Architect renovates homes to be more 'green'

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>> Eric: My name is Eric Cory Freed assumed spelling, I'm an architect based in San Francisco and we design Green buildings.

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>> Eric: When I was a little kid the first building I saw that moved me was one by Frank Lloyd Wright in Philadelphia and it's really what set me on this path to designing things that were innovative and connected to nature. It seems that the biggest challenges that we face is that we've been building our buildings the same way for about 200 years now and we've kind of become set in our ways, so when someone like me comes along and says, you know, there are smarter ways to do things people start to get a little freaked out. But once I show them that here are opportunities to save money, here are opportunities to save water and save our resources suddenly they don't seem so scared. Today we're in Palo Alto, California and we're in the backyard of one of our Green projects. And what we've done is we've taken the existing house and we've expanded it with 2 wings on the back addition and these wings turn towards the sun and the roofs are shaped by the angle of the sun and by the direction of the wind, so now what we have is we have a house that essentially heated and cooled by sun and wind power and doesn't really need that much mechanical power to stay comfortable. This house collects its rain water from the roof and then uses it in the garden. It generates its own solar energy through solar panels, which is pretty typical now days. But it also heats its hot water through solar panels of a different kind called solar thermal and then that hot water is then used to heat the floor on very, very cold days or is used for showering and things like that. We picked nontoxic finishes, nontoxic paints, we picked a lot of recycled finishes, of course, recycled glass and recycled metal and then we picked some unique finishes like bamboo cabinets. And by making cabinets out of this rather than wood we prevent the destruction of trees, which is a good thing. For me I'm really looking forward to a future where I won't have to be arguing this anymore that it'll just be common place, that truly every building will be a Green building. Half my time is spent trying to essentially sell people on the idea to do the right thing. And what I'm hoping is in the next 5 years that can go away and I can go back to doing what I like which is designing and teaching and really stick with that. But for the time being this is what's needed and so that's what's important so this is what I like to do.

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====