I hope some of our QUEST blog readers were able to attend the West Coast Green conference held September 19-22 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Home Energy magazine is a media sponsor for the event and our staff handed out well over 1,000 magazines, pressed a lot of flesh, and were involved in well over 100 hours of passionate, stimulating, exciting conversation with builders, contractors, architects, homeowners, and others about green home building and renovation. Wow, what a great time! Plus exhibitors there handed out free organic beer and wine, and really great swag like a cool LED flashlight from PG&E. You could sit on a couch made of grass and calculate your total carbon footprint at the PG&E booth.
I found out that Moraga, where I lived before moving to Walnut Creek, is something of a center of residential green building in the Bay Area! There are some very beautiful and sustainable homes in the sleepy town. The Moraga Barn is being renovated into offices and a learning center for a very green-oriented construction company, Canyon Construction. Story goes the barn was once a house of ill repute. Soon it will be showcasing green building technology, which offers its own sensual pleasures.
You know those shipping packages that you see next to 580 on the way to the Bay Bridge heading into the City? You know, the ones that have been piling up ever since our trade deficit with China began to grow? Some crazy architect named Cate Leger, of Leger Wanaselja Architecture, made a house out of some of them! And it is not only beautiful, spacious, and easy to get around in, it will be around through many earthquakes where it's planted in the Richmond Hills--it’s built like a brick shipping container.
There is so much going on in green building--from houses made from shipping containers to LED lights to re-purposed brothels--that make it a good antidote to much gloom and doom in the air these days about our environment. The beer was pretty good too.
Jim Gunshinan is Managing Editor of Home Energy Magazine. He holds an M.S. in Bioengineering from Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, and a Master of Divinity (MDiv) degree from University of Notre Dame.