By John McLeod, AIA

I had planned to write a report on the annual Board Retreat to share a bit of what the board does, but then I saw Food, Inc. last night; equally relevant to architecture, and much more interesting to write about…and hopefully to read about. 

So let me briefly mention that the aiaVT board meets each June for an all-day retreat at the Lake Champlain Yacht Club to talk about the big picture:  What we’re doing well and not so well, why we exist as an organization and goals for the coming year. (Note:  This undertaking involves Adirondack chairs, coffee and bagels, a backdrop of sailboats and mountains, and a lunch-time cookout—not a bad setting, for those of you who might be interested in joining the board…)                 

As for the film:  I don’t know how many of you have seen Food, Inc. or read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Fast Food Nation, and the like, but I find the similarities between our food culture and our architecture culture fascinating.  With both, it seems we’ve realized that many of our ‘advances’ have in fact been steps backward, or at least sidetracks.  Industrial-scale farming with pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and genetic modifications has produced the most abundant, cheapest food ever, but it’s made us fat and sick.  Similarly widespread development, imitation materials, and shallow stylistic references have cluttered the landscape in many places with flimsy, uninspiring enclosures, ready to be discarded and forgotten almost as quickly as fast food containers.  Both systems are more geared toward the individual consumer (“I’m lovin’ it”) than the community, offering brief satiation rather than sustained nourishment.

With both food and buildings, there is the challenge of up-front costs versus long-term value, and apparent price versus true price.  Oftentimes, better food and better buildings cost more in strict out-of-pocket terms, and that’s a real issue for the majority of our society.  As one family says in Food, Inc., “Sometimes you look at a vegetable and say, ‘ok, well, we can get two [fast food] hamburgers for the same price.’”  The problem with both cheap food and cheap buildings is that they usually do not reflect their true cost, to society and the environment. 
Fortunately, more and more people are recognizing that artificial ingredients, oversized portions, and disregard for nature generally do not make good food, or good buildings.  The funny thing is, with both farming and building, so many of our current efforts to get back on track are really a return to doing things as they were traditionally done:  Accepting and working with nature; using resources wisely and sparingly; handing down collective knowledge; valuing community and respecting others.  Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela have both talked about the concept of ‘ubuntu’:  “[We] are connected and what you do affects the whole world” (Tutu) and “Ubuntu does not mean that people should not address themselves. The question…is: are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?” (Mandela).
The core issue seems to be how we value things—as embodied in our national policies as well as our individual actions.  Grass farmer Joel Salatin says in Food, Inc., “Imagine what it would be if, as a national policy, the idea would be to have such nutritionally dense food that people actually felt better, had more energy, and weren’t sick as much.  Now you see, that’s a noble goal.”  We can just as easily substitute the word “buildings” into that statement.            

I hope everyone’s enjoying the summer.                   

By Shawn Brennan, AIA

A Guatemalan friend of mine visited Vermont right after I graduated from college and was amazed that we build almost all of our houses out of wood.  There was a corresponding amazement at the number of fire departments we have, which stands to reason in light of the first observation.  The source of this wonder was the fact that you can virtually watch in real time anything built out of wood in Guatemala being consumed by insects.  That was the first time I gave serious thought to how regional construction traditionally is.  We have abundant wood resources and a relatively minor tree chomping insect population, so we build our houses out of wood…and we build plenty of fire departments to go with them.  I don’t travel a great deal, so this regionalism just struck me again during my recent trip to the Maltese Islands.  

The nation of Malta is an archipelago located in the center of the Mediterranean just south of Italy.  It consists of three islands totaling 122 square miles and has a population of 400,000.  The main island is Malta and has an area of 95 square miles.  The adjoining islands of Gozo (26 square miles) and Comino (1 square mile) are reached by ferry.  Gozo has a small percentage of the population and Comino is uninhabited.  I spent two weeks on Gozo and spoke with a local Gozitan Architect about the construction practices there.  The first thing I noticed when I flew over the islands was the fact that everything is brown.  This was not a case of me failing to see the forest for the trees simply because there are not trees, so you can imagine that there hasn’t been a great deal of wood construction.  Correspondingly, I can’t recall ever seeing a fire truck during my stay, let alone a whole fire department.  On a side note, they aren’t big on police departments either, as evidenced by the local driving habits.  If you’re ever there remember that roundabouts mean accelerate, stop signs actually mean “look” not “stop”,  and keep an eye on the convex mirrors at the corners because you can’t see a thing on those tiny streets.  Did I mention they drive on the left side of the road?  Good luck!

The island of Gozo is a reflection of a bygone era where bakers, fisherman, and grocers travel the streets selling goods right at your front door.  If they don’t have something you need then it’s a quick walk to the shops at the town square.  Here’s another tip for you:  Remember not to walk on the sidewalks because they actually belong to each house they are in front of. Each morning you will see the proud owners fastidiously sweeping their twenty feet of sidewalk.   Let me tell you, those sidewalks look good enough to walk on.  And everything you need is within walking distance so you don’t have to drive everywhere, which was fortunate for me given the aforementioned circumstances.  The entire town is one mixed use development, and all of the development is in the town, not sprawled out over the limited countryside.  They don’t build on green field sites (the term “green” is absolutely figurative in this dry climate), and any development is slow and deliberate since Gozitans tend to spend only the money they have.  What a novel concept.

Their construction methods follow the same dense urban pattern it has for centuries.  They follow the regional edicts set forth by the local climate and local resources, with the indigenous building material being limestone since prehistoric times.  With a hot climate the Gozitans have a tradition of building thick cavity walls of limestone to act as a thermal mass to absorb the brutal daytime heat, which is then radiated back out during the cooler nights.  There was usually a central courtyard to allow airflow and light into the interior of the building.  The cooking areas were separated from the main part of the house to isolate the heat.  These characteristics, along with the high ceilings and through wall vents, helped to keep the buildings cool without mechanical systems.  Recent weather changes and the global economy are impacting these ingrained methods; generally for the worse.  

Much like many rural areas of Vermont, there are not a lot of career opportunities on Gozo.  The cab driver taking me from the airport complained that the lack of opportunity is causing many of the young people to move off of the island, contributing to the aging of the population demographic.  There is also a relatively large percentage of alcohol and drug abuse among the younger age groups who have few recreational outlets.  With little economic growth and outside influences making their way to Gozo there has also been an affect on the construction techniques.  Houses typically are not built with a central courtyard anymore in order to maximize the available space.  People are building their walls out of a singe wythe of limestone rather than the traditional cavity walls, thus decreasing the thermal mass and predisposing the structure to moisture problems.  Over the past several years the rainy winters have gotten colder than usual, which is responsible for the deaths of a rising number of the elderly since the houses do not have insulation or central heat.  The Architect I spoke with was justifiably proud of the house he designed for himself because it had the traditional cavity wall construction, double glazed windows, and two inches of insulation on the roof!  This is almost unprecedented construction on the island.  Besides that it was just plain gorgeous.  At one point there was an entrepreneur on Gozo who started a mechanical contracting company to install central heating systems, but neither the business nor the idea survived his death.  I was also told that someone else tried to start an insulating company, but the locals didn’t see the value of it since it was never part of their construction methodology.  

The current construction practices are leading to some of the same issues we are facing in the more industrialized world.  I visited a house built using current building practices such as single wythe walls.  The owners recently had to mitigate mold growth on the interior face of the exterior walls, and when I visited there was new mold growth already visible.  Cheaper new construction is creating new problems in an old part of the world.  Right before I left the island I spoke with an architecture student who has decided to spend a semester at an architecture program in the United States.  He wants to learn new construction techniques to help his island deal with these burgeoning problems.  I tried to describe some of the building technology he will be facing in his studies in our part of the world.  It will be quite foreign to him, but I can see the value of this experience for him.  If change in Malta is inevitable, then it makes sense for the Maltese to learn the lessons of others to ensure that the change is beneficial.