The TCU Sustainable Futures Group is sponsoring a conference called “Urban Futures: Utilizing Green Technologies” this Thursday from 4PM until 7:30PM at the Omni Hotel in downtown Fort Worth.
Registration is $50 at the door, or $35 if you register online in advance. TCU students are now going to be allowed in for free, but Faculty and Staff will be charged $15.
Admission gets you free valet parking for your Prius (or your F350 Super Duty), beverages, and hors d’ oeuvres. There will be a cash bar, so if you want to get green around the gills while talking green tech, bring a grip of green. (I’M SO SICK OF “GREEN” EVERYTHING!)
Ever since the USGBC introduced the LEED standard for green building, there have been naysayers and skeptics.
First it was the builders and real estate developers who said that people didn’t care about all that “green” BS, they just wanted the least expensive building they could get. (Or, conversely, the most building they could get for the least amount of money.)
More recently there have been catcalls from the traditionalist movement that green buildings are ugly and therefore inherently unsustainable because they’re “unlovable.” (I wonder how you quantify lovability?)
Now that “green” has become mainstream, the loudest complaints about LEED are coming from people who say that it doesn’t go far enough, or that it’s just a marketing tool or system for racking up points based on the unconsidered application of “gizmo green” technology.
I’m more bothered by the latter groups than the former. While it’s good that there be healthy debate and I’m all for criticism of LEED on the basis that it is too easy to game or that its standards are too vague, I wonder if this kind of scorched-Earth dismissal of LEED isn’t more harmful to the sustainability movement than its intended target.
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Just in case you were wondering, you CAN build a sustainable home that anyone looking at it would immediately identify as a HOUSE. Have you ever noticed that kids always draw the same thing when you ask them to draw a house, no matter where they grew up? Peaked roof, two rectangular windows in the front, maybe a dormer or two…
I’ve never seen a kid draw Fallingwater when asked to draw a house. 
Not that there’s anything wrong with a modern house, believe me, I LOVE modern houses, particularly of the mid-century flavor, but I think this one is a good response for those neighborhoods where a more modern shaped house wouldn’t be a good fit.
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