Two weeks ago, we let you know we’d be at the Living Green Expo. It’s here. MN State Fair Grounds. Saturday, May 2nd, 10-6; Sunday, 10-5. FREE! At the show, there will be kids’ activities, food, music, workshops, and AVEDA founder Horst Rechelbacher’s Tesla. This would be the vehicle for green car enthusiasts who simply cannot live without a vehicle that can reach 60 MPH in under 4 seconds. Me, I’ll be pedaling my bike. Free bus passes available at the Living Green link above. Oh, you can recycle all those CFL bulbs piling up in your garage too.
Make a weekend of it; Family Free day at the Walker on Saturday, Living Green Expo Saturday afternoon/Sunday morning, MayDay Parade & Festival in Powderhorn Park Sunday afternoon. You’ll go to work Monday exhausted but fulfilled.
Living Green Expo
With barely enough time to catch our breath, we’re hosting an open house at our studio on Thursday, May 7th 5-9pm for First Thursdays in the Arts District. We’ll be making some more bicycle tread signatures, and offering free design consultations.
Finally, stop by our studio as your launching point to visit any number of other open artist studios during Art-A-Whirl, NE Minneapolis’ annual art crawl, May 15-17. Friday 5-10 pm, Saturday 12-8, Sunday 12-5. We are hosting a reception on Saturday night for the end of the Full Cycle Project (see bicycle tread signature link above) from 6-8.
Art-A-Whirl catalog
With so many chances to gain your support for Locus Architecture in the coming weeks, there’s surely no need for us to go begging for stimulus package funds.
We’ve put in two geothermal systems in the past two years for clients in Minneapolis, both remodels, and with mixed results. For anyone considering geothermal, understand it is not an inexpensive up front option (say, $20,000 and up for an installed system sized for a 1,600 square foot well-insulated home). Geothermal installers often talk up the green aspects of the systems, but we feel the green advantages are not so clear. A few things are worth noting if you’re thinking geothermal.
Just in case you’re not familiar with how these systems work, I offer the following three-sentence, grossly simplified summary. Geothermal systems exchange heat with the ground via liquid – usually a glycol solution – flowing through sub-grade tubing loops (like a radiant floor but in the ground). The tubes are placed at least 5′ below the ground surface, in vertical wells or horizontal fields, where temperatures remain relatively constant at about 50-55 degrees. A heat pump, which operates much like the compression/expansion loop on your refrigerator (but can run both ways), extracts heat from the ground in heating months and dumps it when cooling. If you are looking for the science behind all of that, it’s available on the web; I’ll just say that geothermal systems have potential for obvious environmental benefits.
The downside? The heat pump – the brawn of the system – uses a fair amount of electricity. Remember the refrigerator comparison? (more…)
Blades on the Rails
On Friday, Tom Hedberg from Hedberg Maps – down the hall from our office – came in breathlessly after running up the stairs, “you guys should come take a look at this!” Big white blades for large scale wind turbines were sitting idle on the rail line 100 yards from our building – close enough for a little tactile inspection. The new energy economy appears to be in the distribution pipeline. That was fast!
I’ve been drawn to these turbines for as long as I can remember. There was a wind farm near my boyhood home; I would stare out the car window at these big things, moving slowly, with a mixture of awe and dread. I always felt they were beautiful and eerie at once – perhaps because the big industrial forms are in such stark contrast to the desolate windswept landscapes where they are often deployed. Oddly, I feel much the same way passing through oil fields, the unmanned derricks endlessly pumping. For a surreal experience, drive US 101 through the oil fields outside of King City in CA.
I feel an odd pull to freight trains too. If I didn’t have young children and a cautious spouse, I just might have climbed on board this one to see where these gleaming fabrications were headed. It would no doubt be fascinating to see how one is put together.
Living Green Expo
LOCUS will join the usual suspects at the 2009 Living Green Expo at the MN State Fairgrounds Grandstand, May 2nd and 3rd. The expo focuses on a wide range of green topics, from food to building to energy to transportation. If you’ve not been before, it’s definitely worth your time and it’s FREE!
There’s two main components to the Expo. 1. The show floor. There’s a couple hundred exhibitors displaying all manner of green wares, systems, and ideas. It’s more easily digested and definitely more targeted than the Home Show – with all the chaff about teeth whitening, leaf-free-gutters, and infomercial-worthy junk. Even so, some of the exhibitors may cause you to wonder, “What’s green about that?” 2. Workshops. If you want to renovate your basement using non-toxic products or just want to learn how to raise chickens in your back yard, there’s a workshop to catch your attention.
We’re in the construction area on the east end, near such green stalwarts as Natural Built Home, Innovative Power Systems (IPS), Clay Squared to Infinity, and The Reuse Center.
The Expo is kid friendly, there will be live music, and green food. Well, not all the edibles will be literally green, but you know what I mean. Extra credit to those of you who bike or ride the bus there.
Prior to ARTCRANK, a cycling poster show, LOCUS Architecture brought together Twin Cities cyclists to make their mark and make a difference. Participants bunny-hopped, spun, skidded, and cruised over prints, recording individual tread signatures in order to raise money for Full Cycle, a Minneapolis outreach program that provicdes free and healthy transportation to homeless and at-risk youth. Some of the signatures – from the notorious Geno to local advocates like Bill Dossett to artists like Caroline Yang – are below.
We debuted the series at ARTCRANK on March 4th, but there’s more to do before the show ends at LOCUS offices on May 16. We’re trying to raise as much money as we can for Full Cycle; the more prints sold, the more funds we can send to the kids. We need your support in the following four ways.
ONE
The original prints are on display now through May 16, at the LOCUS Architecture studio.
Stop by, and implore your friends to do the same, to view tread eye candy (M-F; 10-4)
Northrup King Building, Suite 333,
1500 Jackson St. NE, Minneapolis
TWO
LOCUS will have extended hours at the studio for the May 7 edition of First Thursdays in the Arts District. We’ll be here 5-9 pm, along with a few more tread signers. Chris Zito, Hurl, Peace Coffee, and a few other surprises have promised to come-a-tread-signing, enjoy a beer, and support the cause. Why not come out and witness art being made? There are dozens of other open studios here at the Northrup King Building to entice you if hanging with us isn’t enough.
THREE
Save May 16 on your calendar for the Full Cycle final reception. Locus will be hosting the closing party 6-8 pm (again, at the studio) in conjunction with Art-A-Whirl. Join us, dragging others who like art and/or bikes with you. Any remaining prints not pre-sold will be sold via silent auction at that time.
FOUR
Buy one of these original prints and/or help us promote these events. At $89 each, these monoprints are a steal for original art, and the money goes to a good cause.
The poster-making process, as photographed by Caroline Yang, is also viewable at ARTCRANK and LOCUS.
