join our site: We just added this feature. Please become a member of our blog so we can begin to build a community around the idea of sustainable age design.
|
 by kevin, on April 8th, 2010 
In 2004, on a busy corner in Venice, CA, an old Hudson auto repair garage built in 1923 was converted to an art gallery. Abbot Kinney Boulevard, between Venice and Pacific, is a ten block long collection of trendy restaurants, custom jewelry shops, book stores, clothing stores, and consignment shops. Every medium-size U.S. city has a similarly gentrified stretch. The garage was located at the southeastern end of that stretch at the corner of Venice and Abbot Kinney. Others in the community may not have given much notice to yet another gallery opening in an already artsy neighborhood. However, it was the first time the garage had been used for anything other than auto repair since it had been built. The new tenant and planned space were different, yet not in a way immediately obvious, especially to that tenant. epOxybOx (intentional spelling) was an art gallery dedicated to presenting green art and the work of fine artists using green materials or media. That idea may have been several years ahead of the curve, but that’s not what set it apart. At the time, no one could have predicted what it would become and how it would evolve.
When Deborah Guyer Greene started epOxybOx, she wasn’t fully aware of the path it would take. In fact, her new venture began on a bit of a lark. She was art director for the Foliage Theater Project and ran the Shakespeare Probation Program where she taught theater to violent offenders between 14 and 19 years old. One day, while searching for a large wall surface for a mural painting, she stumbled on the shuttered garage. She knew as soon as she saw the place she had to do something with it. During a recent interview, she referred to it as divine intervention. “It’s a terrible way to make business decisions,” she warns. Without a written business plan and before securing investment capital, Deborah signed a lease and formed epOxybOx. It quickly became a social hub, a community gathering place, an event center, and a place to party. Event and opening audiences went from small crowds to large throngs.
While converting garage to gallery, Deborah knew she wanted to use environmentally favorable building materials, but finding them was far more difficult than she expected. That struggle planted a seed in her mind. Two years later she joined forces with Sasha King to form epOxyGreen. Their idea was that green materials should be easier to find and affordable to purchase. At first they carved out 500 square feet in the garage lube room, but the new business was an instant hit and required additional space. As the showroom grew, the gallery shrank. It eventually took over all 1,500 square feet.
Read more stories of sustainability: Deborah Guyer Greene 
by aleida, on March 17th, 2010
Two-hundred years ago, about 80% of the U.S. population lived and worked on farms. Today, that same percentage of the population lives in cities. The urbanization process left a large number of farmhouses, barns, and other rural structures abandoned to the elements, and for at least the last four decades, there has [...]
by aleida, on March 6th, 2010
Friday’s opening session, titled Successful Entrepreneurial Approaches to the Current Green Economy was a pretty fun way to start the morning. It was a panel discussion moderated by Lilian T. Chiu, CEO of Morgan Environments and current President of the Society for Marketing Professional Services South Florida; the three panelists were Greg [...]
by kevin, on February 22nd, 2010
The majority of our work is for national chains. It’s rare that we design a project in our home town of Los Angeles. That can be pretty exciting, but it can also keep you separated from your local community. That became glaringly obvious to me when I recently discovered a retail venue in my [...]
by kevin, on February 8th, 2010
Our fifth class was a field trip into downtown Los Angeles to visit the new showroom of InterfaceFLOR. Having seen company founder Ray C. Anderson speak just a few weeks before (posted here), we were treated to a tour and presentation of their efforts to reduce waste from every system. We did [...]
by aleida, on February 4th, 2010 Image from BrightTALK web site
This post will review BrightTALK Green Building Summit sessions six and seven. Yes, I’m skipping session 5, primarily because Kevin presented it. If you would like to see it, please go here. We’d love to hear your feedback.
The sixth webcast in the series was presented by Ralph [...]
by aleida, on February 3rd, 2010 Image from BrightTALK web site
The third session on the BrightTALK Green Building Summit line-up was Do Green Buildings Make Dollars and Sense? presented by Dave Pogue, National Director of Sustainability for CB Richard Ellis, Inc. Pogue presented the results of a nationwide study conducted over the last year which included 154 buildings, all [...]
by aleida, on February 2nd, 2010 Image from BrightTALK web site
The 2010 BrightTALK Green Building Summit on Thursday, January 28 was incredibly informative – hopefully the webcasts attracted a sufficiently large listenership. I joined all seven webinars and arrived at the end of the day with over a dozen pages of notes. While I will not post even a [...]
by kevin, on January 29th, 2010
I recently presented this session, titled Sustainable Materials: How to Develop Your Own Library, as part of the one day Green Building Summit hosted [...]
|
is it greenwash: Montana Ghost Wood
Image from Montana Ghost Wood web site
We regularly troll the Web for new construction material sourcing leads. Whenever we see a company we’ve not heard, we’re excited to research and investigate. Several months ago such a new material source caught my attention. Posted on a LinkedIn Green Building Products group discussion board, someone [...]