How Green Was My TEEVEE

Last summer when we vacationed on Cape Cod, we dug The Big Dig whether we wanted to or not, getting in and out of Logan International Airport. Eighteen Billion Dollars! (And still digging!) The original budget was for $4 billions. It set a new standard for pork barreling.

What a comfort, then, to see how Single Speed Design, run by two young Asian American architects (John Hong and Jinhee Park); has found a way to recycle 500 tons of Big Dig discarded steel and concrete--and win Metropolis Magazine’s first visionary competition—its $10,000 Next Generation Design Prize. The instigator of this canny historic recycling was one Paul Pedini, a civil engineer who had been supervising the creation of temporary bridges as the Big Dig dug in. He talked the authorities into letting him save the dismantled bridge elements to be eventually used in experimental housing.

It was an uphill struggle. Strange looking. Used concrete and steel beams? Who would want to live next to such Modernist Monsters. They were at first even turned down by a settlement of Walter Gropius-trained architects who have long relished the tiny Bauhaus inspired settlement, Moon Hill, that they had devised for themselves in Lexington, MA.

But Single Speed Design took Pedini’s challenge, until eventually they slowly sweet talked all those with the power to veto their project to go along. This green wavelet is the focus of one half-hour TV program in a cluster of six under the rubric, Design: E Squared.

Other topics include New York City’s successful program to put grass roofs on Battery City apartment complexes and Chicago Mayor Richard Dailey’s successful campaign to turn the Windy City’s downtown into a stunning green oasis. I walked through Frank Gehry’s sinuous elevated walkway towards Lake Michigan on my last visit there, and believe me, it’s a splendidly sensuous urban experience. It sure ain’t the Chi Town I experienced as a seventeen year old Swabbie at Great Lakes more than sixty years ago. (Who’d thunk old hack Richard Daley’s son would—or could!--turn green?)

Convincing a TV audience complacently used to its structurally Wasteful Way of Life is no easy assignment. But the producers have chosen a mix of informants, like the Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic, the man in charge of environment action at City Hall, local architects, and the editor of Metropolis Magazine.

Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, has appeared in an analogous series for CNN on Energy Efficiency. “We create abundance by design. Saving energy costs less than buying it!”) Lovins has helped Wal-Mart design more energy efficient big boxes. They have also designed a Hypercar which uses carbon materials instead of steel. It’s part of a continuingly engaging CNN TV magazine, “Global Challenges”, which juxtaposes international examples of intelligence in action—a vivid instance of what old guru Marshall McLuhan meant by “global village”.

In this edition of GC, Lovings is juxtaposed with a Thailand defender of the mangrove as a multipurpose solution to local agricultural problems, as well as Tim Smith, a upwardly failed rock star, who, wealthy from his noise generation in his early 30’s, adopted an abandoned Victorian garden in Cornwall, gradually transforming himself into a plant guru who seems to be regenerating not only that neglected garden but an entire sector of impoverished Britain.

His Eden Project, a Giant Geodesic snuggled into an abandoned china clay pit, would have thrilled old Bucky Fuller, plant lover that he was when he wasn’t scheming to reconfigure our architectural conventions. The tactic CNN uses is not to argue rationally but to show visitors enthralled, from gaped-mouthed young students to gabby old geezers. Turning green is not thereby a Puritanical mandate but a giddy adventure. I can just see cranky old Ted Turner grinning in satisfaction. With 99 and 44/100ths of our globe dingy Brown Fields (unlike the advertised Ivory Soap, it is sinking!) we need all the greening we can engender. That TV is finding ways of accelerating the process is hopeful.