blueprintsVolume XXVII, No. 1–2 NATIONAL BUILDING MUSEUM In Between: The Other Pieces of the Green Puzzle in this issue: HEALTHY Communities, GREEN Communities Word s ,Word s ,Word s Winter & Spring 2008/2009 The Lay of the Landscape Annual Report 2008 in this issue... 2 8 13 18 19 21 23 In Between: The Other Pieces of the Green Puzzle The exhibition Green Community calls attention to important aspects of sustainable design and planning that are sometimes overshadowed by eye-catching works of architecture. The environmental implications of transportation systems, public services, recreational spaces, and other elements of infrastructure must be carefully considered in order to create responsible and livable communities. This issue of Blueprints focuses on the broad environmental imperative from the standpoints of public health, urban and town planning, and landscape architecture. Contents Healthy Communities, ! 2 Green Communities M Cardboard Reinvented Physician Howard Frumkin, of the Centers for Disease Cardboard: one person’s trash is another Control and Prevention, brings his diverse expertise as B an internist, an environmental and occupational health N person’s decorative sculpture, pen and pencil expert, and an epidemiologist to bear on the public health holder, vase, bowl, photo and business card holder, above: Beaverton Round, in suburban Portland, Oregon, was built as part of the metropolitan area’s Transit-Oriented Development Program. implications of community design and planning. p Photo courtesy of the American Planning Association and Portland Metro. stress toy, or whatever you can imagine. Bring out your o Creating Sustainable Landscapes creativity with these durable, versatile, eco-friendly LIQUID h CARDBOARD vases that can be transformed into a myriad from the executive director 8 In an interview, landscape architect Len Hopper discusses s his profession’s inherent commitment to sustainability and of shapes for a variety of uses in your home. growing involvement in large-scale planning efforts. Going Greener Still—A New Era for the Museum Available in the Museum Shop Words, Words, Words Prices vary; start at $27.00 Member, Six years ago, the National Building Museum galleries—as the old ones wear out, of course—and enhancing our efforts 13 Paul Farmer, executive director and CEO of the American $30.00 Non-member launched the first in its ongoing series of popular to recycle and reduce waste. Planning Association, reflects on the value of various and influential exhibitions on sustainable design We are now embarking on a new phase in that effort, and this issue sustainable planning initiatives. and planning. Now on view is the latest exhibition of Blueprints represents a beginning and an end in that regard. You will in this series, Green Community, which examines notice, for instance, that in lieu of the glossy, 36-page Annual Report that Museum News the vital but often overlooked elements of the built we have mailed separately in the past, the report for fiscal year 2008 is 17 environment that lie between individual buildings— incorporated in condensed form in this issue, saving a great deal of paper • Robert A.M. Stern Accepts Vincent Scully Prize • The Home Depot Foundation Awards Presentation the infrastructure and landscapes that weave those buildings together and ink, not to mention postage costs. Complements For the Greener Good Program into a cohesive cloth. The exhibition reveals how design professionals But an even bigger change is on the horizon. This is the last issue of • Popular Receptions Mark Opening of Green Community are rethinking our communities to reduce energy consumption, protect Blueprints that will be distributed as a printed magazine. With the next • Festivals Draw Eager Crowds natural habitats, and improve public health. issue, we are moving to online publication. We know that many of you As a complement to these exhibitions, of course, the Museum has will greatly miss receiving a physical copy of Blueprints, but we hope that Development Notes offered numerous lectures, symposia, and other education programs that you will come to look forward to reading the next version electronically. 21 • Donor Profile: American Public Transportation Association have helped to focus the public discussion of green design and planning. After all, it will be the greenest issue ever. • Thanks to Recent Donors Our ongoing series For the Greener Good: Conversations That Will Change the World, for example, poses provocative questions and engages broad Mystery Building audiences in the search for answers. 23 “The Phantom T” But our commitment to sustainability extends beyond our pro- gramming. Thanks in part to a generous grant from The Home Depot insert Annual Report 2008 Foundation, we have been working hard to make our building—and our Chase W. Rynd operations—greener. We are gradually installing green materials in our President and Executive Director Winter & Spring 2008/2009 blueprints 3 Perhaps not. For the last few generations, traditional town planning principles have given way to a pattern known as urban sprawl. With suburban growth, cities have expanded over vast geographic areas. Land-use pat- terns at the urban edge have changed, from traditional farm and forest to residential subdivisions. Land-use mix has declined; housing developments are built far from schools, stores, and workplaces. Land-use density has also declined; some communities can measure land-use in acres per family rather than families per acre. Traditional downtown areas have given way to long stretches of multi-lane roads lined by strip malls and big-box stores, set back on vast parking lagoons. Trans- portation systems have changed as well, with the vast majority of trips—even short ones—made by automo- bile, and with a concomitant drop in walking, bicycling, and transit use. Amenities that were routine in an earlier age—sidewalks, plazas, parks—are too often omitted from recent developments. Revealing Statistics Health professionals love hard evidence. Fortunately, Common sense suggests that parks are an asset opposite above: Boston’s Back Bay Fens were HEALTHY Communities, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in the late we have considerable evidence to point the way to for communities. They provide a venue for physical 1800’s to preserve the Fens marshland, which healthy community design. Consider these examples: activity, social interaction, and relaxation, which all had become polluted, and to create valuable The SMARTRAQ (Strategies for Metro Atlanta’s Re- promote health and well-being. But a recent study of real estate and recreation areas within the city’s Emerald Necklace park system. GREEN Communities gional Transportation and Air Quality) study in metro parks in Copenhagen provided further evidence of Photo by Dan Tobyne. Atlanta followed more than 10,000 adults, assessing health benefits. People who live near parks not only their neighborhood characteristics, their means of travel, opposite below: New York’s central park, by Howard Frumkin, MD, DrPH lmost 2500 years ago, the legendary Greek use the parks more frequently than those at a distance, also designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, was and certain health outcomes. Greater land-use mix, officially completed in 1873. Among the most physician Hippocrates wrote his classic but they have lower stress levels and weigh less—an more walking each day, and less time in the car each day effect not fully explained by visits to the park. Nearby influential innovations in the park’s design Dr. Howard Frumkin, a physician and epidemiologist, is Treatise on Air, Water, and Places. He offered were the “separate circulation systems” for A were each associated with a lower risk of obesity. Land- greenspace is salutary. careful observations on how towns and cities were situ- pedestrians, horses, and carriages. director of the National Center for Environmental Health and use and transportation patterns predict physical activity, Photo by David Shankbone. ated, on wind, sunlight, soil, ground cover, and topog- Community design, then, can do a great deal to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the and physical activity is important for health. raphy, and on how these factors influenced the health promote health. Good sidewalks and trails, nearby above: View of typical suburban development. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A study in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic of residents. Writing as both physician and geographer, destinations, parks and other green space, safety, and Games took advantage of a natural experiment. Atlan- the presence of other people all promote walking and below: In the 1970’s, Virginia’s Arlington he knew the importance of place for health. County realized it would need to plan for tans were urged to refrain from driving during the 17 More than two millennia later, Frederick Law bicycling. Transit use does the same; in fact, nearly a changes brought by the new Washington-area days of the games. Many complied, and peak morn- third of transit users get recommended levels of physi- Metro transit system. The county has since Olmsted had the same insight. The father of landscape become noteworthy for its string of dense, ing traffic counts dropped by 22.5%. Peak daily ozone architecture, he was keenly attuned to human health, even cal activity just by walking to and from their transit mixed-use urban villages at successive levels promptly dropped by 27.9%. And acute asthma transit stops. serving as secretary general of the United States Sanitary stops. To support these design features, many of the events in children dropped by as much as 44.1%. © WMATA, photo by Larry M. Levine. Commission (forerunner of the Red Cross) during the All three parameters returned to their baseline at the Civil War. In such projects as New York’s Central Park— conclusion of the Olympics. Transportation affects air the “lungs of the city”—and Boston’s Back Bay Fens—a quality, and air quality affects health.