Modern Atlanta

I used to wake up every day with the same low-grade feeling of guilt and anxiety. It was barely noticeable throughout the day, and there were many times I would forget it was even there at all; but it was always there. The guilt came from the knowledge that the activities I would be performing throughout that day were, in large part, going to have a negative effect on the environment around me. I was going to consume more energy than I gave back, drink more water than I would replenish, throw away more material than I could recycle, and contribute more carbon dioxide to an already warming planet. The anxieties came from the fact that almost all of these negative environmental impacts were unavoidable in a modern society and were going to be relatively unaffected one way or the other by the choices I made.

So what was the rest of the eco-conscious global community and I to do? Give up on the world and adopt a nihilistic attitude towards life and be miserable? Or set fire to our homes and clothing, move into the forest, and revert back to the pre-civilized humans whose only knowledge of a carbon footprint was that of a bare foot that had just walked through an extinguished fire pit? While I was sure more than a few had adopted the former, I dared to venture in wondering if a radical handful had quite possibly embraced the latter as well. With such polar extremes, I felt that for the rest us, who chose to exist in a modern civilization and wanted to live a happy fulfilling life, there was a considerably wide swath of middle ground between the two from which to choose.

Having been an artist all of my life, and a renovator/builder for the past four years, I had done little outside of my own daily routine to contribute to the greater good of the environment. I did all of the things one would expect an average eco-conscious person would do. I recycled my trash, replaced my incandescent bulbs with CFLs, bought local organic food, educated my friends and family on being green, and had a general consciousness about the daily choices I made and their effect on the environment; but I still felt like the positive effect my actions had were minute at best. In fact when it came to the first two houses I built, I felt like I was more a part of the problem than the solution due to the amount of waste I was generating and the energy inefficiency the overall design of the houses embodied. After a frustrating completion to these homes, the solution to my dilemma became clear. I needed to do what I had initially wanted to do from the beginning of my new construction career, but others had said was an “unwise” and a “crazy idea” for Atlanta: build very progressive, and very green, modern homes on spec. Probably not the most insane thing one could do, I certainly didn’t think so, but given the housing market I could understand how people may have thought it to be a risky endeavor. Nevertheless, I felt I was obligated to travel this new modern green path. So I founded Concourse E, a design/build firm that would be structured around the belief that modern design not only entails a progressive aesthetic, but also an environmental consciousness as well. Being a modernist, as well as an environmentalist, my entire life, the formation and direction Concourse E would take seemed almost inevitable.

Today, less than a year later, I am pleased to say that Concourse E has begun construction on the first two LEED Platinum homes in the Southeast and only the 14th and 15th in the entire country respectively. Because Atlanta still has one of the highest rates of new construction in the country, and so little of that development is either modern or green, it was crucial to have our first projects stand out as groundbreaking models of what can be done on spec, not only in modern architecture, but in green building as well. These projects primarily focus on green features and components that address a home’s daily functional impact on the environment, namely, a home’s water and, most importantly, energy consumption. I believe these two areas of green building and design to be the most important and effective in combating the enormously negative effects buildings have on the environment.

Most people do not realize that buildings account for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, emissions that have been proven to be the main culprits of climate change. The main contributor of these emissions are the thousands of fossil fuel based (coal burning) power plants around the globe used to supply homes, schools, and other buildings. with the energy they need for their cooling, heating, lighting, and other electrical-based needs. In the United States alone, buildings consume 76% of the energy produced by coal-fired plants. While there undoubtedly needs to be a paradigm shift in how we use and produce energy, one of the most immediate solutions to the problem is to take what we have now and make it work better.

The 2030 Challenge, created by Architecture 2030, addresses this solution with a series of design/construction benchmarks that target successive energy consumption performance standard reductions for all newly built and renovated structures over the next 23 years. In other words, The Challenge is a series of energy efficiency targets for all newly constructed and renovated homes. The current target is an energy consumption performance standard of 50% of the regional average for the particular building type being measured. By 2030 the benchmark will be 100%, meaning a house consumes zero energy from outside sources. The 2030 Challenge goes far beyond the highest levels of almost every green certification program out there today and really gets to the point when it comes to providing real actionable guidelines that, if used and followed, will have a substantial impact on reversing climate change. It is for this reason that Concourse E has adopted The Challenge for all of our current and future projects.

Our two current residential projects are located next door to each other in Reynoldstown and consist of a two-unit town home and a single-family residence. Both homes have dozens of green features not only in the systems installed, but also integrated into the design of the homes themselves. For example, the duplex project has been designed to have a vegetated rain screen that covers the center half of the front façade of the structure. This vegetated wall will serve not only as a thermal barrier to the structure, but will also produce oxygen and capture storm run off as well. The duplex will also generate 25% of its power from solar panels on the roof, while reducing 50-65% of its energy needs through the implementation of such features as Biobased spray foam insulation, solar hot water, ultra high efficiency HVAC and Energy Star rated Bosch appliances just to name a few.

The single family home, next door to the duplex, incorporates many of the same features with one obvious difference: a vegetated green roof. While seen more and more on commercial structures, green roofs are still extremely rare for residential projects and Concourse E’s homes are the first in the Atlanta area to offer such a feature. Green roofs not only act as an insulating layer, thereby saving energy, but they also absorb the majority of rainwater that falls on the roof, clean the air and decrease the heat island effect a typical shingle roof causes. All of these systems and design features work in conjunction with one another to greatly reduce the overall daily energy needs of the homes.

Even though reducing greenhouse gases through structural energy efficiency lies at the core of these projects, it was important to address an even more immediate and larger problem facing the Atlanta area: water storage. While the majority of the attention on solving the water shortage crisis has been primarily focused on keeping more of the water we have by preventing the Army Corps of Engineers from releasing it downstream, little attention has been given to ways we can reduce our water needs. Because the vast majority of water usage goes toward outdoor watering (over 60%), it is important to implement steps that either significantly reduce this need or eliminate it entirely. Our Reynoldstown projects have eliminated the need for any municipal water use for outdoor watering by employing rain harvesting systems that capture roof run off and xeriscaping. The plants and materials used to landscape the yards of both projects will be self-sustaining and require no additional watering and very little maintenance. We are also taking measures to reduce indoor water needs as well. Using clean drinking water to fill toilets is not a necessary or wise use of a scarce resource. The installation of graywater recovery systems in each of the homes will utilize the drain water from the bathroom sinks and showers to fill the toilets in the house. This system, in conjunction with low flow showerheads, faucets and toilets, will reduce the home’s indoor water usage 40-50%.

While it could be argued that these projects are not as absolutely green as they could be, the only reason they are not is simply due to budget. Being that they are homes on spec, we are somewhat bound to the fact that in the end, we are a business, and businesses need to make money in order to survive. If it were economically viable to build all of our projects with zero energy requirements and material waste, we most assuredly would be doing so. Though the Reynoldstown homes could be considered a compromise in some respects, they are still a compromise that is more environmentally friendly and energy efficient than 99% of what is being built today, so I don’t beat myself up too much.

Now that construction has finally begun on these projects, that low-grade feeling of guilt and anxiety I used to get everyday has, in large part, dissipated. While I still think about my daily actions and their relation to the environment, I don’t dwell as much on the negative as I do the positive. Granted I’m not curing cancer or changing the world overnight by building these projects, but I take comfort in the fact that my positive contribution to the home in which we all live, as small in scale as it may be, is a positive contribution nonetheless.