Retooling the Conventional Apprenticeship
After an extraordinary year of working on a variety of sustainable and conventional building projects throughout Canada and the US, I’ve been back in Canada doing a bit of consulting and renovating, studying for LEED and looking for interesting projects near home and further afield to fill the next year.
There was a fair amount of time on the trip home to reflect on the statement that Jack Stephens made at the International Natural Building Colloquium 2008: “We need to build more GOOD buildings.” It reminded me of the first exam essay I had to write in Architecture 101, about the Vitruvian trilogy of Firmitas, Utilitas and Venustas – the three essential traits of “good” buildings. In the vocabulary of sustainable building, these are roughly translated as durability, functionality, and beauty.
In terms of creating good, sustainable buildings, current guidelines and literature generally agree about the basics of design, material selection and installation. As I’ve traveled and worked since finishing the Sustainable Building Design and Construction program at Fleming College, I’ve found that detailing and durable building design practices vary widely. Some of these differences are characterized as matters of opinion or regional variation, while in other cases I’ve found many owner-builders and beginning builders are reluctant to dig for guidance about construction details in long narratives about alternative building.
