Hockenberry at Dwell on Design: What percent of this conversation about sustainability will be permanent vs. fad in 10 years?

Geoff Manaugh: We won't need to talk about sustainability issues because they'll be the norm. 89%.
Frank Harmon: We're losing the battle, houses are treated like a box of cereal. 5%
Lorcan O'Herlihy: There's a way to go. 50%.
Gwynne Pugh: There's been a fundamental paradigm shift. 30-40%
Reed Kroloff: It depends on the people in the press, to change public opinion. 30%. It also depends on the government to create a tax incentive and energy costs have to keep rising so Americans keep paying attention. And, it depends on you.

That's a good way to end this episode of Dwell on Design, and also, by starting to think about the next one: June 6,7 & 8, 2008 in...Los Angeles (woohoo!).

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Coverage from Life Without Buildings, PrairieMod [Day 1] [Day 2], BLDG BLOG, Inhabitat [Day 1] [Day 2]

Frank Harmon at Dwell on Design: Dwell likes to write about prefab homes and we have plenty of prefab homes in North Carolina. This is one of those North Carolina Dwell homes. Except we like to call it a trailer.

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So they've mushed together the final speakers at Dwell on Design, making for a kind of "greatest hits" panel on regionalism. Michelle Kauffman is not here, but we do have Reed Kroloff, Gwynne Pugh, Lorcan O'Herlihy, Frank Harmon and Geoff Manaugh, whose BLDG BLOG gets major Hockenberry praise. (PS: The noise from the exhibition space surrounding the conference area just got deafening as we're over time and it opened to the public at noon.)

After Frank Harmon's fascinating slide show of his North Carolina projects, Reed Kroloff (former dean at Tulane) gives a report from New Orleans on the challenges of defining a new and appropriate regional architecture for the city. Look for the Sundance Channel show Architecture School that chronicles the school's projects. Now for the Q&A.

Hockenberry plugs BLDG BLOG again with a question tacked on the end but Manaugh kind of skirts it, saying he's most interested in regionalism due to the fact that the weather's changing--regionalism is essentially climate-appropriate architecture and it will need to adjust. He talks about a map of Europe published in the Guardian based on potential climate zones in 2071: London will have the weather of Lisbon. Now to LOH, who sees regionalism as connectivity to the area--and responsibility to take private outdoor spaces and make them public in the right way.

Then Hockenberry asks Pugh to guess which city has the highest foreclosure rate and he guesses Irvine (dude, Pugh, what do you have against Irvine?), but the answer is Las Vegas, making it the multi-faceted epitome of a non-sustainable community. LA planning director Gail Goldberg gets namechecked for her "city of villages" concepts for San Diego as a good example of a sustainable community.

There's major blog love for BLDG BLOG again from Hockenberry but by now we think it's pretty obvious he doesn't read it. He asks Manaugh if he writes the blog to help people get information about how to transform their communities but Manaugh says that's not really the intention, it's more conceptual. Like, hello? BLDG BLOG? That's one of them smart blogs.

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Yay, someone's finally going to talk about LA at Dwell on Design! And he's certainly the man for the job; Lorcan O'Herlihy has come armed with "Double Edged Density." Of course the man is talking about the nascent urbanization of our fair city. Cry as much as you want about it but the LA single family house is no longer affordable. The LOH is gonna lay down some density solutions.

LOHA creates their residential projects strategy they call contingent planning, that physically engages the city using nine different principles. Working closely with John Chase, urban designer for the city of West Hollywood, LOHA is working on or has completed four great projects in WeHo--The Willoughby, The Formosa, The Gardner and Habitat 825, the sometime-controversial residential project next door to to R.M. Schindler's Kings Road House. Progress on each could be seen during a quick spin on your bike or at the LOHA website.

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MIT's William J. Mitchell presented one of the school's Smart Cities projects at Dwell on Design, the City Car. While not a replacement for full-size cars or trucks, it's an easier way to get around an urban area that could be rented at transport nodes (like the bike-sharing systems in place now). It's teeny tiny--so small there's no room for a steering wheel, you control it with a joystick. There are electric motors in the wheels, which are omnidirectional and braking, and computerized navigational systems that can intelligently move through the city. And it folds and stacks like a shopping cart into an electric charging platform, which would hypothetically be wired into solar panels on the roof of a nearby building. It has such a small footprint that a typical Manhattan block that could hold 80 cars could hold six times that many City Cars.

When talking about a prototype folding scooter they're testing in Taipei, Mitchell called it "our little version of Optimus Prime." Complete with a Michael Bay soundtrack, we hope.

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Master of ceremonies (and of our hearts) John Hockenberry opened up this morning's Dwell on Design session with a film he made for environmental entertainment website Blue Egg. In this episode he tries to stump MIT students by asking them to name five greenhouse gases. You can see all Hockenberry's videos including a hilarious discussion of "peak oil."

See what happens when you bring a hot tub to a design conference? Mayor Gavin Newsom jumped in after this woman led the way out to the post-programming party after his surprise speech. Blue skies and warm breezes draped over Dwell's outdoor showroom--a refurbished parking lot with all traces of asphalt expertly converted into prefab lots and patio furnishing vignettes. There were strappy chaise lounges, shiny glass shards that crunched underfoot like shattered bottles, squares of penny tile over the bars (fabulous idea), and a DWR Airstream (designed by none other than Dwell founder Lara Hedberg Deam's hubby Chris Deam).

We commiserated with the Chronicle Books squad (and UnBeige readers!) Jodi Warshaw, Christina Amini, and Alan Rapp (who we wrangled into snapping these photos for us, merci). LA editor Frances Anderton introduced is to more of the Dwell crew, including pres and publisher Michela O'Connor Abrams, and editors Amber Bravo, Aaron Britt (who used to work for word god William Safire!) and new hire Geoff Manaugh, who's adjusting to San Fran life quite nicely. He's got the intellectual take on the conference over at BLDG BLOG. We're also reading Emily Pilloton's coverage on Inhabitat but haven't found her curled up in a Fatboy yet.

The orange human crock pot above, by the way, is by our friends at Dutchtub, comes in six colors, and yes, that's a little skillet to sear your grass-fed bison steaks while you prune up appropriately.

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You heard it here first, Gavin Newsom is scheduled to make a surprise appearance at the Dwell on Design conference momentarily...we hear he's quite the Dwell fan, too.

UPDATE: He's here! Giant posse trails into the room, Newsom shakes hands with Dwell editor Sam Grawe.

Design and sustainability minded San Francisco residents, apparently all you have to do is ask your mayor to do something green, and he'll do it. And he's very proud that he does whatever he wants and doesn't have to ask permission from Arnold, Congress or Air Force One.

According to a raspy-voiced Newsom, San Francisco is the greenest large city in the US, had an alternative fuel taxi fleet before anyone else did, and has more solar projects than other places in the nation. They also have a 69.1% recycling rate, one of the highest in nation, and even though it pisses off Newsom's "good friends" at grocery chains, they're still saying no to plastic bags. In the works: Capturing the natural energy of SF Bay's tidal flow by building underwater wind farms, and an ambitious green building program to get more architects and developers to achieve higher LEED certifications.

Now, the architecture bonus round: Not bad! He ticks off building after building, architect after architect, LEED certification after LEED certification, even namechecks Frank Gehry. Newsom claims Gehry said he would never ever do a building in SF, and now they're trying to get him to consider it. Because you're not a world-class city unless you get Gehry.

Triple word score: He's a subscriber. "Politicians usually lie about that stuff," says Newsom. "But I actually am a subscriber." We think we're in love.

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Gwynne Pugh at Dwell on Design: In my schooling I really despaired planning because it was like nothing would ever get done, it was like herding cats. And I hate to say this, but at this end of my career, I really see the value of planning in making the biggest impact on communities.

Hockenberry: So you're staying architects have the ability to learn on the job? Wow, incredible! We're making the news today.

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The Dwell on Design schedule says Craig Hartman from Skidmore Owings & Merrill is supposed talk about the Treasure Island project which would make for a SOM vs. Pugh + Scarpa Navy Land Redevelopment Project Showdown, but it looks like he'll be going over their proposal for the Transbay Tower instead (which we like to call the Crystal Cathedral). Oh, duh: He's obviously trying to sway some more votes before the deadline. Way to work it, Hartman!

Ok, cool, now he's talking about Treasure Island (which we really hope they rename TI). The 400-acre island plopped in San Francisco Bay is a former Navy base that they've making into a mixed-use environmentally sensitive residential community. It will be connected with new ferries to the mainland, and linked with a bus system and possibly some alternative forms of personal public transportation. They've designed the grid of the city to maximize natural light and minimize wind. And they'll also have a community farm...inspired by Alice Waters! It all comes around.

Gwynne Pugh counters with Pugh + Scarpa's Navy project: a 15-acre Navy waterfront parcel in San Diego. With close proximity to the water it needed to serve at a gateway to the city with a relationship to the waterfront--"more like Nice," says Pugh. The developers came to them with a bad "Irvine-like" plan (OC residents, take that any way you'd like), so they converted it into a more pedestrian-friendly layout using the paseo/plaza model--so pedestrians could move through the larger buildings and still interact with the water.

In this Navy vs. Navy faceoff, we'd say Hartman and SOM win this one, because an island from the bottom up is cooler than revamping the San Diego waterfront.

But wouldn't it have been cool to have all the Transbay firms go head to head in some kind of McLaughlin Group blowout? We would pay money for that. Okay, back to paying attention.

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