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Wednesday, February 4. 2009
Is durability important?
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Tedd-
I think your response is dead on. You can parse "durability" a million ways but it all comes down to the context. A plastic water bottle is evil, after all, specifically because it DOES last forever.
In the context of a tear-down obsessed industry like homebuilding, durability does point the way to a better strategy. Home Depot is filled with junk designed to be installed today and "remodelled" away in a year or two. Where does the chrome-plated plastic faucet go after that? There are endless TV shows where "designers" install styrofoam crown molding with hot glue guns.
There will likely never be an heirloom cell phone, passed down through generations, but that doesn't mean we need to treat buildings as disposable consumer accessories as well.
I think your response is dead on. You can parse "durability" a million ways but it all comes down to the context. A plastic water bottle is evil, after all, specifically because it DOES last forever.
In the context of a tear-down obsessed industry like homebuilding, durability does point the way to a better strategy. Home Depot is filled with junk designed to be installed today and "remodelled" away in a year or two. Where does the chrome-plated plastic faucet go after that? There are endless TV shows where "designers" install styrofoam crown molding with hot glue guns.
There will likely never be an heirloom cell phone, passed down through generations, but that doesn't mean we need to treat buildings as disposable consumer accessories as well.
Mr. Benson,
I have been reading your blog for about two months now. I feel hesitant to comment as I am not in the building industry but have significant DIY experience and am compelled to chime in nonetheless.
I have been reading your thoughts on durability and am intrigued how similar they are to my own. As I think about building my next home, I wish to do so in a sustainable manner. By definition, that includes building a durable and long lived structure that will be easily adaptable as needs change. There is no reason my next home shouldn’t be able to survive half a millennia, or longer – there are plenty of examples where this milestone has been achieved. While building a Net Zero energy home is possible today, the embodied energy can never truly be negated – so our best choice would be to amortized that cost over the structures lifetime. The longer it stands the less impact it has on the environment. Building insufficient housing that has to be rebuilt every 50, 75 or 100 years makes little sense to me.
Homes are built larger than ever before and have various materials that were not as common previously. All these changes mean far more embodied energy is expended in the construction of a new home – Examples: granite, Italian marble, Mexican tile, Chinese bamboo, etc. When change happens, as it always does, we expend even more energy deconstructing and then reconstructing. This cycle continues until the existing structure simply can’t sustain any more change without significant reconstruction or the homeowner decides it’s too much to bear and goes off to build anew. We are finding sustainable ways to deal with ongoing energy consumption after the build but failing to consider the “costs” that go into the actual construction and reconstruction of homes.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with modern home construction is how inflexible homes are. They are built for the sale. Nice and finished with little regard to how they will ultimately change over the years. The idea that the architect/builder/homeowner knew exactly where to put every outlet, every phone/cable connection, every wall, selected materials/colors/textures generations would embrace, every little detail for the next 100+ years befuddles me. It’s not just builders either. Remodelers and homeowners themselves are also at fault. It’s just the way is been done for over 100 years…why change!?
I can understand some of the concerns about durable home construction as we continue the status quo building techniques. However, if we build it right the first time and make it flexible then the two concepts of durability and sustainability come into a unique concert. This concept of durable housing does not assume one would live their entire life within a given structure. Quite the contrary – it fosters movement and gives people responsible housing without having to build all over again. While in a home, it can be easily adapted and when that structure will no longer do, another should be available to either upsize or downsize into. This cycle continues for generations leading to less urban sprawl, less natural habitat destruction from those looking to build a house that incorporates the next “big thing”. We need to take a “pay it forward” approach to home building that benefits us and future generations by allowing adaptability in a durable shell and reducing the amount of resources required to keep rebuilding the wrong way.
I can’t predict the future…none of us can. We can’t tell what new styles or trends will emerge. We can’t predict what technologies we will want to integrate into our homes. All I know is 40 years ago a finished basement was a unique thing to have. 30 years ago green & pink bathrooms were all the rage. 20 years ago attached garages became a norm. 10 years ago we started hanging TVs on the wall. Today, the green movement is developing technologies and systems that I would love to implement into my existing home…if it wasn’t so darn hard. The future is unknown and our houses need to be built to adapt to those needs. Over the last century the only thing that has remained largely the same is the way homes are built – speaking in general terms of course! This is just dumb. I’m pretty young and even I can see that change happens. Why can’t the building industry adapt!?
I hope this soap box rant hasn’t offended anyone…but then again sometimes you need to be a bit unreasonable to make change happen. It’s hard to sum up how this would happen in a short write up like this but there are others out there doing every day – like Tedd, and we need more of them. I hope to engage in the conversation and look forward to learning from more of the great minds out there.
I have been reading your blog for about two months now. I feel hesitant to comment as I am not in the building industry but have significant DIY experience and am compelled to chime in nonetheless.
I have been reading your thoughts on durability and am intrigued how similar they are to my own. As I think about building my next home, I wish to do so in a sustainable manner. By definition, that includes building a durable and long lived structure that will be easily adaptable as needs change. There is no reason my next home shouldn’t be able to survive half a millennia, or longer – there are plenty of examples where this milestone has been achieved. While building a Net Zero energy home is possible today, the embodied energy can never truly be negated – so our best choice would be to amortized that cost over the structures lifetime. The longer it stands the less impact it has on the environment. Building insufficient housing that has to be rebuilt every 50, 75 or 100 years makes little sense to me.
Homes are built larger than ever before and have various materials that were not as common previously. All these changes mean far more embodied energy is expended in the construction of a new home – Examples: granite, Italian marble, Mexican tile, Chinese bamboo, etc. When change happens, as it always does, we expend even more energy deconstructing and then reconstructing. This cycle continues until the existing structure simply can’t sustain any more change without significant reconstruction or the homeowner decides it’s too much to bear and goes off to build anew. We are finding sustainable ways to deal with ongoing energy consumption after the build but failing to consider the “costs” that go into the actual construction and reconstruction of homes.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with modern home construction is how inflexible homes are. They are built for the sale. Nice and finished with little regard to how they will ultimately change over the years. The idea that the architect/builder/homeowner knew exactly where to put every outlet, every phone/cable connection, every wall, selected materials/colors/textures generations would embrace, every little detail for the next 100+ years befuddles me. It’s not just builders either. Remodelers and homeowners themselves are also at fault. It’s just the way is been done for over 100 years…why change!?
I can understand some of the concerns about durable home construction as we continue the status quo building techniques. However, if we build it right the first time and make it flexible then the two concepts of durability and sustainability come into a unique concert. This concept of durable housing does not assume one would live their entire life within a given structure. Quite the contrary – it fosters movement and gives people responsible housing without having to build all over again. While in a home, it can be easily adapted and when that structure will no longer do, another should be available to either upsize or downsize into. This cycle continues for generations leading to less urban sprawl, less natural habitat destruction from those looking to build a house that incorporates the next “big thing”. We need to take a “pay it forward” approach to home building that benefits us and future generations by allowing adaptability in a durable shell and reducing the amount of resources required to keep rebuilding the wrong way.
I can’t predict the future…none of us can. We can’t tell what new styles or trends will emerge. We can’t predict what technologies we will want to integrate into our homes. All I know is 40 years ago a finished basement was a unique thing to have. 30 years ago green & pink bathrooms were all the rage. 20 years ago attached garages became a norm. 10 years ago we started hanging TVs on the wall. Today, the green movement is developing technologies and systems that I would love to implement into my existing home…if it wasn’t so darn hard. The future is unknown and our houses need to be built to adapt to those needs. Over the last century the only thing that has remained largely the same is the way homes are built – speaking in general terms of course! This is just dumb. I’m pretty young and even I can see that change happens. Why can’t the building industry adapt!?
I hope this soap box rant hasn’t offended anyone…but then again sometimes you need to be a bit unreasonable to make change happen. It’s hard to sum up how this would happen in a short write up like this but there are others out there doing every day – like Tedd, and we need more of them. I hope to engage in the conversation and look forward to learning from more of the great minds out there.
Tedd, thanks for your invitation for further discussion, and for the opportunity to participate. I want to say how much I appreciate your experience, perspective, credibility and accomplishments as a builder. It is because of this I’m interested in what you have to say on this subject.
With due respect, I didn’t ask if Durability was “important” I asked if “Sustainability means Durability” was a useful way of thinking. It seems that saying “Durability is Sustainability” promotes a tautology since we are using it to “change the denominator” of the “embodied energy” equation.
I’m saying that in thinking about sustainability in design (and that is what I think we’re discussing), the design life of a thing must come to the designer as “a given”, not used as an argument for its sustainability itself.
My understanding is that embodied energy counts as 1 – 3 percent of the energy used for a buildings lifetime (obviously someone is assuming a denominator on that figure). IF this is true, thinking in terms of “embodied energy per year” is marginal issue.
What seems to be more troubling is the implication that housing is a “consumer good”.
Industrialization (in general) reduces the unit “cost” of a thing and allows us to do more with less. If we are going to be involved in the affairs of industry, we are called to think about “housing”, with its attendant constraints, which is what industry and builders have had to do, while architects and artists are free to literally dwell in “glass houses” in places like New Canaan and cluck about the shoddy state of lives led by those living in boxes made of “ticky tac”.
Lastly, I’d like to suggest that Sustainability as Durability is confusing to people who mean well but aren’t thinking clearly, as the comment by Pete above demonstrates. One is not inclined to think of many industrial building materials (eg. paper facecd gypsum, OSB, poly styrene molding, etc … ) as “durable” per se. In the case of homebuilding, they’ve replaced not only incredibly durable materials (cement plaster, T&G boards, solid hardwoods) but ones that we necessarily think of as higher quality. But the materials supplanted by industry are also more expensive, labor intensive. To put it simply is OSB less sustainable than T&G sheathing? It certainly is cheaper and demonstrates a higher material economy, doesn’t it?
Take the example of crown molding Pete mentions. It shows the difficulty of decoupling durability from “quality” and shows how it muddies thinking about sustainability (as if we aren’t already mired). Which one is more “sustainable”: the plastic kind (that can be made from “evil” water bottles), or what it replaced?
I know which one I “feel” better about – but which one is more “sustainable”?
With due respect, I didn’t ask if Durability was “important” I asked if “Sustainability means Durability” was a useful way of thinking. It seems that saying “Durability is Sustainability” promotes a tautology since we are using it to “change the denominator” of the “embodied energy” equation.
I’m saying that in thinking about sustainability in design (and that is what I think we’re discussing), the design life of a thing must come to the designer as “a given”, not used as an argument for its sustainability itself.
My understanding is that embodied energy counts as 1 – 3 percent of the energy used for a buildings lifetime (obviously someone is assuming a denominator on that figure). IF this is true, thinking in terms of “embodied energy per year” is marginal issue.
What seems to be more troubling is the implication that housing is a “consumer good”.
Industrialization (in general) reduces the unit “cost” of a thing and allows us to do more with less. If we are going to be involved in the affairs of industry, we are called to think about “housing”, with its attendant constraints, which is what industry and builders have had to do, while architects and artists are free to literally dwell in “glass houses” in places like New Canaan and cluck about the shoddy state of lives led by those living in boxes made of “ticky tac”.
Lastly, I’d like to suggest that Sustainability as Durability is confusing to people who mean well but aren’t thinking clearly, as the comment by Pete above demonstrates. One is not inclined to think of many industrial building materials (eg. paper facecd gypsum, OSB, poly styrene molding, etc … ) as “durable” per se. In the case of homebuilding, they’ve replaced not only incredibly durable materials (cement plaster, T&G boards, solid hardwoods) but ones that we necessarily think of as higher quality. But the materials supplanted by industry are also more expensive, labor intensive. To put it simply is OSB less sustainable than T&G sheathing? It certainly is cheaper and demonstrates a higher material economy, doesn’t it?
Take the example of crown molding Pete mentions. It shows the difficulty of decoupling durability from “quality” and shows how it muddies thinking about sustainability (as if we aren’t already mired). Which one is more “sustainable”: the plastic kind (that can be made from “evil” water bottles), or what it replaced?
I know which one I “feel” better about – but which one is more “sustainable”?
Scott, the answer may be to design without the need, functionally or aesthetically, for crown moulding!
Sustainability has grown to be understood as a concern for the environment. But what is sometimes missed is that this planet must also sustain human life. A home built durably and flexibly will remain in service, decreasing the need to build again. Imbeded in the "mortgage crisis" is the need for mortgages. A home paid off is as good as a salary earned in many cases. Sustaining families, neighborhoods and whole regions is a worthy goal also. I recently drove the length of the Maine coast; from my home in Kittery to Calais. I observed the ghosts of mill towns, logging enterprises and farms, their abandoned buildings reminders of the life they once supported. If we can sustain people in place, we decrease the need to start over again someplace else. When the places I saw were supporting peoples lives, we didn't have to encroach on habitats for aligators in Florida, coyotes in Arizona or the spotted owl in the Northwest. Its not all about population expansion, its about relocation as well. Cultural durability and flexibility need to go hand in hand with sustainability.
Sustainability has grown to be understood as a concern for the environment. But what is sometimes missed is that this planet must also sustain human life. A home built durably and flexibly will remain in service, decreasing the need to build again. Imbeded in the "mortgage crisis" is the need for mortgages. A home paid off is as good as a salary earned in many cases. Sustaining families, neighborhoods and whole regions is a worthy goal also. I recently drove the length of the Maine coast; from my home in Kittery to Calais. I observed the ghosts of mill towns, logging enterprises and farms, their abandoned buildings reminders of the life they once supported. If we can sustain people in place, we decrease the need to start over again someplace else. When the places I saw were supporting peoples lives, we didn't have to encroach on habitats for aligators in Florida, coyotes in Arizona or the spotted owl in the Northwest. Its not all about population expansion, its about relocation as well. Cultural durability and flexibility need to go hand in hand with sustainability.
