seeds of architecture, the environment and the american landscape from Washington DC

Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs second home in December of 1943.

Despite my ongoing pursuit of plant knowledge and current employment as a landscape architect, architecture was my first love, and however cliche in the architecture community it may be, I will continue to argue that FLW was the best and most influential architect ever. Although published far less frequently than other Wright homes, one of the most interesting houses he designed and built was the Jacobs II house.

On the first six working drawings of the Jacobs II house (as it is often referred to) the project is labeled “solar hemicyclo”. Subsequent drawings and references use the name “solar hemicycle”. The house is called a solar hemicycle because the plan is based on a south facing semi-circle. Although the home occupies only 120 degrees, planting beds occupy the remaining 30 degrees on each side, finalizing the half circle.

The design was shown to the clients at Taliesin on February 8, 1944. Paul Sprague defines the geometry of the home in its National Historic Landmark Nomination as follows;

In plan it was nothing more than an arc of about 120 degrees. Inside it would be two stories, 14 feet in height, and would spread out along the arc for approximately 88 feet at the rear, or north side, and 60 feet on its front , or south side. Its depth inside was to be 17 feet. The south wall would be all glass, 48 feet in length, divided between doors and fixed panes.

I find the home most interesting because of its relationship to the site and its integration with a landscape that extends from the north berm all the way to the southern sun. The entry procession cuts through the ground and bleeds sunlight on the other side.

The sunlight is captured as heat in the home during the winter and shaded by a large overhang in the summer.

The poetry of the house is less in the furniture or details but rather grounded in the stone wall, concrete floor, and cylindrical towers that contain a stairwell and service functions. The house has a strength that I think is often guilded in other Wright homes. Sunlight and plants drive through the veins and keep the house breathing and beautiful even in eventual decay.

(original photography credits unknown; photograph color and diagram by Ryan Moody)

When gardens stop war.

5 years into the second volume of this babelized war it occurs to me that bamboo can grow as fast as 3 feet per day and that a white oak beats gravity at more than a foot per year. Forget a dividing wall. Forget airplanes filled with food. Want to divide people; grow a garden. Want to feed people; grow a garden. Grow a big, aggressive as hell collection of plants (modified beyond natural recognition) to grow fast, tall, fruit bearing, pulp encircling, fuel producing and outrageously beautiful. Throw seed bombs from planes and watch the monster grow by the minute. Let it divide waring factions, feed hungry stomachs, warm cold nights, boil parasitic water, and bloom until the flowers catch every damn bullet. Forget flower power, lets fight with trees…

or lets at least collect the eggs of our favorite native plants, encase them in soil and toss the seed bombs over every urban fence protecting wastelands of concrete and grass.

Most Washingtonians already know that this week is peak bloom for our famous cherry trees. Even if you haven’t seen the flowering trees, you can tell by the hordes of tourists that have descended upon the city. If (like me) you don’t enjoy fighting the crowds down at the Tidal Basin, there are quite beautiful cherry blossom displays scattered throughout the city. The Washington Gardner Magazing blog has a list here that includes Dumbarton Oaks and the National Arboretum. There are also some pretty impressive displays in some of the city’s smaller parks like the view from my office window in Stanton Park (4th and Mass Ave NE) , and the park/walkway from Union Station to the Capitol Building. My favorite way to see peak bloom  is heading to the Tidal Basin after dark. The tourists have departed, and the lighting gives the cherry blossoms a beautiful pink glow.

Time is short. Peak bloom ends Thursday, although there are always a few late bloomers like the new cherry trees at Nationals Park that failed to bloom by opening day.

On my family tree and the one out the window…

Growing on the sunny side of the window closest to my current desk is a beautiful Witchhazel. While I don’t know the story of Arnold’s promise, the name of this particular cultivar, I do know a thing about witches. It turns out that my sister is a witch… or shall I say that both my sister and I are descendants of a witch. We happen to be relatives of Susannah Martin, one of 19 witches hanged in Salem in 1692.

While this relation bestows many powers upon me (spells, potion mixing, broomcraft travel, etc.) it unfortunately does not provide for a fuller understanding of Hamamelis x intermedia, common name Witchhazel. If one traces the etymology of this common name it shakes out that the witch in Witchhazel is derived from the Old English word ”wice” and the Middle English ”wyche”, both of which mean pliant. Susan Post at the INHS Center for Economic Entomology explains;

The tree has also been called water-witch. The word witch comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “to bend.” The forked springy branches of witch hazel were used by early settlers, and later dowsers, as divining rods to search and detect underground water and minerals.

As someone more attune with magical mixes I find the plants homepathic uses as an astringent and lotion more valuable. Scroll down Steven Foster’s overview of Witchhazel for a tested preparation of bark and leaves and some excellent background information on this fine plant.

Looking back to the family tree, the genealogical rhizomes of the Moody’s (including Susannah Martin) have been studied and documented by my Grandmother, Dorothy Moody, and it is a gift from her that I turn to as a conclusion. She recently gave me her copy of Trees, Stars and Birds, a book of Outdoor Science, published in 1919 by Edwin Lincoln Moseley. Upon receiving it I learned that it was one of her favorite books as a child and that she often studied it in her youth. Trees, stars and birds linked in words and drawings… The mixture is very inspiring to me and I can’t help but set a sylvan scene of Witchhazel potions, sun yellow flowers and flying witches when I peek beyond the panes from the drawing on my desk.

I have been hearing a lot about “green-collar” jobs lately and I wasn’t sure what to make of all the fuss. But last week at an historic conference on green jobs in Pittsburgh, I realized that unlike other of-the-moment green trends, the “green-collar” jobs movement has deep roots and the great potential to unite the environmental, labor, and social and economic justice movements. The conference was more than just the latest meeting of high-minded progressive intellectuals although there were plenty of those armed with power-point presentation. In a city which is being reborn thanks to urban and environmental renewal rank and file union members rubbed elbows with anti-poverty organizers and environmental activists. Even more astounding was that the issue that brought these unlikely allies together is global warming.

As a sometimes cynical Washington lobbyist it takes a lot to inspire me these days, but that is exactly how I felt driving away from Pittsburgh past the recovered brownfields and towards wind turbines that are sprouting up all over Pennsylvania. The overarching message of the conference was that global warming is not only the biggest environmental challenge humanity has ever faced, but it also could be one of the greatest economic opportunities our nation has ever seen. Imagine this: we need to rebuild our energy system in order to stop global warming. Building wind farms, installing solar panels, retro-fitting buildings to make them more energy independent and manufacturing all the parts, products, vehicles, and train cars that will make it possible will create hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of jobs. Now imagine that all of those jobs were union jobs that provided good benefits and a living wage to impoverished people. Suddenly global warming could provide “green pathways out of poverty” in the words environmental justice rock star Van Jones.

At the conference the Apollo Alliance - a coalition organization of labor, environmental, and social justice groups - released a report that highlights many of the green job success stories already happening across the country including right here in DC. Mayor Adrian Fenty has created a “Green Jobs Advisory Council” uniting several city departments. Their goal is to meet the District’s environmental policy goals on green buildings, energy efficiency and water quality by building a skilled “green-collar” workforce of DC residents. Chicago, Oakland, New York City, Millwaukee, Minneapolis and other cities across the country are pursuing similar policies.

So maybe the oil companies, Big Coal, and global warming deniers are right that saving our planet will be the end of our economy as we know it. But that doesn’t worry me if we replace it with a more just, sustainable, and equitable system that revitalizes our cities and brings economic opportunity to millions.

Octopi and radii, but unfortunately no Croci. There are over eighty species of Crocuses. Photographed species unknown, we march towards Spring nonetheless. The most impressive Crocus scene I have collected was at Dumbarton Oaks last year. I encourage any and all to seek it sooner than Summer. The combination I have spotted most often around Capitol Hill has been purple and yellow. Itten would call it complementary contrast and suggest 3 purples for every yellow, and me,

I suppose I would try to design a red one and fill half my yard.

One to one red to green just like the Bauhaus tells me. My perennial text is at the office otherwise I might threaten to name these devils. Any botanists out there? Crocus lovers, what say you; what flavor have we found? And so I go on wondering about the radio at night, if birds see in color and why they (the birds not the flowers) are so noisy at sunset. The Crocuses are smart and I wonder how consistent they are. How close are they to sprouting at the same time every year? Chasing seasons just like the birds… and me. Eleven days, each one longer than the last.

In the second act of the most recent NPR release of This American Life, the narrator gives a brief background and interviews residents about the influx of “young white professionals” into the Northeast DC neighborhoods. At the center of the discussion is the planned closing of 23 DC public schools, one of which seems to be doing quite well, and the speculation that these closings are fueled by rising land value, the potential for condo development and the influx of a new demographic.

Heres the brief from www.thislife.org…

Act Two. The Plan.

American cities have gone through a massive wave of gentrification in the last few decades. To some people, it’s not a natural ebb and flow of the real estate market, but a plot, by rich, mainly white people, to take over the neighborhoods of poor, mainly black people. This American Life producer Jon Jeter reports on how, in neighborhoods all over the country, the plot has a name, “The Plan,” and most people you talk to know about it. (11 minutes)

Listen here

As noted in the program, white couples walking their dogs seems to be the universal sign of gentrification. I don’t have a dog, but the day might not be far off (dogs are among many things I like on the hilarious list of other stuff white people like). As a new resident to Capitol Hill East I realize that I am part of an increasing minority of white people in a historically black neighborhood… and that I have no idea what it is like to watch a neighborhood I have lived in for twenty years change so quickly. I see a renovated school building turned into a gym or condos and think, wow, what an excellent adaptive re-use, how lovely that some caring developer could secure that building, decide to not tear it down and instead renovate it. How nice that an architect had the decency to respect the craft of the original building and save as much as possible…

like most things, the longer view is a bit more complex.

I moved to Capitol Hill because it is a beautiful neighborhood close to where I work. The neighbors I have met are great. But I understand my naivete. My comprehension of the culture of the neighborhood is extremely limited. Nonetheless, I can see when the puzzle piece doesn’t fit. I see the elemenary school closest to me falling into disrepair. I see open windows in middle of winter. I see new condo buildings loom over single family homes and I watch four story shadows smother first floor neighborhood porches.

I heard the story on NPR and couldn’t help but wonder; was that school really neglected on purpose so that it would run down and ultimately be able to be “saved” and converted to million dollar condos? I don’t have the answer, but I am starting to see the perspective.

This situation is happening across the country in many neighborhoods, has happened in the past and will continue to happen in cycles. What is making it interesting is the complication of a failing economy. All of those condo buildings that have been built are not selling. Those that are being built will not sell. This is the reality of the current market. Many have reverted to rental properties and others sit abandoned as miscalculations in the geography of risk. This geography of risk is resulting in holes in the fabric. While there are lots of white people with dogs, I don’t know if there are enough to fill all the holes… and of course I suspect most are better at talking to their dogs than they are about talking to their neighbors.

In the New York Times today there is a great Op-Ed from a fruit and vegetable farmer in Minnesota on just how out of touch our national agriculture policy is. According to the farmer, Jack Hadin, anyone who grows one of the big four commodity crops (soybeans, corn, wheat, and rice) has to forfeit federal farm subisidies for those crops if they grow so much as an acre of fruits or other vegetables on their land. What?! That is ridiculous. As a result regional fruit and vegetable growers like our favorite vendors at farmers markets here in the district are struggling to keep up with exploding demand for local produce and are often unable to even rent additional acreage from behemoth corn and wheat farms.

I have known for a long time that the agriculture policy in the U.S was screwed up. It is a system that favors big agri-business and large growers of a few crops over smaller, more diverse growers. That is why it is cheaper and easier to buy a tomato from California here in DC than one grown in nearby Prince Georges County, Maryland. Its politics pure and simple. For the past year the reauthorization of the Farm Bill (the behemoth piece of legislation that sets up federal subsidies, crop insurance and nutrition programs and other projects) has been tied up in battles over how to pay for the billions of dollars in subsidies, who should get them, and how much. Defeated early on were proposals to make the federal farm programs better for fruit and vegetable growers. The Farm Bill still hasn’t been reauthorized as the President is threatening to veto it. Perhaps if this latest effort fails, the next President can spearhead an effort to make the Farm Bill help farmers like Jack Hadin instead of Archer-Daniels Midland and Cargill. Just a thought…

[slideshow=1]

…

According to the Casey Trees Tree Map the Red Maple outside my window is worth about 4 and 1/2 grand. And boy is it lookin good with its tail-light red flower fireworks show. I forget how brilliant the Red Maple can be in both leaf and flower. I don’t see Acer rubrum used too much as a street tree anymore, but most of the maples on our street seem to be doing ok. I love the fact that Casey Trees has mapped the trees of the District and stamped a dollar amount on each one. I don’t really have the slightest idea how many leaves their will be on this particular specimen but something tells me it might be around 5,000. A buck a leaf… sounds fair to me. Whats your view worth?

(below is the rest of the information on this pollution eating, oxygen spewing beauty)

Height: 40 feet
Diameter at Breast Height: 16 inches
Crown Radius: 15 feet
Leaf Area: 392.01 m
Leaf Biomass: 26.40 kg
Leaf Area Index: 5.97

For those of you unfamiliar with the geography of Washington DC, it looks something like this (image courtesy of the Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center);

I have highlighted the capitol building in yellow and the waterways of DC in red (the Potomac branch to the left and the Anacostia branch to the right) which of course combine and continue off into the Chesapeake Bay. My explorations for now will take us almost directly East (right) of the Capitol building and to both sides of the Anacostia.

Obviously, there are some issues with the Anacostia… pollution and combined sewer outfall among them. As new construction, renovation and political action move east from Capitol Hill to the historically neglected neighborhoods of Anacostia, it will be interesting to see how the not so buried treasures of life along the river are dealt with. The iridescent sea and its toxicity are beautiful in passing but crushingly heavy in the long view… what will become of the mortar labor and motor oil?

While walking around the abandoned Health Center complex just West of the Anacostia it was difficult to tell what was being fenced in and which side of the fence I was on. The porosity of the place, exposed by years of nature made fences interesting; relicts of division,  pleading for a river view and an open window.

I love to cook. Unfortunately, I hate grocery shopping. My local Safeway - nicknamed the “not-so-Safeway” in the DC tradition of nicknaming grocery stores - resembles the mad rush at Target the day after Thanksgiving just about every weeknight. Don’t even think about trying to find bananas that aren’t some scary shade of fluorescent green after about 6pm. Living on Capitol Hill I am lucky enough to have Eastern Market nearby, but even at the market much of the produce comes from farms as far away as Pennsylvania or is imported from who knows where.

What’s an amateur, fresh veggie loving cook to do? Recently, I have been hearing a lot about Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA.  According to Local Harvest many farms offer produce subscriptions, where buyers receive a weekly or monthly basket of produce, flowers, fruits, eggs, milk, coffee, or any sort of different farm products.

In college in Philadelphia I got interested in the local food movement and volunteered at a community run garden. In the largely low-income neighborhood of West Philly, the garden was one of the few places where local families could get fresh foods.  Also in Philly is perhaps the finest food market in the country - Reading Terminal - where farmers and craftsman from all over southeast Pennslyvania sell everything from grass-fed beef to local apples and giant baked pretzels. Local food is not only tastier and fresher than the imported produce in the grocery store, it also better for the environment. Less shipping means less air and global warming pollution. Small, community supported farms often use less fertilizer, pesticides and other harmful chemicals that seep into our water supply.

Joining a CSA seems like a great way to reconnect with the local food movement, especially as Ryan and I experiment with a vegetable garden of our own. In case the local critters get a hold of our broccoli crop, we can always count on a weekly delivery of veggies from as nearby as Prince Georges County. Joining a CSA can be costly upfront. Most CSA farms ask for payment for the season which is usally late spring through early fall and cost around $600-800. You can cut the cost by sharing. A typical weekly delivery is ideal for a family of 4, so you can go in with your housemates or another couple in your neighborhood. Check out this directory for a CSA that delivers to your neighborhood.

I am already looking forward to thinking up new seasonal recipes and getting to know a local farm. 

Green is making me sick.

The word is being abused so much, and the idea is so saturated, that I’m beginning to have trouble spitting it out of my mouth. You can paint cowpies green all day… they are still cowpies. In this time and art of greenwashing I’m afraid we’ve lost any understanding of the word.

The interesting thing about green is its location at 520-570 nanometers in the color spectrum. According to Wikipedia (via the Olympus Microscopy Resource Center) “the sensitivity of the dark-adapted human eye is greatest at about 507 nm, a blue-green color, while the light-adapted eye is most sensitive about 555 nm, a slightly yellowish green; these are the peak locations of the rod and cone (scotopic and photopic, respectively) luminosity functions.” The translation is that our eyes are most sensitive in both light and dark to the color green; we can distinguish more hues of green than any other color. This is why newer fire engines and cross walks are painted bright yellow/green; the color is visible both day and night. Green is interesting because we are wired to detect subtle changes in our environment, much of it dominated at one time by green, blue and yellow.

Removing mountaintops is not subtle and coal is not clean.

Green is interesting because it suggests some type of growth, a connection to water and sunlight, and the beauty of diversity. The absurdity of the green revolution is that it is occurring in advertising and not in environmental action; it is the representation of an ideal painted on a surface (in the hue of our choice). We, as communities and individuals, are very responsive to green ideas. The question unknown is if these surfaces can grow.

A cowpie is great fertilizer.

Can something worthwhile grow from the sh*t we are being thrown. Can advertisements like Clean Coal, get people to think about what coal really is and how difficult and dirty it is to find, access, extract, burn, sequester, store… maybe some intelligence can grow from the green facade? Maybe we can attract new ideas, solutions and inspiration from greenwashing? Or is too much green dangerous? Perhaps the washout will turn inspiration to cynicism.

Ilex vomitoria and too much green

Although the leaves of Ilex vomitoria, common name Yaupon Holly, do contain caffeine and have been historically used for medicinal and social purposes, too many leaves or berries leaves one feeling not so good. The plant is an emetic and is used to induce vomiting (hence vomitoria). In my state of American overdose on green I’m thinking that I’m being forced to consume too too many berries, and too much green is making me sick…

That said, the Yaupon Holly is an attractive native species that can grow as tall as 20′. It is the only native plant that contains caffeine and its berries are an important food source for songbirds. The Yaupon Holly is generally found along the coastal plain and as far north as Washington DC.

Part I.

While perusing through some of my old books, I came upon a very worn but intact and unmarked copy of the Maurice Sendak classic Where the Wild Things Are. The image of monsters dancing under moonlight with claws and jagged smiles clicked in my imagination. And there it was; the drawing that captured and coined my own and so many other kids sense of the wild. Something so frightening and liberating, lawless and exciting, and colored in a way to reveal the mystery of reflected sunlight off the earths only moon. Magic.

Between my aunts, my father, my sister and myself the book has surely been read 1000 times. For the first time I noticed, across the floral interior cover board, the date on the first page, copyright 1963… a first printing of the first edition.

Part II

In My Backyard is a strange place. It is a leftover space; the interior of a large block that was apparently never considered. There are many spaces like this around the Capitol Hill neighborhood, and likely hundreds more in the entirety of dc.

All kinds of odd things happen beyond my backyard and various people have taken claim to this hole in the grid. In an attempt to amplify the wild of my back door nature I think that this space, as well as the many others, could use something more. So how to build upon the wild of this patch? One idea might be to plant it as densely as possible with native coniferous plants and attract as many birds as possible… a kind of neighborhood bird palace protected by a moat of humans. As protectors of our many two winged friends we could make baths from satellite dishes, and give the birds selection of our leftover cereals. We could watch them enjoy breakfast from our backyard tables and wonder if they enjoy music. Other Wild Things would join them and suddenly the dead center would swell and spill out to colonize the dying street trees, the mosaic extending from castle to castle.

If you have been thinking about installing a solar hot water heater in your home, or putting solar photovolataic (pv) panels on your roof in the District, time is running out to be eligible for federal tax credits. Many states like California and New Jersey (yes NJ - the Saudi Arabia of flat, pv friendly roofs) offer generous rebates and incentives for homeowners that want to go solar. Unfortunately DC does not have a rebate program, so Washingtonians interested in installing solar technology rely on federal tax incentives to make it more cost friendly. The bad news is that the federal tax incentives that allow homeowners to get a credit for up to $2000 of what they invest on solar is set to expire at the end of this year. After the initial investment, solar can help DC residents save on their electric bills because of net metering policies that require utilities to credit customers that generate more electricity than they use themselves.

The federal solar incentives, as well as incentives for wind, geothermal and other forms of clean energy fell victim last year to the oil industry, who didn’t want to give up any of their billions of dollars in federal subsidies to help fund clean energy. Apparently record breaking profits doesn’t keep the oil industry happy enough. The solar industry, environmentalists, and investors are all rallying together to save the clean energy incentives.

To find out more about solar incentives in your state (or District) check out the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency at www.dsireusa.org.

***Update***

Democrats in the House of Representatives are ticked off about oil industry profits as well and are going to bring up an energy tax package later this week. The bill  will extend the solar and other renewable energy and energy efficiency tax credits and pay for it by rolling back oil subsidies. The vote is expected on Thursday.

going underground…

There is a fungal network of Armillaria ostoye in Oregon that covers an estimated 2200 acres below ground. The fruits from such an organism appear in sporadic places above ground as mushrooms, stars in a massive galaxy of tentacle like rizomorphs that compete under the soil surface for water and nutrients. There are simply so many things happening that our eyes can not see. In some ways it is better not to see, but rather to imagine this vast network of the Honey mushroom taking over entire states. There are, however, of course other competitors. The Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) might be one. In variable fashion, this tree takes over huge tracts of land by sending out suckers; new trees born from the root system that are all connected as one organism. The clonal colony of Quaking Aspens in Utah named “Pando” is estimated at 47,000 stems (trees) covering 43 hectares with an average stem age of 130 years. The collection of stems are all born from one genetic individual.

American Beech (Fagus grandiflora) has its own strategy. This copper beauty uses allelopathy which is difficult to remember word that means it releases biomolecules into the soil that inhibit the growth of other plants. By doing so, the Beech trees are able thrive with limited competition. The result is limited but beautiful expanses of copper colored leaves dominating an otherwise leafless hardwood forest view. Why the American Beech tree is able to hold its leaves longer than others, I can’t say I know, but under and above, they are working hard to gain valuable ground… even without a super Tuesday to await.