To the Editor:
Unless the United States embarks on a policy of breaking up population centers (increasingly feasible, with interesting aspects, but unlikely), the answer to Saturdays front-page question, Is increased density the answer? It is a no-brainer. Extrapolate current trends, and the higher density will be largely unaffordable and often unpleasant to live in as well.
Lack of political and socio-economic imagination will be one cause. We will all have to be living more lightly on our Earth, and it would make sense to progressively restrict the total square-footage of residences, so that all of us could share more air and open space. The cost of energy may be so much higher as to have major effects on architecture and location.
But for today, I'll look at a comparatively mundane dimension: whatever we build, how shall we make it stay up? (Photos of India's earthquake show the importance of this question).
The Peninsula now relies on three- to four-story stud-and-plywood lumber construction, our standard apartment environment. If you want to go higher, you have to get custom engineering and use steel and reinforced concrete, which makes those units unaffordable to the common person. Our country has a conservative building establishment, by the way -- the studwall approach dates back to the 1820s, when the invention of automatic nail-making machines in the Pittsburgh area made connecting lots of little sticks, in effect, a fast way to build a house. Steel and concrete for tall buildings date to about 1880. Plywood and similar materials have become much more common since then, but the basics of the structural framework have not changed.
Other cultures have used other tensile and compressive elements, a major one being bamboo, for thousands of years. Hemp is a very strong natural fiber.
Western adhesives chemists have designed hundreds of resins, binders, and other compounds that could bring new natural/synthetic composites.
California could establish an advanced construction materials group in the Office of the State Architect, to begin winnowing and qualifying both materials and designs. Using those might then make possible a range of shapes, elevations, curves, cantilevers, light penetration into airy residential volumes, so that high density would come to mean something entirely different than San Mateo readers now imagine.
Peter Cross
San Mateo
Please purchase a Premium Subscription to continue reading.
To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account.
We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription.
A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means you’re helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much!
Only subscribers can view and post comments on articles.
Already a subscriber? Login Here
Sorry, an error occurred.
Already Subscribed!
Cancel anytime
Thank you .
Your account has been registered, and you are now logged in.
Check your email for details.
Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password.
An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the email address listed on your account.
No promotional rates found.
Secure & Encrypted
Thank you.
Your gift purchase was successful! Your purchase was successful, and you are now logged in.
| Rate: | |
| Begins: | |
| Transaction ID: |
A receipt was sent to your email.
(0) comments
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.