Sweet Onion Creations

What will the kids think up next?

The Washington Post ran an interesting article about a couple of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduates that hit upon an interesting idea for insulation…mushrooms.

From the article…

“Here’s how it works: A mixture of water, mineral particles, starch and hydrogen peroxide are poured into 7-by-7-inch molds and then injected with living mushroom cells. The hydrogen peroxide is used to prevent the growth of other specimens within the material.
Placed in a dark environment, the cells start to grow, digesting the starch as food and sprouting thousands of root-like cellular strands. A week to two weeks later, a 1-inch-thick panel of insulation is fully grown. It’s then dried to prevent fungal growth, making it unlikely to trigger mold and fungus allergies, according to Bayer. The finished product resembles a giant cracker in texture.”

Imagine building with this material. If you can build it on site, to the dimensions needed, what would be the reduction in building waste? Could you grow a bit extra to use at home for pizza toppings?

Read the entire article about this new green insulation product.

Who’s not for affordable housing?

It’s a no-brainer of an idea to get behind, especially in a community like Bozeman where the line between the have and have-nots becomes increasingly clearer with every glance at the Bridger foothills.

The sticky part is how do you implement it…

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle’s Op-Ed piece yesterday spoke to the issue of affordable housing in Bozeman:
“The commission granted preliminary approval last week to an ordinance that will require developers to make about 10 percent of the homes built in housing developments of 10 homes or more available to qualified buyers at below market prices.
A final vote is slated for next month, after which builders will be required to sell the designated “work force-housing” homes at significantly less than $200,000 in today’s market. Those are prices have been rare to non-existent in Bozeman for some time.
On taking this momentous step, the commission is wished the best of luck. City commissioners have been trying to make Bozeman housing more affordable for nearly 20 years, a period during which home prices rose rapidly and steadily.”

A house in Bozeman for less than $200K is a rarity indeed these days. We have an interview coming shortly with a for-profit developer that does affordable housing and spoke specifically to this ordinance. More on that to come shortly later this week.

On a similar note, I attended the Affordable Housing Conference through the Wheeler Center over in Missoula last month. The future is not bright for home ownership in some of Montana’s more exclusive communities (namely Bozeman, Missoula, Kalispell, Whitefish).

You can read more about “The Price of Paradise: Affordable Housing in Montana” through the Wheeler Center’s website.

Basically, if you’re in a house by now you should consider yourself lucky.  Many of my friends that I attended high school with have gone off to school, did the city thing for a bit, and decided Montana is where they want to settle down.  Only problem is Montana grew up while we were all away and unfortunately it’s pretty tough to compete with the Boomers for a place to live.  College towns only exasperate this problem.  (The New York Times columnist, Michael Brooks, wrote an interesting book called Bobos in Paradise.  In it he describes the psychographics of Boomers and even details Missoula and why college towns are so attractive to this generation.)

As an add-on to the recent Economist article, here is a video from the TED conference that is held annually in Monterey, California. (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds.)

William McDonough is the author of Cradle to Cradle and references his book throughout this talk and the Economist article mentions it as well. The development he is working on in China at the end of the talk is very interesting.

The bio from the TED site:
Architect and designer William McDonough asks what our buildings and products would look like if designers took into account “All children, all species, for all time.” A tireless proponent of absolute sustainability (with a deadpan sense of humor), he explains his philosophy of “cradle to cradle” design, which bridge the needs of ecology and economics. He also shares some of his most inspiring work, including the world’s largest green roof (at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan), and the entire sustainable cities he’s designing in China.