Colorado Court is a 5-story, 44 unit single room occupancy apartment complex for low income tenants in Santa Monica. It is also one of the first buildings of its kind in the United States that is 100% energy independent, generating nearly all its own energy for electricity, heat and light.

Architectural Review, November 1, 2002:

“In both siting and form, the building has been designed to exploit passive environmental control strategies such as natural ventilation, maximizing daylight and shading south-facing windows. But it also incorporates a number of innovative energy generation measures, notably a natural gas-powered turbinecum-heat recovery system that generates the base electrical load and services the building’s hot water needs. Photovoltaic panels set in the walls and roof supply most of the peak-load energy demand. This co-generation system converts natural gas into electricity to meet the building’s power needs. The same system also captures and uses waste heat to produce hot water and space heating for residents throughout the year. Unused energy from the photovoltaic panels is returned to the grid during the day and retrieved at night as needed. The architects estimate that these energy generation and conservation systems will pay for themselves in less than 10 years and annual savings in electricity and natural gas bills should average around $6000....

Details such as fluorescent lights which automatically extinguish when a room is not in use, insulation made from recycled newspapers, a bike store, CFC-free refrigerators and a trash recycling room reinforce the evangelical message. As many of the technologies are relatively unproven, it is hoped that in its intelligent exploration of the potential of sustainability, the building will act as a successful demonstration project for developers, planners, politicians, architects and, most especially, the wider public.”

The apartments themselves are 375 square feet studios with a kitchenette and a small bathroom. Shared areas include a lounge, laundry, and courtyard.

The project falls under Santa Monica’s “Sustainable City Program” which tries to reduce electricity and water consumption, and install photovoltaic cells on in public and private projects.

Los Angeles Times, June 26, 2001:

“A host of public and private entities—including the cities of Santa Monica and Irvine, Southern California Edison and the California Energy Coalition—are involved in planning, funding and monitoring the innovative building. The two cities, the conservation group and the utility have formed a group known as Regional Energy Efficiency Initiative, which has contributed about $250,000 to energy-saving devices in the building. In addition, Santa Monica itself is contributing about $250,000 toward electricity generators.

The building will be loaded with energy-saving and environmentally benign or ‘sustainable’ devices. Heat from the micro-turbine will produce hot water, eliminating the need for a conventional water heater....

Prevailing breezes will cool the building, which will have no mechanical air conditioners. The U-shaped structure ‘acts like a giant wind scoop,’ said architect Larry Scarpa, a principal of Santa Monica-based Pugh & Scarpa.

In yet another ‘green’ flourish, the building will collect all the rainwater from the alley behind the property and funnel it into a series of underground chambers. The water will slowly percolate back into the soil, which will filter the pollutants from the water while preventing contaminated water from spilling into Santa Monica Bay. The drainage system was paid for separately by the city of Santa Monica.

The concept of a building that would be energy self-sufficient emerged about two years ago, when Santa Monica officials met with members of the California Energy Coalition. The city’s Housing Division, which funds construction of low-income housing, chose to make a low-income housing project into a dream project of ‘green’ construction, and Colorado Court became the target.

‘We needed a demonstration project because a lot of developers feel that the technologies are unproven,’ Raida said.

A number of apartment buildings in Santa Monica and Irvine are to be equipped with energy-saving technology by the Regional Energy Efficiency Initiative, but the Santa Monica building is the only project attempting to provide its own power as well.

Rebates from the state Energy Commission helped defray the high cost of the energy-generating equipment. The state’s rebate on the solar panels, which cost about $225,000, will be about $62,000. The $57,000 micro-turbine and heat exchanger will yield a $15,000 rebate from Southern California Gas Co.

If recent research and development has yielded new ways of conserving energy and producing electricity, regulations and building codes have not kept pace.

In one instance, architects had to obtain special permission from the city to hang solar panels outside the exterior stairwells because building inspectors said the solar panels ‘enclosed’ the stairwells and triggered requirements for floors, ceilings and fire-rated walls.”

Santa Monica Mirror, December 6-12, 2000:

“[Architects] Pugh Scarpa Kodama and the Community Corporation have been working with the City of Santa Monica and Southern California Edison to come up with an ‘incentive-type’ plan, which would allot a certain amount of energy to each resident per month, and would award those who did not use the full amount with rebates on their energy bills....

Colorado Court’s units will rent for between $316 and $365. They will be available to low-income residents culled from the Community Corp’s waiting list, who meet the low-income requirements for this building. Twenty-two units will be rented to people making less than $12,775 yearly, another 22 to those making less than $14,600 yearly (these figures are based on 35 - 40% of the current median income of $36,500). According to Raida, the typical demographic for a building such as Colorado Court would include full time workers earning minimum wage, and people on fixed incomes such as retirees and the disabled.

The Community Corp’s waiting list currently numbers over 1,000 people.”

It’s great that the org’s and the city could pull together $5.8 million to build high-tech, green, low-income housing. But, experimenting on the poor for their demonstration project? Is this the flip side of environmental racism? Get some low-income tenants to live inside your the unproven technology? No air conditioning in Southern California? An experimental powerplant in the basement, and less-than-fire-rated exterior walls... that cover a fire exit? Evangelical indeed.

“The Computer TakeBack Campaign is protecting America’s public health by promoting corporate accountability for electronic waste.

Tens of million of computers become obsolete every year and less than 10% are collected for recycling, with the rest of them stored in homes and offices, disposed in landfills and burned in incinerators, and shipped to poor countries for dismantling under horrific conditions. Newer, faster, smaller, and cheaper products hit the market every day - all of them toxic, most of them designed for disposal rather than reuse and recycling, and, once obsolete, are ignored by the very companies that profit from short life-spans and cheap design.

Currently, the expense of collecting and managing discarded electronics is borne by taxpayer-funded government programs. Public policy and corporate practice have failed to promote producer take back and clean design. The principle of producer take-back shifts the burden for collection and recycling costs off of taxpayers and government to the producers, providing an incentive for companies to market products that are durable, less-toxic, and recyclable....

The Computer TakeBack Campaign was formed to promote clean design and brand owner responsibility for discarded computers and electronics.”

The campaign was launched on November 27, 2001 with the release of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition’s 3rd Annual Computer Report Card. The annual report measures the environmental qualities of electronic equipment and the environmental performance of companies. The report noted that several major U.S. computer companies ran TakeBack programs in Europe, but not in the United States.

Dell was singled out as the focus for the first major campaign. Dell has the largest share of the U.S. and global personal computer market, and are the leading seller of computers to institutions. The Computer TakeBack Campaign is also targeting Dell “because the company’s sales and distribution model uniquely positions it to establish an effective national take back system for used and discarded products.”

After a long campaign and a much public pressure, on March 19, 2003, Dell announced it’s new curbside recycling program. As of March 25, consumers in the continental U.S. could “order home pickup of unwanted notebooks, desktops, monitors, and other select computer equipment for $15 per unit.”

Dell, however, is using prison labor to do the dirty work of recycling its electronics.

A friend of laughingmeme writes:

• Dell still contracting with prison labor to do recycling... prison labor is a low-road solution which relies on ‘high tech chain gangs’ and thwarts the development of a legitimate recycling infrastructure... and prison laborers are handling toxic computers and OSHA standards are not enforced as they should be
• Dell still charging a fee at the back-end (instead of implicit in purchase price) for the pick-up, which is a disincentive for participation
• Dell not reporting on goals or setting timeframes/goals for recovery
• Dell not aggressively advertising program (they launched the program the week we went to war!)
• Dell not commenting/committing to phasing out the toxins in their products
• Dell partnering with a charity, but what will eventually happens to the computers? — they way they are designed now they all become obsolete at some point
• [As of mid-March] Dell has recovered only 1,000 machines in the last six months which is really pathetic. (they actually started taking back computers from consumers in sept, but are just now expanding the program to include home pick-up)

According to this fact sheet: prison labor is not protected by federal safety and health standards, nor is it covered by National Labor Relations Board policies. Financial support for this U.S. prison-industrial complex steals tax dollars from public education and environmental protection programs and kills private sector development in electronic recycling.

Prisoners should be able to develop occupational and educational skills, not forced to do dangerous, toxic work because companies can get away with it. Investing in prison labor also reinforces incarceration as a solution social, political, and economic problems.

Find out more, and what you can do.

Update: On July 3, 2003, Dell announced that it will stop using a vendor that relies on prison labor for its electronics recycling.

“Share Your Vision is a national art contest and exhibition, sponsored by Visual AIDS with funding from Roche. The Share Your Vision program was created to help raise awareness of the impact of cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis on the lives of people with HIV. CMV retinitis is an AIDS-related opportunistic infection, which, if left untreated, can lead to blindness. The contest is open to HIV-positive artists who have been affected by or touched by CMV retinitis. The most appropriate submissions will address, discuss or represent the artist’s understanding of and/or experience with CMV retinitis. Selected works will be displayed in an exhibition at Artists Space in New York and included in an accompanying exhibition catalogue....

The winning artwork may also be utilized by Roche, Visual AIDS or a designee of these parties for a public education campaign on CMV retinitis that may include a traveling exhibition. The artwork may be reproduced for use in the development of collateral materials (print, broadcast and/or Web) to support CMV awareness....

Each of the winning artists will be awarded a cash prize, and, for the top 13, a matching gift will also be donated to an HIV/AIDS charitable 501(c)(3) research or support organization of the winner’s choice.”

Yeah, so the big drug company hawk their pills and makes a profit off your work. It’s still an important and underexposed issue. And you get to put some of that marketing budget back into research or support.

Deadline for submissions is June 16, 2003. Check the Visual AIDS Web site for more info.

“How an Atheist Helps Protect Islamists in Turkey,” The New York Times, November 26, 2002:

“In 1995, [Turkish publisher Sanar] Yurdatapan’s activism took the turn that came to define it: It began when Yasar Kemal, one of Turkey’s most famous writers, was charged under antiterrorism laws for writing an article against the war in Kurdish areas.

In protest, 1,080 well-known people signed their names [as co-publishers] in a book that republished Mr. Kemal’s article and nine other banned articles. They then demanded that they all be prosecuted because it was also a crime to reprint banned articles.

Mr. Yurdatapan’s orchestration of the book put the Turkish state in an awkward position, having to suspend sentences or change the laws to avoid arresting everyone. In 1999, however, he received a two-month sentence....

With little money and a tenuous legal status — his group, Initiative for Freedom of Expression, exists only on the law’s margins — Mr. Yurdatapan keeps up his work: 4 books and over 40 pamphlets have been published.

In 2000, he took up the case of Islamic activists, including the nation’s only Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, who has been banned from political life since the army’s ouster of his government in 1997 and whose party was victorious in the recent elections.”

The February 3, 2000 Kurdish Observer reports that Sanar, a civilian, was sentenced by a military court to two months in prison for “making publication to lose people’s enthusiasm for the military service.”

Sanar became well-known as a composer, songwriter, and advocate for free expression in the 1970’s. From Human Rights Watch:

“Sanar Yurdatapan was stripped of his citizenship by the military junta that seized power in Turkey in 1980. He lived in exile from 1980 until 1992. The military handed back power to a civilian government in 1984, but they have kept public discussion of certain issues off limits, particularly criticism of state institutions (especially the military) and the role of ethnicity or religion in politics.”

He has also worked on prison conditions, the right to conscientious objection to military service, and exposed the Turkish military’s massacre of Kurds. The Times again:

“[In the summer of 2002], as part of its bid to join the European Union, Turkey passed several laws easing freedom of expression. Mr. Yurdatapan says the atmosphere is improving, though not enough for him to end his work.”

More publishing than design, the 1995 action is such an elegant act of civil disobedience, a grand mockery of Turkish censorship law.

From Just Another Poster? Chicano Graphic Art in California:

In 1962, Cesar Chávez and his cousin Manuel conceived of the U.F.W. logo as a way to ‘get some color into the movement, to give people something they could identify with.’ they chose the Aztec eagle on the Mexican flag as the logo’s main symbol and created a stylized version of it that was easy to reproduce. The U.F.W. logo became a highly recognizable icon in the union’s boycott efforts, legislative, proposition campaigns, and a victorious symbol of its successful contract negotiations.

The symbol and flag were unveiled at the first mass meeting of the newly formed union.

From Aztlannet:

The evolution of Chicano poster art began in 1965 with the production of graphic images to support the organizing and boycotting efforts of the United Farm Workers. The U.F.W. logo — a black stylized eagle with wings shaped like an inverted Aztec pyramid — became a key symbol of the Chicano movement. It appeared prominently on all official U.F.W. graphics, and its inclusion on unrelated posters made by Chicano artists signaled support for the union. Posters also were utilized to promote other Chicano political causes, such as the 1968 Coors beer boycott in protest of the company’s discriminatory hiring practices.

“More than two million men and women are now behind bars in the United States. The country that holds itself out as the ‘land of freedom’ incarcerates a higher percentage of its people than any other country....

Perhaps the single greatest force behind the growth of the prison population has been the national ‘war on drugs.’ The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelvefold since 1980. In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges.

Even more troubling than the absolute number of persons in jail or prison is the extent to which those men and women are African-American. Although blacks account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black.

Census data for 2000, which included a count of the number and race of all individuals incarcerated in the United States, reveals the dramatic racial disproportion of the incarcerated population in each state: the proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeds the proportion among state residents in every single state. In twenty states, the percent of blacks incarcerated is at least five times greater than their share of resident population.”

Some experiments with GIS turned into a redesign of this Human Rights Watch backgrounder. Interesting to note the regional clusters that emerged from dumping various metrics into a spatial layout. Download the PDF here (192 Kb).

“Great is the empire that we defied, but greater than this empire is our right to freedom.”

Happy May Day and saludos to the people of Puerto Rico and all who struggled to push the U.S. Navy out of Viéques. At midnight last night, the Navy formally turned over its territory on the island to the U.S. Department of the Interior who will turn the bombing range and base into a wildlife refuge.

UCLA U.S. Navy

The struggle isn’t over, though. The end of 60 years of military exercises there is a major victory, but the land remains “off limits” to Puerto Ricans. And there’s still an enormous clean up to be done.

Tomorrow morning the people of Viéques will place a large cross on the former bombing range to commemorate those who have died as a result of illnesses related to the contamination of the site.

This 2000 UCLA map shows the geographic extent of the Navy’s territory on the island. Much of the west end of the island was transferred to the Viéques Municipality and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2001, though this 2003 Navy map still minimizes their apparent footprint. “Live impact” in a “conservation area”?

Some images of resistance from around the Web:

Mural of Milivy Adams Calderón, a boy from Viéques whose death of cancer is widely seen as a result of the military’s contamination of the water.

View of crosses and sea from Monte David.

Mural at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez. Photo by Javier Gonzalez Rivera.

Fishermen blocking US Navy military maneuvers off of Viéques.

Protestors hang banners from the Statue of Liberty, November 6, 2000.

March for the release of political prisoners, September 29, 1999.

More here.

The June issue of Metropolis magazine has a short review of this blog in its Screen Space column:

Social Design Notes

Activist and graphic designer John Emerson’s Web log follows the role of design in social activism, collecting little-known news items from around the world. Recently Emerson has devoted much of his coverage to the war in Iraq. He critiques the way newspapers and magazines use graphics to enforce pro-war rhetoric and celebrates protestors who alter existing ads and signs to get their message out.

I’m flattered that Metropolis reviewed my blog, but the review is somewhat skewed by its timing. If you stopped by during the invasion of Iraq that was probably much of what I was blogging.

Crawl through the archives, though. There’s some good stuff there. I do write a lot about the role of design in social justice movements, but I also blog other examples of design in the public interest including (but not limited to) environmentally friendly materials, civic wayfinding, public friendly consumer labeling, sustainable energy sources and design for energy efficiency, universal design and accessibility, mapping, design and public transit, e-government, and design by working people for working people. In addition to news items, I do post some commentary, criticism, original research, and longer features (when I get the time.) I do hope to do more of the latter and less of the link propagation.

I’m not sure what “little-known” means. I do not post items because they are obscure, though I sometimes do not post things that are all over everyone else’s blogs. “Little-known” to who?

In my item on anti-war protests in the City, I was not just celebrating protestors altering ads, but commenting on how protestors were using the City itself not just as a site of protest but as a medium. Not just altering ads, but posting stickers and signs of their own, marching by the thousands, rearranging street furniture, blocking traffic with their bodies, changing the face of the City and using the City itself to disrupt business as usual. I’m actually increasingly skeptical of Adbusters style activism, of altering logos and ads unless it’s within the context of a broader grassroots social movement.

Anyway, all this is to say that in year two of this blog (which starts today) I will try to post more in-depth, to organize my archives better, and to further clarify this whole “design in the public interest” thing.

Thanks for stopping by.

The Washington Post reports on the demise of the payphone:

“In Washington, as in other parts of the country, pay phones are disappearing from the landscape. The number of them across the country has dwindled from a high of 2.7 million in the mid-1990s to about 1.9 million now, supplanted by the more personal wireless phones that fit in a pocket. The small companies that maintain them are pulling out of the business. Even at the higher price of 50 cents a call, many phones run at a deficit — it costs more to clean, maintain and service them — so people like [technician Andres] Castro are yanking them from their sockets, cutting the lines, and pulling them from shopping centers, gasoline stations, restaurants and street corners where they used to turn a booming profit.”

The Globe and Mail reports that instead of dismantling its pay phones, Bell Canada has started adding WiFi capabilities:

“Aimed at business customers, the service is free until late March and available at several sites in Montreal, Kingston, Ont., and Toronto. The project will also include service at Air Canada airport lounges in Calgary, Montreal, Toronto and elsewhere. The pilot project is intended to measure how customers use the service and how much to charge for it, although some observers wonder if service providers will be able to make much money from so-called wireless fidelity or wi-fi hot spots. For Bell’s hot-spot trial, it’s mostly setting up wi-fi nodes where it has payphones, effectively ‘reinventing’ the payphone business.”

In the United States, massive amounts of cash are being thrown at building a nationwide wireless infrastructure. Adding WiFi to payphones is picks up on an exisitng infrastructure. From Bell Canada’s press release:

“The plan calls for payphones in high traffic areas to be fitted with Wi-Fi technology; typical locations include airports, train stations, hotels, convention centers and corporate campuses.”

Adding WiFi to payphones would be a good way of brining WiFi to underserved neighborhoods — the same neighborhoods that rely on pay phones rather than cell phones.

From the Post again:

“It is much easier — and cheaper — to dial from a cell phone for customers who can afford one. However, pay phones are still profitable in the lowest-income areas of a city, said Terry Rainey, president of the American Public Communications Council Inc., an industry group representing independent pay phone operators around the country.

‘There are a great number of people in this country without a phone,’ Rainey said — 4 and 5 percent, which is more than the 1 or 2 percent of the U.S. population that lacks television sets.

‘Some lower-income areas rely on [pay phones] for regular communications, as well as, in some cases, emergency calls,’ said Mason Harris, president of Robin Technologies and of the Atlantic Payphone Association.”

Compare this map of median household income from the 1990 U.S. Census with this 2002 map of WiFi hotspots in Manhattan. From the Public Internet Project:

Click here for a larger version.

Update: On May 10, 2003, the New Jersey Star-Ledger reported that Verizon plans to put WiFi transmitters in pay phones across New York City. No mention of how much it will cost to use.

Also of note is this May 5 article from the International Herald Tribune which describes plans by the city of Paris to build a WiFi network along the subway system. Two or three antennas could be places outside each of Paris’s 372 Metro stations.

“Ideas that Matter is an initiative by [paper company] Sappi that provides funding to support creative design for social good. Your talent and skills could benefit the many institutions working for change: non-profit organisations that are involved in scientific, environmental, educational, cultural or relief programmes.

Sappi is ready to award financial grants of up to €50,000 to pay your out-of-pocket expenses and the full implementation of a print campaign. This includes the cost of the photography, illustration, films, paper, printing, mailing, etc...

Select the non-profit organisation that would benefit from your ideas and ask them to agree to your ideas and application for a grant. Then prepare your creative print campaign proposal and submit it to Sappi. Remember your campaign must exploit the effectiveness of ideas on paper, maximising the potential of posters, direct mail, brochures or print advertising - or something new. Of course, you can submit more than one application if you have more than one idea.”

Check some of the previous winners. The org seems inclined (though not necessarily limited) to funding projects that promote charities that promote children’s rights and humanitarian health and development projects. Get your application here. Entries must be postmarked by May 31, 2003.

When picking a paper stock, you might also consider some of their fine woodfree products.