’s hard to imagine low energy costs ever going out of fashion.
I wrote this article on the use of pre-air conditioning techniques in regional architecture of the South by a very busy, respected firm in Atlanta. The story will run in the January 2011 edition of Green Building + Design, where I am a regular contributor. As a writer on green topics, I find that so many of the ideas of today respect the designers and builders of the past:
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The classical, traditional designs of the American South are surprisingly green. How so? To begin with, the architects and builders who were responsible for constructing handsome homes and other structures in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries didn’t have mechanical air conditioning to provide relief from a hot, humid climate.
“Traditional design is light-years ahead of understanding and promoting sustainability, compared to modernist contemporaries,” says Kevin P. Clark, LEED AP Partner with Historical Concepts, an architectural, planning and “place-making” firm based in Atlanta. “At its root, traditional architecture strives to use locally sourced materials, constructed in a way that is inherent to their nature and configured to be respondent to the site’s climate and culture.”
The firm’s work reflects many of the philosophies of Original Green from Steve and Wanda Mouzon (New Urban Guild, Miami), who promote “the design of true traditional buildings and places native to and inspired by the regions in which they are built.” They are averse to “gizmo green,” the use of technologies when a broader, more holistic approach to sustainability can often draw from what builders knew hundreds of years ago.
A good example is from Historical Concepts’ 2,300-square-foot Idea Cottage, situated in the Charleston, SC-area low-country, new urbanist village of I’On that is recognized for its smart growth features. Featured in Coastal Living magazine for its ability to “live large in a small footprint,” the home achieved LEED Gold certification–even without solar collectors in this sunny locale.
“In-town lots preclude perfect solar orientation,” says Clark. “Besides, solar panels take a lot of energy to construct.” Instead, this beach-style, canal-fronted home achieves sustainability through other features:
“This shows that a house doesn’t have to ‘look green,’” says Elizabeth Dillon, a LEED AP architectural designer with the firm. Instead, the house and the village itself meet many of the expectations of Original Green. These include accessibility, where the car is but one option for getting around town, and lovability, where the home is so well-designed that future generations will appreciate it as much as those who built it.
Dillon offers the traditional southern courtyard as a clear feature of sustainability. “Plants and water features in the courtyard create an evaporative cooling effect,” she notes. Raised garden beds, whose walls add seating to living and dining furniture arrangements, border the Idea Cottage courtyard. Plantings between pavers further soften the hardscape.
Historical Concepts practices sustainable design it its broader applications, that of planning and place-making.
Examples of these include an engagement with the historic town of Senoia, Georgia. Located an hour outside Atlanta and faced with encroaching development, the city planner contacted Historical Concepts in 2005 to conduct a historic precedent analysis, create imagery and character sketches, develop conceptual architecture and streetscapes and write a design guidelines to protect and enhance its historic district.
The firm performed similar functions for the Fairburn (Georgia) Education Campus, a historic infill site intended to make education accessible to local citizens while serving as a catalyst to commercial investment in the community.
With so much inventory of pre-20th century towns and buildings in the South, it is smart business for the firm to focus its work on this aesthetic. And clearly, there are plenty of opportunities to achieve sustainability by either working with existing structures, or building new in a compatible style that works smartly in this region’s climate.
“Historical structures are much more attentive to human scale and proportions,” says Dillon. The compact nature of historic downtowns the firm helps preserve were clearly built on this scale as well.
These are features that lead the firm’s architects to be bullish about the future. “Younger people grew up in suburbs and now yearn for a more vibrant lifestyle, less slaves to cars,” says Clark. “They want mixed-use, diverse, walkable neighborhoods where they can invest care and love into their homes. Unlike in the past, people now want one community where they can stay for years.”
It is hard to imagine why anyone would ever choose to leave a coastal cottage like the one Historical Concepts designed in I’On.
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Do you think that potholes (chuckholes, kettles) are merely the product of winter weather? Guess again — heat and rain are just as capable of ruining a road as are ice and snow. Which explains why Honolulu and Los Angeles have particularly bad pothole problems.
I explore the mechanics of pothole creation as well as the conditions that lead to poor pavement maintenance in this article for Pothole.info. My client is building its presence on the web with articles on all things pavement and pothole prevention and repair, and writing on technical subjects for the non-technician audience is something I particularly enjoy. Given this post went up in July, the subject matter is appropriate for anyone who thinks road deterioration occurs only in winter.
My clients at Pothole.info like to track trends in infrastructure (road and bridge building and repair) and transportation, including funding and consumer behavior issues that can affect these things. I stumbled onto an Advertising Age article that discusses lower rates of driving among young people, and turned it into a blog for Pothole.info. In the blog, I report on both the article content and what Ad Age readers said in response (it was a lively exchange).
What does this have to do with potholes? Lower rates of driving today might explode in five to ten years as the economy improves and when 20-somethings evolve from bikes and public transportation (my preferred modes of travel, btw) into homeowner-parents who might live too far from jobs to avoid being in cars. If cities, states and the feds fail to fund road pavement preservation between now and then, there will be many a rutted highway for those Gen Ys to navigate. Better to keep up the maintenance – because every dollar spent fixing a road is seven dollars saved rebuilding it later.
The Gulf Oil Spill of 2010 is a tragedy of many origins and, as of this writing, a cataclysm with dismal prospects for solutions. Regardless of political stripe, almost everyone agrees that a reduced dependence on petroleum is an important step toward fixing many problems.
The bike-to-work option is increasingly embraced by people who “get it,” as an estimated one million people bike daily to their place of employment during warmer months. I do this myself, riding 14 miles round trip to the health club where I train my sole fitness client – up to six times a week, February through early December.
I write about how to creatively approach bicycle commuting, even if your workplace is beyond your current biking distance abilities. If this article gets just ten people to trade four wheels for two, the world is made a better place.
A fundamental aspect of fitness, in particular, strength training, is that you are asking your muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones to do something different and harder than before. So if your exercise routine is just that, routine, you are gaining little from the time you spend there other than to maintain what you’ve accomplished in the past.
I write about the way to change this, a practice known in the fitness training profession as “periodization,” in this article for HairLoss.com. This is a means for structuring your exercise program in blocks of time, anywhere from two weeks to four months, where the change will always do you good.
A smartly-packaged approach to fitness marketing, the P90X program, is getting lots of attention across a broad swath of people who want their exercise program to be effective. As a certified fitness trainer and writer, I find this fascinating because it’s really nothing new. It just takes a fundamental principle of training – surprise your body with activities that are hard to do and which you don’t do routinely – and turned it into a product. As consumers, we often respond to products better than basic advice.
The problem is that “shock the muscles” exercise necessarily means departing from the norm. Old-style health clubs are the antithesis of this, with single-track machines and a culture of people who allow those machines to lay down the rules on how to exercise. My article on this topic explores this disconnect, in addition to providing some sample exercises.
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