selophane.blog

Architect as … data security victim

As the news of the Equifax Data breach trickles out and I find myself once again worrying about my own personal data, there’s something that’s really been bothering me about the latest breach. Unlike other other breaches, you cannot opt in or out of Equifax’s credit reporting services. If you have a social security number and any form of utility service, bank account, credit card, loan or do anything else that is not cash based then your identity is in their system. This is on par with the IRS or the social security system being hacked.

Now I’m not even going to start discussing whether the credit agencies have too much power, if they should exist, or if they should be nationalized. That’s a completely different discussion and doesn’t address the issue at hand. On the same hand, I’m also not going to discuss the insider trading that appears to have occurred, that’s already a crime and should be dealt with.

What we should be discussing is culpability. It seems like the media spin has been how can you, the victim, protect yourself now that your data is compromised. What about the company that has been breached? Why aren’t we talking about their failure to protect our data? As our data becomes more and more valuable and it’s protection integral into our daily existence, shouldn’t there be some incentives for companies to protect it? Or rather, if you consider protecting our data the level of “reasonable care” that the “average company” should provide, shouldn’t their be some penalties when they don’t?

We should be talking about criminal negligence and a class action lawsuit. As a licensed Architect, if I failed to protect my client’s health, safety, and welfare as well as their financial interests I can be sued for negligence. If that breach was severe enough it could be criminal instead of civil. The basic test is what is the reasonable level of care that the average Architect would provide. While financial services and data protection isn’t a licensed profession currently (maybe it should be) there should at least be a level of public trust that a company will protect your sensitive data when you or someone else provides it to them.

I think we can all agree that regardless of whether it’s currently legally required, companies that deal with sensitive personal information (social security number, bio data, and other data that can be used to steal someone’s identity) should be held to some level of responsibility for protecting that data. Equifax has failed to do this and has exposed millions to identity theft through no fault of the victims, and so far have offered a new culpa and a year of credit monitoring services. That’s rediculous, that’s somewhere around $150 per person in compensation and after a year they are on the hook, that’s about $210 Million but I bet there’s a volume discount; that’s not a small number but ridiculous compared to the impact. Identity theft costs people on average about $5000 per incident, at 143 million people, that’s a potential $7 Billion in damages. Also, it’s not the first time Equifax had had a major data breach, this Forbes article goes into more depth on their past breaches and Equifax’s systematic disregard for data security.

It’s not like people can vote with their feet and choose not to use Equifax in the future, like other companies, so they really have no incentive to make sure this doesn’t happen again. In fact, even after past civil lawsuits they still are not taking security seriously, and you can bet they are not alone. It’s time we made this type of negligence a crime.

A Big Push and a Big Life Update

The blog archive is back, and I talk about where the last 9 years have taken me in really broad strokes.

So, back in October 2016 I took a long hard look at this blog and pulled it back off the shelf.

I rearranged some stuff, removed other things and generally updated the look. In the process that broke a lot of my old posts. As I wrote in Rebirth/Reinvention at that time I took a lot of the old posts and made them private. Over the course of the last almost year (11 months) I have been slowly fixing the old posts and making them public again. This process took a lot longer than it probably should, but today I decided that I just wanted to done. So I pushed through editing the remaining 160 posts and in that process I read a lot of what I wrote during 2008 to 2010, and not all of it made its way back into the blog.

160 posts is a lot of introspection, let me tell you.

I’ve been using this site lately as a means of pushing out some of the big ideas that I feel need a more formal space than a Facebook or LinkedIn post. One of the things that struck me as I was finishing the blog housecleaning is how it’s been 9 years since I was laid off as a part of the recession. In that time I’ve:

earned my license
worked for three different companies
opened and closed my own small design firm
became involved in AIA Northern Virginia and AIA Virginia and continue to serve on the boards of both organizations
got married to my husband
started a fiber business with my husband curating and dying yarn, spinning fiber, and related products – The The Fiberists, LLC/li>
was diagnosed with adult onset diabetes and made some drastic life changes to improve my health
and as of this past March, been laid off again

This puts things into an interesting perspective. These all seem like really big things, yet I’m back at a place not unlike where I was 9 years ago. I’m unemployed and have been for a long time; there doesn’t seem to be work in my field in my area for people with my range of experience currently. I’m trying to survive on a shoe string budget: I’m sharing a car, so while I am more mature and experience than in 2009, I feel less independent because everything revolves around when I will be able to run errands or otherwise. I’ve been writing a number of longer form posts on facebook which may make their way here at some point. I’m also dedicating most of my non-job search time to working on my fiber business, which I love, but is not at a place where it can support me as a full time job. Take all of that together and add in that I’m once again wondering if there is a place for me in Architecture and it really feels like deja-vu. The setting and characters have changed, but the themes are the same.

I’m not promising regular posts at this time, because we know how well that always turns out, but I find that I process things better when I write. So, I’m hoping over the foreseeable future to come back more regularly to this digital space and work through some of my career/life issues.

Architect as … cultural healer

There’s been a lot of media attention on New Orleans and the removal of statues honoring the confederacy and notable confederates. This article from CNN talks a bit about it. It’s amazing that removal of a single statue can have such a strong personal impact on me when I’m so far away.

View of New Orleans from the Marigny Docks

I applaud the city of New Orleans for taking a proactive step to try to heal the scars of slavery and all of the horrors that came after the “peculiar institution” came to an end, if only in name. As a Jew, to get close to the feelings that African Americans feel, I have to imagine living and operating daily in a world with statues to nazis. And the thing is, the nazi’s only directly terrorized and killed a single generation (and all their future generations that were snuffed out before they started). Imagine if the Nazi’s had ruled for 400 years and what kind of cultural baggage we would have.

The closest parallel to the confederate monuments I have personally and locally is Ronald Reagan National Airport here in Northern Virginia. I refuse to call it by its current name: I call it “National.” I do this not because of his politics or economic policy, but because his administration looked the other way while an entire generation of my gay forefathers died in a plague. They refused to act because HIV and AIDS were happening to ‘those people’ and it was ‘icky.’ This was negligent, but it wasn’t willful. They didn’t give gay people (and transfusion cases, the African American community, drug users, and others) HIV, but they didn’t do anything to stop it. And for that I can’t bring myself to say the official name of “National Airport.” I imagine if it had been intentional and gone on for hundreds of years and maybe I can start to understand what the African American community feels about confederate statues and memorials.

For that reason I feel like this is literally the least that should be done. I’m not saying we should erase the confederacy from the history of the south, but we should be looking to how Germany teaches its history. We need to remember that ‘nice people’ do horrible things to other people when profit can be made, whether it’s the south and slavery (and the rest of the triangle trade) or the whole country’s treatment of the Native American nations. That’s said, remembering history does not mean honoring those who perpetuated the horror. It’s not disrespectful to the dead, who were literally traitors to the union, it’s doing something to set right the scales of history. They had over a hundred and fifty years of being honored and remembered. It’s time to start setting things right.

So, set that all of that to the side. In another part of my brain I’m sad. It’s just another reminder that my city is not the city I left; that time moves on and things are constantly changing. Will I miss it being “Lee Circle?” Yes, I will. But that’s ok. Being an adult is being ok with things changing, especially if it’s for the right reason.

View of Gibson Hall of Tulane University from Audubon Park

A third side of this came up just this week while I was writing this response. It has been suggested that my Alma Matter, Tulane University, change its name as a part of these changes. As you learn on any tour of the school, the University, which was originally the publicly funded Louisiana College of Medicine, became a private school and was renamed in honor of Paul Tulane after he made a sizeable endowment to the school in 1882. What you don’t typically learn on any tour of the school is that Paul Tulane was also the largest donor to the Confederacy in New Orleans. This raises some deep questions about the suitability of the name.

Should his funding of the confederacy be honored? No, it should be condemned. Should his endowing a school with enough funding to be self sufficient and become a seat of higher learning be honored? Yes, it should be celebrated. I feel like the answer to this comes down to intent. The issue is clear cut for me on Confederate memorials because the intent of the memorial is to honor the leader of the confederacy, but its murkier on the name of Tulane University. The intent of the school’s name is to honor the endowment by Paul Tulane, not his actions which helped prop up the confederacy. Nevertheless, he did do that and there is an unavoidable link there. Furthermore, his endowment was made after about 17 years after the end of the civil war, and might be seen as a way of making amends for his support of the Confederacy. Then there are the logistical issues, if the school were to change names, how would that even work? Would they need to send new diploma’s and transcripts to all alumni? And how would that affect their overall brand? Maybe the university should resurrect the Newcomb name and change from Tulane University to Newcomb University?

Personally, I think a name change is not warranted, since the name is meant to honor the endowment not Paul Tulane’s role in supporting the confederacy. That said, I think the university needs to use this as a teachable moment and show that even those who do great deeds in service of the common good can also do great harm. At the very least they should start making it common knowledge that University’s namesake was also a supporter of the Confederacy and a complicated man.

Architect as … Political Thinker

To my friends who are suggesting we get rid of the electoral college. I get it, you are pissed. I’m pissed. This sucks for me and it sucks for you, that said, we shouldn’t dismantle the machine just because we didn’t win. The electoral college plays a valuable role in the checks and balances of our federal government.

But before we can talk about that we need to talk about our government for a bit. We like to think of ourselves as one country. But when the constitution was written, people thought of themselves as citizens of their state first, if they even though of themselves as “American” and not “British,” and our country second. Because of this, our system is pretty much created as if we were a federation of independent but united nation states with an overarching representative government that represents states interests and the interest of the people.

Most of us when we hear that phrase “checks and balances” think of two very specific processes – the presidential veto and potential congressional override and judicial review (the courts declaring a law unconstitutional). What most people don’t realize is that almost all processes put in place by the constitution have a system of checks and balances. A lot of these are not between branches but between the people and the states.

What do I mean by that? Well our government while it is “of, by and for the people” it really is a balance of citizens and states interests.
Take congress. The system is meant to check the will of the people against the will of the states. The House of Representatives is directly elected by congressional districts that are all supposed to represent a similar number of people. This means that each member is a representative of the their specific constituents, which, in theory means that they are beholden to the will of the people. Think of them as the representatives of the citizens of the United States.

The senate on the other hand is different. Each state gets two senators. Originally these were chosen by the state governments. This was supposed to represent the issues of the state and not necessarily its people. Now they are also directly elected, but they represent the whole state, so they have a wider focus. Think of them as the Representatives of the member states of the United States.

Keeping those parallels in mind, in our congress we have a built in balance between the people (the house) versus the member states of the United States (the senate).
There are certain powers that only the people (the house) have: money bills must start in the house, the house impeaches, and the house elects the president in a tie. On the other hand, the states (the Senate) have their own powers: treaties are ratified by the senate, appointments like Supreme Court justices are approved by the senate, the senate holds impeachment hearings, and the senate elects the Vice President in a tie. All of this is a way to check the will of the people against the will of the member states.

The electoral college system is not actually name checked in the constitution.
What Article II section 1 states is:

Section 1. The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

To parse this down, basically it says the President and Vice President hold 4 year terms. They are elected by a number of electors that are equal to each state’s senators and representatives in Congress, but not by the senators or representatives. This left the matter of choosing electors to each state.

This section of the constitution was amended a number of times, first to specify that electors voted for a president and a Vice President separately and that the winner of the electoral college needs a majority, not just a plurality, and if there isn’t a majority then the congress will select the winners. It was then amended a number of times to clarify specifics of presidential succession, term limits, qualifications and voting ages. But, the selection of electors has not been addressed since.
So, what does this have to do with checks and balances? Well, first, since electors are apportioned by representation it balances the interests of urban versus rural states in the number of electors for the states. The more populated states have a lesser say than if it was a popular vote, which is the system they would prefer, and the less populated states have a greater say than they would in a popular vote and a much reduced voice if it had been a vote with each state’s selection of president carrying the same weight, which is what they would prefer. So it is a compromise of the state’s desires.

The second thing it does is provide an avenue for no clear winner to be elected. By making the system possible for no one to win it allows the representatives of the people to select the president from the top three candidates and the senators (representative of the states) to select the Vice President from the top three vice presidential nominees. This is a check against the state’s by making the voice of the people select the office with any real power and a check against the executive branch by having the legislative branch choose the top office holders.

By allowing states to decide how electors are chosen the system provides an opening for the people to have a greater say. Currently most states have a statewide election where the winner of the popular vote in the state gets all of the electors. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Two states divide up their votes. In both of these states, the winner of the popular vote gets the equivalent of the two senate seats and then each House of Representatives district is apportioned by its own popular vote winner. These are not the only options out there. States could divide all votes between all candidates (proportional voting) or, as some people have suggested, they can assign their votes to the winner of the popular vote.

Each of these systems has problems. The current system has the potential for the popular vote winner to lose the electoral college (which has now occurred 5 times: John Quincy Adam, Rutherford B Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, George W. Bush and now Donal Trump). In the split vote system used by two states there is the issue that excessive gerrymandering of districts will result in state winner who lose the state popular vote. In a proportional system there is a greater chance that no one will win a majority and instead congress will have to decide. And lastly in a national popular vote we lose the compromise between rural and urban America.

So, do I think the electoral college needs to stay as it is? No. I think there are issues and it will need to be resolved with a number of changes. One of these issues is that we stopped using one of the checks and balances in the constitution.

Previously after each census in addition to reapportioning seats in the House of Representatives there were seats added to congress to account for the growth in population and creation of new states. From 1789 to 1843 the ratio of people per representative grew in size with each census, but the growth was small for less than 30k to just under 50k. There was a gradual increase in constituents per representative until the 20th century (from under 50K to 210k in 1923). Since that time the size of congress has been capped. What that means is that as of the last census there are now over 700k constituents to each representative. So, how does this play out? Well in the House of Representatives it means the smallest state, Wyoming, with a current population of just under 568,300 actually has a slight edge in the house – it’s one vote represents less people than California’s 37,347,989 constituents with 53 representatives. This doesn’t mean a whole lot in the house, but in the electoral college that means that California’s influence is even less than intended. To put this in real world terms, this is as if a dollar spent buying juice in the house cafe was actually worth $1.23 if the person spending it was from Wyoming but only $0.99 in if they were from California. In the electoral Congress this disparity get worse – $3.70 for Wyoming versus $1.15 for California.

The easiest solution is to add members to the House of Representatives to bring our ratio of people to Representatives back to where it was when the number of seats in the house were capped, 210k. This means we would add approximately 1,036 additional seats to the House of Representatives. Now that’s a lot of people, but we are a much more populated country, so there is some logic there. The problem would be logistics. Our government is just not set up for that many representatives. That’s a lot more offices, a lot more salaries and a lot more physical space for a house chamber.

Alternatively, we could double the number of seats for each state in the house (add 435 additional seats) but instead of having districts these would be statewide at large seats. This could allow us to keep gerrymandered districts (which while skewing the vote, can help to make sure minorities are represented) and mitigate some of their effect by having representatives who are elected by statewide ballot. These seats could be apportioned proportional to party results or they could be an open field where voters select up to the number of seats (choose 5 of the following, for example). To use the example above, a dollar spent buying juice in the house would remain unchanged – each state would have the same buying power, just more seats, like a stock split; it is just that these seats would represent a more diverse set of interests. In the electoral Congress you would see a major shift – down to $2.46 from $3.70 for Wyoming versus $1.01 from $1.15 for California. California’s buying power decreases a little, but Wyoming is now only 2X, not 3X, more influential than California per capita. This would eventually need to be revisited and scaled up again in the future to maintain these levels of equity.

Is this the perfect solution, no, but it’s a good compromise. By increasing the number of seats in congress we make congress a better representation of the people while at the same time making the Electoral College closer to a compromise between Urban and Rural interests. In the process we re-assert an import part of our representative federal system and preserve an equally important check and balance.

Architect as … Convention Goer

After a successful Architecture Exchange 2016 I have a lot to think about how an architecture firm should operate and how it should serve it’s staff and its clients.

I’m sitting in my hotel room in the Richmond Marriott writing this post and thinking back on the past two days of the Architecture Exchange East conference (but on by AIA Virginia and serving the Region of the Virginias).

The Empty stage and a screen showing a slide welcoming the attendees to ArchEx2016 — The stage before the General Session of ArchEx 2016 started

This has been a great conference: I was energized Thursday morning by Rosa Sheng‘s keynote address on Equity in Architecture. She addressed many topics that hit close to home for me. She talked about how the study of the missing 32% was really just a “Canary in the Coal Mine” to indicate the issues that were facing the profession of architecture. She talked a lot about her own experiences and I felt a connection when she mentioned that at one point she was thinking about us leaving the profession when she had her daughter. While I don’t yet have children the reasons she mentioned are very similar to the issues I’ve been dealing with the past year or so – a need to be able to engage at hours outside of core working hours, a need for health accommodations, a need for architects to fight for their worth and negotiate on salary and benefits. She also talked about the value of engaging and enriching work – something I feel like I’ve been lacking for a while.

A slide indicating 5 ways to affect change - 1. Make Connections 2. Embrace Technology 3. Seek, Be, Cultivate Members 4. We are the Champions 5. Build your tribe — 5 ways to affect change

All of this set the tone for the rest of the conference for me. I saw similar themes in this afternoon’s presentation by Carolyn Rickard-Brideau about the Well Standard and Salutogenic Design and how this new certification (currently only for offices) will help to make Architecture that heals us, instead of hurts us. In 2015 I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes, I’ve been working with my doctor as well as a nutritionist to lose weight, be more active and overcome this disease. One of the biggest factors for me in this diseas has and continues to be work. The stress and long hours of my job have played havoc with my blood sugar. The time demands of the job and meetings have made it hard to schedule doctor’s appointments on a regular basis, and when I am able to, there’s a ton of stress that goes with it. When I changed jobs this summer it was with the express purpose of minimizing stress and increasing my ability to get physical activity. Being able to work in an environment that was designed to minimize stress and encourage activity It would be a big step forward in combating a health issue that many Americans face. Tying this point into the earlier keynote, I might not need the flexibility I do right now if my work environment was Salutogenic instead of Pathogenic.

A slide showing 5 ways to hack and affect change - A. Get Curiouser B. What's Next C. Defy Tradition D. Get Scrappy E. Fail Fast, Fail Often — How to “Hack” Architecture

The capstone on the weekend was a closing Keynote by Mickey Jacob, FAIA who talked about elevating our role in leadership. One of the points that stuck home to me was that he mentioned that he is a “digital tourist” and not a “digital native.” This made me realize that the issue at heart right now in architecture is one of “Physical Natives” versus “Digital Natives”. Architects in my generation are digital natives, we look to technology to solve our problems. We time shift our entertainment and expect to be able to do the same with our work. We expect our work to embrace the new technological opportunites that we have already accepted. But the thought and practice leaders are physical natives. They may be skilled at software based design and work practice, but they remember a time before the technological revolution. To them face to face work in the physical realm is sacrosanct. They cannot imagine that any digital solution will be as good as the physical, if not a better solution. Yes, they may have accepted CAD as the new way to draft, but BIM is still just a step too far into digital magic. And, while that is an overexaggeration (there are some young people who are luddites and will only sketch by hand and there are well seasoned professionals that are technophiles and tweet with the best of them) this typifies why we have the issues we are having. Why we are facing the lack of equity and why the demand for it is so jarring to some. We are demanding that the architecture profession catch up to the rest of the business culture. We are having our own culture clash.

So where does that leave me? Well, I’m not making any commitments, but if I do stay in architecture, it means that my 10 year plan needs to think about how best to find a firm or make my own that embraces the “startup” culture and committement to its staff as the future and an investment and not just resources to be spent on acquiring more profits.

Rebirth/Reinvention

In the course of events over the past 8 years, I’ve let this website grow old, dusty and fallow. That’s something I’m not proud of, but it happened.

I’m currently in a period of personal introspection and growth. As such, I’m revisiting this website and everything in it. All my old posts and pages are preserved and archived for the time being. Some may come back, others will stay in cold storage.

Here’s to a new selophane.com, whatever that may be.

The curious case of the LEED lawsuit

I’ve seen a lot of tweets lately about the LEED lawsuit. While I can’t speak to the veracity of the lawsuit’s claims I can and will weigh in on my own personal opinion of LEED and the USGBC.

I think LEED was incredibly important. It was a first step towards a national shift in the way developers, governments and commercial clients think about buildings and performance. Without LEED we might still be living in a world where green and white roofs would still be found mostly in Europe, where dual flush toilets and waterless urinals would be a curiosity found at Epcot but no where else in the USA, and where post-consumer recycled content percentages would still be found only on paper and not listed proudly on the resource webpage for carpets and other finishes. With all of that said, I think we have outgrown LEED.

I’ve seen a lot of tweets lately about the LEED lawsuit (Giffords Vs USGBC). While I can’t speak to the veracity of the lawsuit’s claims I can and will weigh in on my own personal opinion of LEED and the USGBC.

To fully understand the situation with LEED I think its important to see what LEED certification does and does not actually brings to a project.

LEED certification does not guarantee energy efficiency, many of the steps that are involved in LEED design are or should be standards in modern building design. What it does guarantee is a lighter foot print than if nothing environmentally sensitive was done at all. That is to say, a LEED certified building of any level is most likely going to have a better performance than anything built in the International Style; a LEED certified home will be more environmentally sensitive than Phillip Johnson’s glass house, but so would most of the McMansions built today.
Under the LEED v3.0 standard for a building to be LEED certified it must be worked on by a LEED AP; all this guarantees is that someone who has studied and passed the LEED exam has been a part of the design team. It does not guarantee that they are a trained design profession, nor does it guarantee that they led the project.
What LEED really brings to a project is marketability; people who are not in the construction trades will usually infer that a LEED platinum building is more environmentally sensitive than a non-LEED building, when this is not true. All that the LEED platinum certification proves is that specific building meets a set of standards, but NOT that other buildings don’t. This is the reason that many municipalities are opting to include environmentally friendly regulations which require buidlings to meet certain LEED criteria but not actually be LEED certified.
Lastly, the surest thing LEED brings to a project is increased costs. While these costs are minor compared to the overall cost of construction, they can be $.05 a square foot for documentation and application costs alone ¹. If you think that this is minor, consider that the new Pei and Partners building at 1000 Connecticut Avenue, NW is over 380,000 square feet and only 12 stories tall ². This is project is aiming to be LEED Platinum which means that in addition to all of the design costs, this project has had at least additional $19,000 in paperwork costs that have done nothing to improve the environmental footprint of the building.

Where does this leave us? In my opinion we should be phasing LEED out and in its place enacting Green Building Codes, much like California just did. This building codes serve multiple purposes:

It gets a private non-profit out of the regulation business. Currently, many school boards, municipalities and local governments have jumped on the LEED bandwagon and started requiring LEED certification for their buildings. This is just plain wrong. A private company should not be in charge of reguating public buildings. We do not outsource our Fire Protection, ADA enforcement and other Health, Safety and Welfare regulations to private companies to enforce, why should environmental design be any different? Especially since it has been shown that indoor environmental quality has a direct impact on the health of building occupants ³.
It levels the playing field and returns Health, Safety and Welfare issues to state licensed professionals. USGBC requires at least one LEED AP professional to work on a project for it to be considered for LEED certification. This means that many firms cannot bid on a project unless they team with a consultant with a LEED AP staff member. This means that states are requiring people to have a certification that is not provided nor regulated by the state. Furthermore, if you consider this in light of the above point, it means that non-licensed professionals are the ensuring Health, Safety and Welfare of the public. Consider that the LEED AP on the project is not required to hold any specific level of position nor are they required to have any liability if a project fails to meet its design criteria ⁴. By the state regulations, this should be something that is regulated by licensed Architects or Engineers. If LEED was phased out and a Green Building Code put in its place, licensed professionals would be liable to ensure that project designs maintain Health, Safety and Welfare statutes.
Lastly, Green Building Codes would mandate and ensure that we move into the 21st century with a level playing field for buildings. By requiring environmentally friendly design and materials in new construction this would increase demand, increase production and in turn decrease the cost of these materials. This has been seen with CFL lightbulbs and photovoltaic cells, as these become more mainstream their initial costs have decreased and their efficiency has increased so that they products stay relevant in the market, because they are forced to compete on cost instead of just being an ethically beneficial product. The overall effect of this might not solve our environmental issues (an ailing power grid, a lack of water on the West Coast, suburban sprawl) but it would go a long way to mitigating them and preventing them from increasing.

How Much Does LEED certification cost. ↩
Case Study on 1000 Connecticut Avenue ↩
The EPA’s statement on IAQ and health ↩
LEED AP’s under the 3.0 system are required to complete Continuing Education Requirements and those previously accredited were forced to complete additional testing in order to be considered as a LEED AP for the purpose of a project’s certification. ↩

Continuing Education Options

This spring I will be coming up on my first license renewal. One of the daunting things that I’ve come across this past year and a half has been learning about the continuing education system and the varying requirements per state. I’ve put together the following list of links as a resource for anyone looking to find out more about whats required of them and where to get some last minute Continuing Education Units (CEUs).

If you are looking up your required amounts of CEUs there are two options for information

AIA has a chart showing their requirements and the individual state/province requirements
NCARB has a prettier chart, but it doesn’t include the AIA requirements.

That all seems innocent enough, but it can actually be quite confusing, especially if you have multiple licenses. I’ll use my situation as an example. I am licensed in Virginia and Washington, DC. So, AIA requires a minimum of 18 credits annually, 8 of which must be in Health, Safety and Welfare (HSW) certified courses. Virginia requires a minimum of 16 credits over 2 years and no specific HSW requirement. And DC requires a minimum of 24 credits over 2 years, of which all of those minimum hours have to be in HSW certified courses. The requirements to maintain a licenses in good standing over multiple jurisdictions is to satisfy the largest minimum requirement for the smallest amount of time. So my total annual amount of credits would need to be 16 (AIA is 16 per year, Virginia is 16 per 2 years or 8 per year, and DC is 24 per 2 years or 12 per year). For my HSW credits I would need 8 per year, but a total of 24 over two years (AIA is 8 per year, Virginia has no requirement and DC is 24 per 2 years or 12 per year), so to make things easier I am for 12 per year. Now this gets even more difficult if you are licensed in a state, like New York, which will not accept CEUs from certain courses. Plus, there are movements afoot to add Environmental Design credits to the mix of required CEUs.

Something that you should also be aware of is that to my knowledge, no state has an active CEU checking program. The whole CEU process is based on the honor system as far as meeting requirements are concerned. Most states reserve the right to audit your record at any time, so be aware that while you may not have to submit anything proving your CEU record, you should be keeping a log. The easiest way to do this is with the AIA’s transcript system. If you want to check to see if you’ve met your requirements, you need to log into the AIA’s CES Discovery system. From here you can look at your transcript or find classes.

For other sources of CEUS I’ve put together the following list:

AIA Lectures – Check your localchapters
NCARB’s Free Mini Monographs – They are free, but non record holders are charged a $35 fee for the exam
NCARB’s Monographs – These are being discontinued, but are still available for purchase and grading
Architectural Record’s CEU Center – Until recently this was an extensive resource for free CEUs. It remains to be seen how the switch to Architect Magazine as the official magazine of the AIA will affect this resource.
Architect Magazine’s CEU Center – Expect this to develop and be much more robust now that this magazine is being mailed to every AIA member.

If anyone knows of other good resources for CEU’s please comment and I will add them to this list.

Where have I been?

I know that in some cases when most blogs go inactive the authors are out leading incredibly exciting lives and are just too busy to write. Or sometimes the authors are going through a major change of life: moving, getting married, having kids, etc. Maybe the authors have been horribly injured and are stuck in a coma and can’t open their eyes let alone compose a post and source images.

None of these things happened. Here’s what happened:

I ran out of things to say.

It wasn’t that i said everything i had to say, not in the least, its just that I got to a point where i felt that every post needed to be a well crafter article with references and deep thoughts. I forgot that the soul of blogging is that its a conversation, I write and you respond. So I moved to twitter for a bit and posted on there my random thoughts, but eventually that became too much to keep up with. I felt that if i wasn’t actively engaged all of the time I was just a broadcaster and not a part of the conversation, so I stopped using that too, and then both went silent.

Of course, I’ve also been focusing on a bunch of things going on in my life – I started a job in DC a year ago (which I can’t write much about). Before this I had been unemployed for 9 months, during which time I took my licensing exams and passed, making em a licensed architect in Virginia and DC (after filing for reciprocity). The combination of stepping out of the day to day practice of architecture and the end of my internship period coupled with starting my own firm lead to a little bit of blogging withdrawal. I stopped reading local blogs and stopped finding things to have opinions about. Then, this summer I moved into an apartment in DC during the week and continue to live in the burbs on the weekends, this makes my commute manageable instead of a 1.5 hour each way nightmare. My apartment is a shared 2 bedroom + office in Southwest DC, where I have the 7×7 office which is a study in minimal living. Its just large enough for a twin bed, a table a dresser and a chair. I use a folding rice paper screen as a door, which while effective doesn’t really provide privacy. In addition, one of my roommates is my business partner for my architecture firm, studioSML, llc, so I’ve actually gotten a lot more involved in working on that. And lastly, and a future post topic, my sister got married and I designed and built a chuppah (jewish wedding canopy) for her out of Copper plumbing, canvas, and decorative cording.

So, I guess I did get busy, a bit. But I’m back, why? Because I’ve started feeling the need to talk about architectural things again. I won’t make any promises on the regularity of posts, nor the depth and breadth of their examinations. But I’m glad to have refound a reason to blog. ¹

You may notice that the blog looks different; I upgraded wordpress when I came back to the blog which broke the old theme I was using. I still have some tinkering with the site to do to get it where I want it. ↩

Kube Open House

I went to an open house a number of months ago for a new project by KUBE architecture. From the street, this Georgetown home, designed by Janet Bloomberg, seems to be yet another Georgian town house. When you open the door you find yourself transported to a modern space more at home in Los Angeles or manhattan than the 18th century streets of DC’s 2nd ward, yet the starck transition works. It sets you up for a series of well lit rooms that play with the modern trope of compression and release but manage to avoid the pitfall of hyper-glossy surfaces that are too often found in contemporary spaces. Instead Janet has chosen a muted palet of textural elements which alternate between the sheen of brushed metal, the warmth of rich wood veneers and the pleasantly imperfect nature of unglazed ceramics.

The house is anchored by a floating stair whose verticality is emphasized by a curtain of steel cables running from the ground floor to the second story. While an interesting architectural element, the steel cables at times present a bit of a challenge in visual and physical comfort. When I visited the house was very crowded, the steel cables made the narrow kitchen passage feel even tighter. While a wall would have made the situation even worse, an open void may have made this space not nearly as tight. Then again, in a day to day mode, this would never be an issue.

Light plays a big part of this house, Light is brought in through a skylight in the center of the house. Part of it is captured in the bathrooms through the use of a glass baseboard along the bathroom walls to allow subtle lighting in while still maintaining privacy. It should be noted that privacy is also an essential element for the master bathroom whose door is hidden in plain sight amongst the wall panels of the Master Bedroom. Light then filters through the stair cables and into the kitchen and is supplemented by a slim window along the south kitchen wall. The kitchen itself was an interesting mix of two wood tones, stainless steel counter-tops with an integral sink and a bright orange frosted a transparent polymer island top. Finally light filters through a glass panel under the stairs into the large finished basement with a bathroom. This space is nicely lit and could easily be adapted as an extra bedroom or as a guest suite.

The rear wall was a NanaWall like system; when opened it complete disappeared allowing the small rear yard to flow into the house as one living space. Combine this with the mostly concrete back yard and you have a space that easily could be an extension of the living room. The cast concrete backyard has a poetic 3 square feet of grass, which is just large enough to be noticeable, but small enough to be ironic. If there is anywhere where I felt things could be improved it would have to be the rear yard; while I get the statement that is being presented here, I would have loved to see a tree or two worked into the backyard, it felt like a missed opportunity.