Advanced Green Builder Demonstration Home and Workplace. Austin, Texas.

A project nearing completion on the scrubland fringes of Austin, Texas could prove to be an important step towards a broader acceptance and wider application of regionally sustainable architecture. The centre for Maximum Potential Building Systems- or more simply Max Pot- is codirected by Pliny Fisk and his partner Gail Vittori. It encompasses an architect's studio, workshop, research laboratory, teaching centre and experimental concrete plant. On the same plot of land is the Advanced Green Builder Demonstration Home and Workplace, a government and industry sponsored project. With its heavy base, light steel roofs and water cisterns, it is designed to be an example for regionally appropriate architecture into the next century. As such it emphasizes opportunities for recycled and by-product materials, water collection, natural cooling and heating. However, what distinguishes the project, and indeed the work of Max Pot as a whole, is the depth and solidity of their holistic approach to building.

The approach sees built form as a product of an informed understanding of the environment in which it is set. This information takes the form of a regional mapping which defines the ecological and economical context. On the one hand mapping is used as a tool to identify plant species, soil types, rainfall, wind strength and insolation. As such it defines the biome or bioregion -an area with a distinct set of climatic, vegetation and soil characteristics. On the other hand mapping is also used as a statistical base to identify human resources such as transport networks, manufacturing processes and job skills.

A data base is derived which allows the architect to cross disciplinary borders and operate in the realm of ecological land planner or industrial ecologist. From the biome mapping one can assess the potential for wind power, photovoltaic cells, rain water collection; and in terms of materials, the scope for the use of abundant local resources -soils for example- or easily renewable resources such as straw or timber.

Equally one can look at the regional availability of manufactured goods, industrial by-products and local skills. The resource mapping becomes the basis of a life cycle assessment from source to sink of material usage. Fundamental to this assessment is the development of an economy of means in the construction and operation of human habitats, with the intent of relying on a region's indigenous materials and human resources. In this way minimal transport costs are incurred with consequential reduced environmental damage and its subsequent costs. From this one gains the understanding of a region as an integrated dynamic system, potentially self-sustaining, through a system of material flows and information loop-backs.

A new product potential is in this way liberated: what otherwise is seen as waste or a pollutant can be seen as a possible cheap and abundant material source that, until this point, had found no use. In other words, value is put on the disposer-recycling sector of the economy and not just the producer and consumer.

There is also an outward looking component to the mapping process. UNESCO already uses biomes as a basis for infomation sharing -this method of analysis is available on computer with subsequent library of information. Pliny Fisk has used this technique to learn through the experience of resource use in other parts of the world where near identical ecologies exist. The Southern Texas biome is comparable with parts of Iran, Argentina and North Africa. This referencing allows the sharing of appropriate material uses or environmentally responsive forms between climatic partners- thus enriching the vocabulary of each. The mapping and subsequent life cycle analysis data base informs all design decisions and material choices. As Pliny Fisk is apt to quote: "form follows flow" -refering to the resource and material flux within the regional system.

This point is emphasized at the entrance to the building
Advanced Green Builder Demonstration Home and Workplace. Austin, Texas

A project nearing completion on the scrubland fringes of Austin, Texas could prove to be an important step towards a broader acceptance and wider application of regionally sustainable architecture. T
he centre for Maximum Potential Building Systems- or more simply Max Pot- is codirected by Pliny Fisk and his partner Gail Vittori. It encompasses an architect's studio, workshop, research laboratory, teaching centre and experimental concrete plant. On the same plot of land is the Advanced Green Builder Demonstration Home and Workplace, a government and industry sponsored project. With its heavy base, light steel roofs and water cisterns, it is designed to be an example for regionally appropriate architecture into the next century. As such it emphasizes opportunities for recycled and by-product materials, water collection, natural cooling and heating. However, what distinguishes the project, and indeed the work of Max Pot as a whole, is the depth and solidity of their holistic approach to building.

The approach sees built form as a product of an informed understanding of the environment in which it is set. This information takes the form of a regional mapping which defines the ecological and economical context. On the one hand mapping is used as a tool to identify plant species, soil types, rainfall, wind strength and insolation. As such it defines the biome or bioregion -an area with a distinct set of climatic, vegetation and soil characteristics. On the other hand mapping is also used as a statistical base to identify human resources such as transport networks, manufacturing processes and job skills.

A data base is derived which allows the architect to cross disciplinary borders and operate in the realm of ecological land planner or industrial ecologist. From the biome mapping one can assess the potential for wind power, photovoltaic cells, rain water collection; and in terms of materials, the scope for the use of abundant local resources -soils for example- or easily renewable resources such as straw or timber.

Equally one can look at the regional availability of manufactured goods, industrial by-products and local skills. The resource mapping becomes the basis of a life cycle assessment from source to sink of material usage. Fundamental to this assessment is the development of an economy of means in the construction and operation of human habitats, with the intent of relying on a region's indigenous materials and human resources. In this way minimal transport costs are incurred with consequential reduced environmental damage and its subsequent costs. From this one gains the understanding of a region as an integrated dynamic system, potentially self-sustaining, through a system of material flows and information loop-backs.

A new product potential is in this way liberated: what otherwise is seen as waste or a pollutant can be seen as a possible cheap and abundant material source that, until this point, had found no use. In other words, value is put on the disposer-recycling sector of the economy and not just the producer and consumer.

There is also an outward looking component to the mapping process. UNESCO already uses biomes as a basis for infomation sharing -this method of analysis is available on computer with subsequent library of information. Pliny Fisk has used this technique to learn through the experience of resource use in other parts of the world where near identical ecologies exist. The Southern Texas biome is comparable with parts of Iran, Argentina and North Africa. This referencing allows the sharing of appropriate material uses or environmentally responsive forms between climatic partners- thus enriching the vocabulary of each. The mapping and subsequent life cycle analysis data base informs all design decisions and material choices. As Pliny Fisk is apt to quote: "form follows flow" -refering to the resource and material flux within the regional system.

This point is emphasized at the entrance to the building tal Protection Agency has recently funded Max Pot to apply these data principles on a national basis. Pliny Fink envisages, furthermore, that such projects, on a larger scale, would become catalysts for a growth in the recycling industry. As a user of recycled building products and of industrial by-products, the design method could lead to the development of a new set of local industries and skills. A feedback which corresponds to the understanding of a region as an integrated self-sustaining system.

The bridging of issues in architecture and ecology with social concerns entails an approach which seeks to restore the cooperative imperative between natural and human systems to ensure their mutual survival. It is a regionalism born out of a rigorous understanding of context, in this respect it is akin to the tradition of a local building knowledge- but using the benefits of the computer age.

Michael Haslam 1996

I am very grateful to Max Pot and in particular to Mr. B. O' Brien for their assistance in researching this article.

Published in the Architectural Review 1996.