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For the Los Angeles area neighborhoods devastated by January’s wildfires, rebuilding is a question of how, not if. A new effort involving 40 architecture firms from L.A. and beyond aims to broaden the scope of what that rebuilding looks like. Case Study 2.0 is a model home design program that is creating a catalog of preapproved and deeply discounted house plans for fire victims in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods. Combining the quality of custom design with the speed and affordability of mass production, the designs are intended to be easily permitted, quick to build, relatively affordable and, just as importantly, beautiful. Xenia Projects [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] This effort was launched in February by Crest Real Estate, a land-use-consulting and permit-expediting company that works with architects, developers, and municipalities to get development projects approved for construction. Third-generation Angeleno Steven Somers, who founded Crest with his brother, Jason, 13 years ago, says that once the fires broke, he knew the company was obligated to do something to help in the eventual recovery. “We’re in a position where we understand the next steps,” Somers says. Emre Arolat Architecture [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] To expedite the rebuilding process, Crest recruited 40 top architecture firms from L.A. and beyond to develop more than 50 fire-resilient home designs that can be quickly approved for construction permits. The homes range from Spanish Colonials and compact bungalows to minimalist ranch-style single-story homes and modernist spectacles with sculptural rooflines. Designed to meet the parameters of the eight most common lots in the fire-affected areas, these house plans are contemporary in design but intended to be built in multiples rather than as one-offs. Tracy Stone [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] The architects have agreed to make their plans available to fire victims for $25 per square foot, which, depending on the firm, is just 25% to 35% of what they’d usually charge for architectural services. And once each design goes through the initial approvals process with either the city or county, it will take less than half the usual amount of time to get any additional build of that design permitted. “The question we were asking was how do you rebuild 100 years of character over the next five years?” Somers says. “People are really concerned that what gets built back feels like a tract development and doesn’t have the unique variation from lot to lot that made these communities entirely unique.” Solkatt [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] A historical precedent This effort was inspired by the postwar-era Case Study House Program, which sought to meet the booming demand for housing in the 1940s and ’50s by commissioning architecture firms to design replicable modern homes for the L.A. region. The resulting houses are now regarded as icons of mid-century modern design, but they didn’t achieve their intended scale. Stahl House: Case Study House #22 [Photo: kjmagnuson/Flickr] “Today we have a similarly urgent need for thousands of units of housing to be built. We want that to be done beautifully, just like the first Case Study House Program, but it must be done economically,” Somers says. “That’s where we feel like we’re picking up the baton.” Grant Kirkpatrick is founding principal of L.A.-based KAA Design, and he worked with Somers as Crest was developing the idea for the Case Study 2.0 program. “As someone who has worked in the hillsides of Los Angeles for over 35 yearsand has seen more than a dozen of our projects lost to fireI feel a deep responsibility to be part of the solution,” Kirkpatrick says. “We see this as an opportunity to help reimagine whats possible after lossnot only to restore homes, but to restore hope.” Marmol Radziner [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] Somers says the program cuts the cost of rebuilding in several ways. First is the discount on the designs offered by all the participating architects, including Morphosis, Marmol Radziner, and Tighe Architecture. Second is a range of 15% to 30% discounts offered by partner companies on building materials including doors, windows, roof tiles, and exterior cladding. There’s also the reduced overall cost that comes from having plans that are already preapproved. Morphosis [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] Once the first iteration of a design goes through that four-to-six month permitting process, Somers says each subsequent use of that design should be approved in just two months. And if the same contractor is used to build each iteration of a design, there are likely to be further cost and time savings. “They’re going to start to really create almost an assembly line process,” he says. Solkatt [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] All this combines to reduce the cost of building a nearly custom contemporary home by 20% to 35%, Somers says. In L.A., that could translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The goal, Somers says, is for the houses to be built for between $600 and $800 per square foot. That translates to between $1.2 million and $1.8 million for a 2,000 square foot house, which is more than the $970,000 cost of the average home in the city of L.A., according to Zillow. For the affluent residents of the Pacific Palisades, the cost may be more manageable than for the middle class residents of Altadena. The homes offered through this program are not the cheapest option on the market, nor are they intended to be. “The real goal here is giving homeowners an option to rebuild something beautiful and that they’re really excited about, but that can cost less than what a typical one-off custom home would cost to build,” Somers says. The program is still in its early phases, and none of the designs in the catalog has gotten to the point of going up for official city or county approval. But Somers says multiple architects are currently working with clients to pursue rebuilding through the program. “I’m absolutely confident that some of these homes will be built,” he says. “Whether that’s 10 homes or 250 homes remains to be seen.”
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With more and more people moving to urban areas, there’s an ever-growing need for people who can think at the scale of a city in order to solve problems. Experts in urban design are very much in demand. Fast Company’s new analysis of job listings across several design disciplines puts a number on it: job postings for urban designers are up 102% compared to the previous year. This boom may reflect the increasing relevance of the kind of work urban designers do, which is to create functioning communities and regions. Spanning architecture, city planning, landscape architecture, and urban development, urban design takes in the whole picture of a city and looks for ways that interventions at all scales can improve the system. “It’s really a field of integration,” says Tyler Patrick, chair of the planning and urban design department at Sasaki, a large multidisciplinary design firm. Patrick says that Sasaki has been hiring more and more urban designers every year, and including their input on nearly every project. “It’s a field that continues to add a lot of value.” Part of rise in demand for urban designers may stem from the fact that the way cities operate is inseparable from the issues of the day. From sustainability to community health to economic development, some of society’s biggest challenges canand perhaps mustbe addressed at the urban level. “Every project we go into we try to understand, How does this fit into the system? How does it change the system?” says Nick Leahy, co-CEO of the design firm Perkins Eastman. Urban designers are typically trained to use sophisticated data analysis tools, including geographic information systems (GIS) and site planning software like Autodesk Forma. These programs and visualization tools help to quantify the ways design decisions play out at the level of a city system. Leahy says this type of analysis is increasingly critical in projects, whether it’s a 2,000-acre plan in Mumbai or the redevelopment of a key parcel in a city’s downtown. And there’s plenty of work to do. Kris Krider, chair of the urban design and preservation division of the American Planning Association, says that the rise in urban design job postings is not surprising, especially in the U.S. “We’re looking at a lot of redevelopment within our existing cities and our communities, and it gets complicated pretty quick,” Krider says. Urban designers, who are skilled in interdisciplinary thinking, are well suited to this messy job, able to weave new elements into the fabric of a living city. “This is not a greenfield site where you can design the perfect town square,” Krider says, using an industry term for undeveloped land. “You’ve got to fix stuff.” The increased demand is likely to continue, especially given trends in American cities to try to move away from the car-centric planning of the past, and to make even suburban areas more vibrant, walkable, and livable. It would be hard to argue that most communities in the U.S. yet check all those boxes. That’s part of the reason, he says, that this type of designer can expect job security. “Urban designers never run out of work to do because there are so many mistakes to correct.” This article is part of Fast Companys continuing coverage of where the design jobs are, including this years comprehensive analysis of 170,000 job listings.
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This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. Wes Lowe uses so much Claritin that he started an Amazon subscription to avoid running out. His kids take two asthma medications. This reflects the normalcy of pollution in Californias San Joaquin Valley, where residents breathe some of the dirtiest air in the nation. Lowe lives about 20 miles outside of Fresno, in the valleys heart. More than a dozen highways, including Interstate 5, run through the region, carrying almost half of the states truck traffic. The sky is usually hazy, the air often deemed hazardous, and 1 in 6 children live with asthma. You dont realize how bad it is until you leave, Lowe said. He understands Californias urgent need to clear the air by electrifying the trucking industry and pushing older, more polluting machinery off the road. That would reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 17.1 tons annually by 2037, significantly reduce the amount of smog-forming ozone,and go a long way toward meeting federal air quality requirements. But as a partner at Kingsburg Truck Center, a dealership in Kingsburg, hes seen how difficult this transition will be. More than 15 percent of medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold statewide in 2023 were zero-emission. But the road has been bumpy amid growing uncertainty about Californias regulations and the Trump administrations hostility toward electric vehicles, the clean energy transition, and the states climate policies. The Golden State started its trucking transition in 2021 when it required manufacturers to produce an increasing number of zero-emission big rigs, known as Advanced Clean Trucks, or ACT. The following year, it mandated that private and public fleets buy only those machines by 2036, establishing what are called Advanced Clean Fleets, or ACF. The Environmental Protection Agency granted the waiver California needed to adopt ACT in 2023. But it had not acted on the exemption required to enforce ACF by the time President Donald Trump took office, prompting the state to rescind its application as a strategic move to keep options on the table, according to the California Air Resources Board. The U.S. Senate threw the fate of the Advanced Clean Trucks rule into question when it revoked the states EPA waiver on May 22, stripping the state of its ability to mandate the electrification of private fleets, though it can still regulate public ones. Now the one bright side for the states efforts to clean up trucking is the Clean Trucks Partnership, under which several manufacturers have already agreed to produce zero-emission rigs regardless of any federal challenges. All of this limits Californias ability to ease pollution. The Air Resources Board has said the Advanced Clean Fleet rule would eliminate 5.9 tons of nitrogen oxide emissions in the San Joaquin Valley by 2037. Another rule, the In-Use Locomotive regulation, bans internal combustion trucks more than 23 years old by 2030 and would reduce those emissions by another 11.2 tons. Even with those rules in place, the state would have to cut another 6.3 tons to bring air quality in line with EPA rules. With the fate of Californias campaign to decarbonize trucking in question, even those who want to see it succeed are wavering. Kingsburg Truck Center started selling battery electric trucks in 2022, but saw customers begin to cancel orders once the state was unable to enforce the Advanced Clean Fleet requirement. Lowe has had to lay off seven people as a result. We got heavy into the EV side, and when the mandate goes away, Im like, Shit, am I gonna be stuck with all these trucks? Lowe said. If I were to do it all again, Id probably take a lot less risk on the investment that we made into the zero-emission space. California remains committed to cleaning up trucking. But the transition will require creative policymaking because the Trump administrations hostility to the idea makes it extremely difficult for the state to hit its goal of 100 percent zero-emission truck sales by 2036, said Guillermo Ortiz of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Still, he sees ways the state can make progress. Lawmakers are considering a bill that would give the Air Resources Board authority to regulate ports, rail yards, and warehouses. That would allow regulators to mandate strategies to advance the transition, like requiring facilities to install charging infrastructure. Several state programs underwrite some of the cost of electric trucks, which can cost about $435,000about three times the price of a diesel rig. Thats not to say California isnt fighting back. It plans to sue the Trump administration to preserve its right to set emissions standards. Losing that will make it impossible to ease the Valleys pollution enough to meet air quality standards, said Craig Segall, a former deputy executive director of the Air Resources Board. Advanced Clean Fleets and Advanced Clean Trucks arise out of some pretty hard math regarding whats true about air pollution in the Central Valley and in California, which is that its always been largely a car and truck problem, he said. Even if the state loses the ability to regulate vehicle emissions and require electrification, Segall is confident market forces will push the transition forward. As China continues investing in the technology and developing electric big rigs, he said, companies throughout the rest of the world will need to do the same to stay competitive. He also said that trucking companies will see zero-emission trucks as an opportunity to lower maintenance and fueling costs. The Frito Lay factory in the Central Valley city of Modesto has purchased 15 Tesla electric big rigs. Ultimately, the economic argument for ditching diesels is simply too appealing, said Marissa Campbell, the cofounder of Mitra EV, a Los Angeles company that helps businesses electrify. She said the states decision to table the Advanced Clean Fleets rule hasnt hurt business. No one likes being told what to do, she said. But when you show a plumber or solar installer how they can save 30 to 50 prcent on fuel and maintenanceand sometimes even moretheyre all ears. Valerie Thorsen leads the San Joaquin Valley office of CalSTART, a nonprofit that has, since 1992, pushed for cleaner transportation to address pollution and climate change. She sees the Trump administrations recalcitrance as nothing more than a hurdle on the road to an inevitable transition. But any effort to ditch diesels must be accompanied by an aggressive push to build charging infrastructure. You dont want to have vehicles you cant charge or fuel, she said. The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District won a $56 million federal grant in January 2024, to build two solar-powered EV charging sites along Interstate 5 with 102 chargers specifically for big rigs. About 45 percent of Californias truck traffic passes through the region, which has, over the past 25 years, eased nitrogen oxide emission from stationary sources by more than 90 percent. A majority of the remaining [nitrogen oxide] emissions and smog-forming emissions in the valley come from heavy duty trucks, said Todd DeYoung, director of grants and incentives at the district. The Trump administration quickly halted grant programs like the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program that would have expanded charging infrastructure. But DeYoung remains confident that construction of the truck chargers will proceed because work started almost immediately. Similar projects are underway in Bakersfield and Kettleman City. Not everyone is convinced the infrastructure needs to roll out as quickly as the trucks. Ortiz said emphasizing the adoption of the trucks will pressure the market to ensure chargers come online. That sends a signal to charging infrastructure providers, to utilities, saying, These vehicles are coming, and we need to make sure that the infrastructure is there to support it, he said. That support is crucial. Bill Hall is new to trucking. He spent decades as a marine engineer, but during the pandemic decided to try something new. He runs a one-man operation in Berkeley, California, and as he carried loads around the state he noticed a lot of hydrogen stations. Intrigued, he reached out to truck manufacturer Nikola to ask about its electric hydrogen fuel cell rigs. His engineering background impressed the startup, which thought hed provide good technical feedback. Hall bought the first truck the company sold in California, augmenting his personal investment of $124,000 with $360,000 he received from a state program in December 2023. Despite a few initial bugs, he enjoyed driving it. As an early adopter, Nikola gave him a deal on hydrogen$5.50 per kilogram, which let him fill up for about $385 and go about 400 miles. I proved that you could actually pretty much take that hydrogen truck to any corner of California with a minimal hydrogen distribution system that they had, Hall said. But weak sales, poor management, and other woes led Nikola to file for bankruptcy in February. Without its technical support, Hall no longer feels comfortable driving his truck. The companys collapse also meant paying full price for hydrogen, about $33 per kilogram these days. Hall is still paying $1,000 a month for insurance and $225 a month for parking. He says the state shares some of the blame for his predicament because it didnt do enough to support the technology. He would have liked to see it distribute 1,000 hydrogen trucks to establish them and subsidize fuel costs. I did the right thing, which ended up being the wrong thing, he said. Beyond the obvious climate implications of ditching diesel lie many health benefits. In addition to generating a lot of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, the transportation sector is responsible for 80 percent of Californias ozone-forming emissions. Theres no question that the transition away from combustion trucks to zero-emission would save lives, prevent asthma attacks, and generate significant, significant public health benefits all around the state, said Will Barrett, senior director for nationwide clean air advocacy with the American Lung Association. The state has come a long way in the decades since smog blanketed Los Angeles, and the San Joaquin Valley has enjoyed progressively cleaner air over the past 25 years. But people like Luis Mendez Gomez know there is more work to be done, even if the air no longer smells like burning tires. He has lived alongside a busy highway and not far from a refinery outside of Bakersfield for 40 years. It has taken a toll: His wife was hospitalized for lung disease earlier this year, and he knows 10 people who have died from lung cancer. This pollution has been going on for years, Mendez Gomez said. Nobody had cared before, until now. Were pushing the government and pushing companies to help us. But just when it looks like things might change, the federal government appears willing to undo that progress, he said. All the ground they gained is going to go away. Benton Graham This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/california-rolls-on-with-electric-trucks-despite-trumps-roadblocks/.Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
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