Yaxchilan Bridge reconstruction courtesy James O’Kon PE

Most people don’t know that the longest bridge in the world, until 1377, was not in Rome, China or the Middle East.  It was in the Central American Mayan city of Yaxchilan.

The bridge over the Usumacinta river, would have been the longest bridge discovered in the ancient world, dating from its construction by the Maya civilization in the late 7th century. It was a suspension bridge with a more or less level deck.

James O’Kon, an engineer and author, describes the bridge in his new book “The Lost Secrets of Maya Technology”. In his book, O’Kon describes the bridge as necessary for the functioning of the ancient city, located in an oxbow of the river.  The tropical river seasonally varies in height by as much as 40 feet, leaving the city isolated on an island for up to half the year.

Yaxchilan map courtesy Google

It has been speculated that the Maya solved this urban transportation problem by constructing a 100-meter long suspension bridge across the river in the late 7th century. The bridge which featured three spans extended from a platform on the grand plaza of Yaxchilan crossing the river to the northern shore. The 63 meter center span remained the longest in the world until the construction of the Italian Trezzo sull’Adda Bridge in 1377.

Mark English architects: Mark, Waylon, Maria, Brian, Ben and Greg.

Last fall, we were fortunate to have participated in the High School Mentorship program hosted by the Build San Francisco Institute. The program itself is unique, and we were very fortunate in having Waylon as our mentee.

Waylon is a senior at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts (SOTA) in San Francisco, a public school oriented towards fine and performing arts, whose mission is to “provide students with a rigorous and inspiring high school program in both artistic and academic disciplines.”

As a Board member with the Architectural Foundation of San Francisco (AFSF), I am a great believer in the program, but had resisted requests to mentor a student because I was concerned about the time required to do so in a small office. How wrong I was!

The Architectural Foundation of San Francisco has created the Build San Francisco Institute, a half day high school program for students interested in design, construction, engineering and architecture. The Build San Francisco Institute is a unique community educational partnership, involving AFSF, San Francisco Unified School District and more than two dozen major San Francisco firms. The program combines a rigorous academic program with mentorships in the partner firms, so that students not only gain new knowledge, but also have the immediate experience of applying that knowledge in a real world setting.

Begun as an after school program sponsored by the Architectural Foundation of San Francisco, the Build San Francisco Institute has evolved into a full partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District as an integral part of the city’s public high school program. This program is the result of a fifteen year process that saw the program evolve from a six week summer mentorship experience into a fully accredited academic program.

The Build San Francisco Institute offers fully accredited courses in Architectural Design and Urban Studies. Students work on real problems using the real tools professionals use, including such state of the art software programs as Autodesk 3DS Max and Autodesk Revit Architecture. In addition, it provides every student who joins the program with a mentorship with a major San Francisco architecture, engineering, construction or interior design firm and key civic agencies. Students may earn up to fifteen units of high school credit each semester. All credits earned appear on the students high school transcript and are approved by the University of California for college admission.

Waylon was in the office for a semester, twice a week for 3 or 4 hours at a time.  We brought him to construction sites, had him read books on architecture, build models, and design his own small projects. Interestingly, in this era of the young digital BIM jockey, Waylon’s portfolio showed a great ability to paint and draw the analog way. How refreshing!

Waylon working on his model.

At first, we came up with small cardboard model projects where he could gain familiarity with the process.

From thought to action!

Later, we started to ask him to design his own spaces and represent them in different formats. The project below is Waylon’s “Dream Bathroom”, represented by a physical model and an evocative oil painting. The very generous solution sports an all glass shower, soaking tub with partial glass sides, separated vanity areas, two toilets, etc.  Exactly as he wanted.

Waylon’s dream bathroom envisioned in an oil painting.

Waylon’s dream bathroom envisioned in model form.

In addition, we asked Waylon to choose examples of some of the good and great works by the Masters, and reinterpret them in model form.  The model below represents a Wurster home in San Francisco…

PRECEDENTS: A study of a Wurster San Francisco house.

And another represents an exercise in understanding Le Corbusier’s use of interlocking space found in the 1928 “Villa in Carthage” project.

PRECEDENTS: Understanding Le Corbusier’s interlocking spaces.

Everyone in the office learned as much from Waylon as he learned from us- that is the hidden beauty of a mentorship program.

Country Pyramid

This monument to the “afterlife” is to be found near the Carneros Inn, Napa.  Hordes of mummies, ghouls and goblins will be queuing up soon.  Note the guardrails (not in Imhotep’s original scheme, but imposed by local Building Officials…)

All of us at Mark English architects, and most of the rest of our colleagues, are involved in thinking about and implementing Green Building practices. Last week the Greenbuild Expo arrived in San Francisco, and several of our employees attended. One of them is Benjamin Todt, a German architectural intern.  Germany is a leading proponent of Green design, and leads much of the world in Passivehaus design, net-zero design, solar and wind alternative energy sources.  I thought it would be interesting to see the Expo through Ben’s eyes.  The following are his observations:

“When I first visited the Greenbuild website to sign up, I became very excited: The prospect of spending three days in educational sessions at one of the world’s largest conferences dedicated to green buildings with building professionals from around the world sounded thrilling. Having just received my Bachelor’s degree I could not wait to learn more about the likes of cool towers, building envelope design and natural ventilation. At the time I registered for the sessions, some of the sessions about architecture specific topics were already full so I had to sign up for a few sessions that sounded less interesting like Austin’s sustainability measures and Tony Fadell’s talk about his beautiful but seemingly pointless attempt to redesign the thermostat.

Biz Stone, courtesy of USA Today

Greenbuild itself then actually started out with a bang. Or more precisely with the opening plenary featuring Biz Stone, Co-Founder of Twitter, and Rick Fredrizzi, President of USGBC, among others. While the moderators of the event wanted to hear that Twitter caused recent political changes, Biz Stone replied in his relaxed manner that all it is really doing is facilitating communication and collaboration, not initiating any human needs. He then mentioned that eventually social media will lead to a smaller world in which it will be more appropriate to think of the world in terms of humanity as a whole instead of nations and countries. And as the world becomes more interconnected he thinks that marketing will shift to a new model where companies use the majority of the marketing budget to do good things in the world and use the rest of it to make sure that we all know about it. He then concluded by saying that people don’t care about “green” when they are oppressed or are starving to death. At this point I was not sure how this related to Greenbuild. But then Rick Fredrizzi made a similar point: While companies are a central part of the problem now, they have to become central part of the solution as well. In essence he said that the green movement can only be successful if it achieves market transformation in collaboration with the economy. His infectious energy and passion, paired with steadfast determination gave me the feeling that the American green movement was in good hands.

After this unexpectedly broad but energizing intro, I was looking forward to equally enthusiastic but much more precise and architecture specific presentations. The sessions that I had looked forward to the most, the ones that were supposed to deliver in depth, cutting-edge knowledge about topics that I had heard about a little in college, fell far short of this. Instead of learning how to exactly design a building envelope that can stand the extreme climate of Saudi Arabia, I was let down with many pretty renderings and a couple of undergraduate-level principles of shading. Instead of learning how to exactly design a building in San Francisco using natural ventilation, I was served with a teaspoon of information that I could have gained from simply visiting the building and looking at it. And instead of gaining any significant new insight into cool towers, the presenters decided to settle for a shallow report of their projects and show that they were unable to integrate the cool towers into the building design in an esthetically acceptable way. Making it an even less satisfying experience, the energy with which they all presented their, in essence truly applaudable, work was as low as the energy consumption of their buildings. Or lower.

Lucia Athens, Chief Sustainability Officer for Austin Texas

In stark contrast to this, Lucia Athens, Chief Sustainable Officer of the city of Austin, gave a riveting talk that went far beyond the sustainability of a single building. Long before she started her work, Austin had dozens of stand-alone sustainability initiatives. But the problem was that the different organizations were not connected or didn’t even know about the existence of other organizations in Austin. So she decided to bundle all 180+ sustainability initiatives and created one recognizable logo. Calling it “rethink Austin for a bright green future” she puts her “holy trinity” of People (Equity), Planet (Environment) and Prosperity (Economy) front and center. With this approach she wants to tackle Austin’s extensive list of problems including huge population growth, poverty, obesity, lack of parks and poor transportation system among many others. She concluded with a set of guidelines, which she uses in her quest: “Build a frame”(start where you are, create a system), “Tell a story” (measure progress, celebrate success) and “Think big” (outside box, people matter, fun). Lucia’s idealism is infectious and she demonstrates on a daily basis how sustainability can go far beyond a city’s buildings.

Tony Fadell, Founder and CEO, Nest

Once Lucia has put people into homes, they can start to worry about their energy bills. And that is where Tony Fadell and his Nest thermostat come into play. I had heard of his product before but admittedly I had never truly understood its revolutionary quality. At first glance it actually is only a beautiful thermostat. You can install it and simply pretend it is like the other thermostat you used before. But Tony made a different experience: people actually start to engage with their thermostat. They start caring about it. The more people interact with it, the more it learns about the occupants of the building. It can set the right temperature considering the time of the day, weather, the occupant’s behavior and more. That helps you to save money by just using it as a regular thermostat. Tony thinks, and being a former Apple employee he should know, that the reason for its success is the fact that it is emotional which makes people want to engage with it. He sees it as a starting point for people to learn more about water, electricity and insulation. But what is truly spectacular about this product is a tiny green leaf that only appears when you set your temperature slightly below your usual comfort temperature. People want to see the green leaf, be rewarded, and that way they save energy and money. Just because of a few green pixels. Spectacular.

Jane McGonigal is the Director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future

Eventually Greenbuild 2012 ended on a high and unexpected note. Very high. Very unexpected. It ended with Jane McGonigal. Jane McGonigal is the Director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future. She said that the world spends 100 million hours every three weeks on playing Angry Birds. Why is that significant? Because it took 100 million hours to create Wikipedia. Wow. We could create something as complex as Wikipedia every three weeks by just not opening the app and being productive in a meaningful way instead. She pointed out how gamers are open to failure, fail constantly, try hard to eventually get the big reward, the epic win. Additionally, gamers are highly engaged in their games. Jane wants to find ways to bring those qualities of gamers into the real world to solve real world problems, Environmental problems, for example.

So what do I know now, after Greenbuild, that I didn’t know before? I don’t know much more about new, surprising ways to make a building “green”. Maybe that’s because I went to the wrong sessions or because there just isn’t that much more to learn about sustainable building techniques. It’s possible that we already know enough and all we need to do is implement it in both new and existing buildings. But that’s not something Greenbuild can do. That’s something only professionals can do in their job. What it did, though, was teaching me that much of the success of the green movement will depend on everyone else but the people attending Greenbuild. We already knew how important building, living, thinking green was. In many ways Greenbuild preached to the choir. And yet it also made room for people like Lucia Athens, Tony Fadell and Jane McGonigal who tackle the problems in a fresh, innovative way. It’s because of them that everyone else but the people attending Greenbuild can become part of the movement. For me, Greenbuild’s biggest accomplishments were to open my mind to the necessity of getting all the other people on board and introducing me to surprising new ways of how to do so.

Thank you, Greenbuild 2012.”

-Benjamin Todt

Last week, we participated in a webinar hosted by the AIA CRAN called “Brand Building in the era of the Empowered Client”. Joining us were Liza Hausman of Houzz.com and architects Bud Dietrich, Jane Frederick and Stuart Narofsky.  You can find the link to the complete presentation here.

“One of the biggest challenges for residential architects today is working with clients who are more empowered than ever ─ empowered about what designs they like, what products they want, and what they know about your firm before they even sit down to discuss their project. Given this, residential architects can stay one step ahead by managing their web presence to tell their story as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

Surprise!

Hidden in the shadow of the wonderful Alcoa Building, by SOM, is a delightful little creature..

NOW  NEXT  FUTURE

Update:

The conference was a tremendous success.  The Pecha Kucha format served to bombard us with fascinating information, and left most of us hungry for more. This Conference will become a yearly one, complementing the Monterey Design Conference.  We hope to see you next year.

Transform Your Business with Ideas on

INTEGRATION + FABRICATION + SOCIAL-MEDIA

Why Should You Attend? Technologies are evolving at unprecedented rates. How can you leverage technology to further design? How do you sort through the plethora of new resources and choose the best for your company and your clients? New hardware, software, and online tools are entering the market faster than you can pull out your iPad. This conference will help you weed thru the clutter, learn about costs and benefits of various tools, and discover ways to embed them into your business and design processes.

Attend this conference and you will

• learn what others are doing NOW
• hear expert opinions about what’s NEXT from architects and respected leaders in the industry
• experience/see what’s coming in the FUTURE in new technologies at the exposition

Embrace the shift in the profession and further design with technology! This Conference on November 3 will not only help you stay current as you continue to deliver designs that help solve issues facing clients, communities and the world, but show you what’s on the horizon. Bring your mobile devices and tablets and get ready to gain insight, education and experience!

PLUS! TECHNOLOGY BOOTCAMP – GIVING YOUR DESIGN METHODS A JOLT OF TECHNOLOGY

Join us a day early for the Technology Bootcamp Friday, November 2. Bring your laptop or mobile devices and get ready for hands-on training with team-members from the Bay Area Young Architects. This event is a MUST if you want to finally understand WHY social media is a “real” and effective way to promote your firm, and HOW to enter the online conversation.

Friday, November 2, 2012
Technology Bootcamp

3:00 pm – 4:00 pm Opening Speaker and Overview

4:00 pm – 7:00 pm Hands-on Technology Training supported by BAYA

AIA San Francisco
130 Sutter Street, Suite 600
San Francisco, CA 94104

Saturday, November 3, 2012
Now Next Future Conference
9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Pecha Kucha and Blue Sky Educational Content and Expo

UCSF Mission Bay
Fisher Banquet Room
1675 Owens Street, Suite 251
San Francisco, CA 94143

Winner: Open Architecture Challenge: [UN]RESTRICTED ACCESS 2011

Here is the information:

“The Competition

____________________________________________________

Architects, Designers, Builders and others in the  Bay Area Design Community, You are invited to the OPEN HOUZZ event this September 11, at 2299 Alameda Street, San Francisco, CA.

Houzz Vice President Liza Hausman will share the results of a new Houzz study on building, remodeling and decorating from the homeowner’s perspective.

Hors d’oeuvres and libations will be provided. I hope to see you there!