Vermont Architect – Robert Swinburne

http://www.ted.com/talks/catherine_mohr_builds_green.html

Environmental Building News has a very thorough article on Passive house system and its relevance in North America. This is a very good and current third party state of the state of the art in energy efficient residential construction. Passive house represents an important step towards a zero energy home and meeting the 2030 challenge:The fossil fuel reduction standard for all new buildings and major renovations shall be increased to:

60% in 2010
70% in 2015
80% in 2020
90% in 2025
Carbon-neutral in 2030 (using no fossil fuel GHG emitting energy to operate)..

The Contest is now over and the top 12 have been chosen to move into the next round. My entry was chosen as an “honorable mention” which I am pleased with. Thank you to all who voted and thank you for all the comments. The comments are especially useful as I plan on putting together a stock plan portfolio in the future including this house or one similar. (the design needs some tweaking)

VOTE !!

This from a few years ago… enjoy!
West West house – a super-insulated hipped roofed and slightly midwestern Vermont farmhouse with amazing stonework, a concrete floored sunporch, a beautiful and minimal timber frame, American Clay stucco interior surfaces, solar hot water and a state of the art TARM wood heating system with oil backup and even a bread oven!

Lots of good passive house stuff on Youtube.
A passive house is being built in Whistler B.C. for the Austrian team and delegation for the 2010 olympics. I am a big fan of Passive House and hope to attend a seminar soon and look into getting certified as a Passive House consultant.

Here is a photo of my office dog Peter Q Puppy taken a few years ago. He is ten years old now and has arthritice from various sports related injuries. he also had surgury for a torn ACL a few years ago (he wiped out on the ice) His ancestry is border collie, greyhound, sheppard…..

My apologies for not posting much recently, overworked and sick kid are my two excuses. Here are some quick model views from a current project. I am developing two schemes for an addition/renovation to a small house, part of which used to be a “sugar shack” (In VT where you make maple syrup in February and March) Here also is a link to my picassa album with some project photos.

Their website is set in a way that I can’t steal images but check out WRB architects in Sweden particularly the “summer house in Trosa”

It just occurred to me that there is a short video which gives some sense of what my barn is like inside and how it is used here on youtube I am leading the parade with my daughter Charlotte.

I now am – license # 31252.
Seemed like a good idea with a current project in MA plus living on the VT/MA border I expect to see more western Massachusetts projects.

Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency
also:
Energy Star
Efficiency Vermont
If you are a builder building an energy star home here is where the government gives you $2000
(why on earth would a builder not utilize the energy star program? )
note to self: Get Steve to write a guest entry about this

link to http://savethepinkbathrooms.com/
which goes with this http://retrorenovation.com/

Sorry about this not very interesting post. I was in Maine visiting family for a week and when I got back I had to go into production mode. I have an old large oak desk out in the barn where I have been working occasional nights and weekends without the distraction of the internet. I am hopelessly behind on the winters wood supply and I haven’t ridden my bike as much as I would like to lately. I could do some mumbling about not getting paid (why do people always want me to work for free?) or I could grumble about square footage (its all relative and americans are really very spoiled) Or about how the banking and real-estate industries work (again square footage – quantity is 10x more important to your bank than quality)
but I won’t.
Lots of my architecture school classmates are under or unemployed so I can’t complain too much.

I stopped by the home of some former clients to look at possibilities for putting in a new floor in the old section of an old house that I designed an addition for.  It is always nice to see ones ideas realized and to have others realize them as well. (if that makes any sense)  This is just a simple little addition that falls under the category of “small town architect”  no earth shattering, new paradigm, poetic, symbolic design work here.  Just basic problem solving to create what is needed.  They are quite happy.

2009 Residential Architect Design Awards

Graduate School

In these days of reconnecting with former classmates via facebook and linkedin I discovered that many of them later went to grad school. Most of us were fried by the time we graduated and there was little if any discussion of more schooling. I have often thought that if I were to go back to school, it would be to study estuarine biology and ecology. Definitely not more architecture. A large part of my practice involves furthering my education (read: un-billable hours) I spend a great deal of time keeping up with the rapidly changing field of residential design. The science is changing on all levels from products and detailing to sustainability and energy use issues to how we as architects actually convey what we design. Many architects and firms have their heads in the sand and follow the models they were taught back in the last century. I think the architects that will emerge at the top in coming years have to be a different breed.

My version of graduate school, in retrospect, was the half-dozen years I spent carpentering after college. It was a good compliment to architecture school and the required internship. At 10 to 13 dollars per hour – no benefits and weather dependant, it also left me rather in debt (similar to graduate school) while my friends started working at larger firms and made much larger salaries.

The new office in the old Cotton Mill has proven to be an asset.  It is a much better place to meet clients than the cafe. It is very quiet and has very few distractions.  The building is filled with industry, artists and dogs but is amazingly peaceful and quiet.  My office is good for one person but may feel tight for two.  the windows are big and face west and north to Mount Wantastiquet.  We (my wife and I) are busy writing a business plan, partly because we need to and partly for the yearly business plan competition put on by the BDCC. it concerns the question of the growth of my business and how to structure that growth.  big scary stuff.

I have been mulling over this subject with a builder friend for a while now and I think I can make my point brief. He is building a very “green” house which is small and pretty and so forth but the cost is astronomical. A simple example of why it is so expensive is that the architect specified clay drain tiles around the foundation instead of PVC. Much more $$. Not that I approve of the use of vinyl – just rent “Blue Vinyl” and you’ll see why – My thought is: would the world be better off if they used the pvc and put the price difference into their town’s fund to help low income folks winterize and add insulation? That seems to me to be so much more environmentally responsible.

I just corrected some links on my website that send people to my blog – (they didn’t)

I added this head shot of me to my blog because a magazine just requested it. I’m gonna be famous!

I tooled around the web and found a few informative sites relating to hiring an architect. Bob Vila.com, eHow, and Contractors.com

Add these to my post “A Good Architect” and it should say about ninety percent of what I would say if left to ramble on for an hour or so. I like potential clients to call people who I have recently worked with to get a sense of what I do. Few people have any idea how involved it can be and why it’s so worth it.