It’s hard to tell, given the lack of hard data and allusions to the Almighty….
Is the Alison-Mayne House, designed by Thom Mayne and his wife Blythe Alison-Mayne, sustainable or not? An article published last year in Architectural Record implies that it is, but I find the claim questionable.
Sustainability, at least how it relates to climate change, is quantifiable. The numbers are large and hard to measure, but ultimately quantifiable—i.e. the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the corresponding increase in global temperatures.
Thus, when an article claims that a building is sustainable but provides no EUI score, no HERS rating, and no utility data, what exactly are we being asked to believe? Furthermore, when the numbers that are provided—in this case, square footages—don’t add up, one becomes even more skeptical.* (The square footages of the house and the guest house vary not only within the Architectural Record article, but from source to source.)
The article claims that the Alison-Mayne House has “no conventional air conditioning,” but that is disingenuous as the house does have a hydronic radiant heating and cooling system. While not a traditional forced air system, hydronic radiant heating and cooling systems do indeed require power. Is that power provided from renewable sources, or from fossil fuels? Again, no data is provided.
Thom Mayne argues that his house is not a McMansion. While that argument is technically true, the house is not exactly an exercise in austerity, joining the many other ArchiMcMansions popular in the architectural press these days.
But who am I (or you) to question such a project? Responding to the outcry that ensued when Mayne and Alison-Mayne demolished Ray Bradbury’s “run-of-the-mill” house to build theirs, Alison-Mayne—as quoted in Architectural Record—said, “By the end, they agreed that Ray—an architecture buff—would have loved the house, even suggesting that ‘God’ had sent us to [create] it here.”
Why should the Starchigods care about sustainability, anyhow?
* Full disclosure: I contacted Thom Mayne’s architecture firm, Morphosis, when I was writing a paper about two recently demolished houses, including Ray Bradbury’s house, in an attempt to determine if the Alison-Mayne House was as sustainable as claimed. If indeed it is, then the decision to demolish Ray Bradbury’s house is somewhat more justifiable, in my mind.