Thursday, August 16, 2007

Glass Houses

I am amazed [not really] that this story about Glass Houses was never picked up by the national media.

2 comments:

Rick and Gary said...

I've read about both houses in some media or other. I've always been puzzled about why Bush doesn't talk about the energy efficiency of his Crawford house. My guess is that he doesn't want to look like Jimmy Carter with the cardigan in the White House.

But it's all terribly unfortunate. I wish Bush had used his political capital after 9/11 to pass higher gas taxes and CAFE standards, as well as a price floor on gas prices, to spur the technology investment that will eventually free us from the Iran-Saudi-Russia-Venezuela axis of oil.

Gore, of course, is ridiculous. It's great to see that few are buying into this "carbon offset" b.s. (you little people conserve your toilet paper while we fly our private jets to New York for lunch)

Count Grecula said...

A very interesting group blog Architecture & Morality, had a great post about this back in May. The author was a student of the man that designed Bush's modest home:

Part of why Heymann enjoyed working for the Bushes was their willingness to listen. As a self-described environmentalist, Heymann was determined to intergrate sustainable design into the new ranch. George W. Bush heard his argument in a one-on-one meeting, letting Heymann make his case. From my recollection, the architect presented the contention that if you love the land that you inhabit that the governor surely did (and continues to return to often during his presidency) you will do what is necessary to preserve its essence, and implement a design that does not intrude upon the landscape. The resulting single-story home is rather small from what it could have been at only 4000 square feet, with heating and cooling partially provided by geothermal technology, rainwater is collected and stored for irrigation.

Just the fact that the Crawford ranch is only 4000 square feet says a lot. Bush is no pauper.