A company is using waste from
coal-burning power plants to
make bricks. The firm hopes
to reduce the amount of coal
ash sent to landfills, and,
at the same time, cut the amount
of energy used to make bricks.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
A company is using waste from
coal-burning power plants to
make bricks. The firm hopes
to reduce the amount of coal
ash sent to landfills, and,
at the same time, cut the amount
of energy used to make bricks.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The company, Calstar, says it wants to open several U.S. plants which would use fly ash in making bricks for construction and paving. The California firm says its method uses far less energy that traditional clay bricks that have to be heated at high temperatures.
Luke Pustejovsky is a Calstar executive. He insists the quality of fly ash brick meets industry standards.
“We spent 18 months and millions of dollars on durability testing with our own labs, with outside third party labs, and this is a brick that’s built to last.”
But a trade group, the Brick Industry Association, is cool to fly ash brick. The group says the product has not yet met the test of time. The group is concerned any problems that come up could discourage customers from using brick.
Lofts are no longer just structures with large windows and exposed brick. Lofts are quickly becoming a symbol of the lifestyle of the young, urban professional. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Many urban planners hope lofts will bring both people and money back to previously abandoned city centers. (Photo by Lester Graham)
In cities across the nation, old warehouses, factories and other buildings are being turned into brand new luxury loft apartments, and for many urban areas, those apartments are a big part of trying to get people to move back to cities from the suburbs. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:
Transcript
In cities across the nation, old warehouses, factories and other buildings are being turned into brand new luxury loft apartments. And for many urban areas, those apartments are a big part of trying get people to move back to cities from the suburbs. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has that story:
Abby Cook is taking a tour of the Union Square Condos.
“…finished the dining area, old basketball hoops and signs throughout the building, so…”
The condos are being built in what used to be a high school, and when they’re finished, the apartments will have a lot of the things that lofts are known for. They’ll have high ceilings, hardwood floors, big windows and exposed brick.
“It’s a great use of the building, it’s a neat idea and just the uniqueness, I think of it.”
Cook is excited about the idea of moving to downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. She lives in the suburbs now.
“Location is key, I think. Being that I am a young person, and I go out a lot, being close to downtown, just being close and the convenience is huge, just huge.”
Developers all over are building these kinds of lofts in empty city centers. That’s because lofts are thought to attract a group that’s become kind of a holy grail to urban planners: young, educated, professionals like Abby Cook. They’re often willing to live in neighborhoods that other affluent people shun, and it seems, they love lofts. Julie Hale Smith is with Michigan’s housing development authority.
“Our main target goal was to increase population in our urban centers. When we looked around at other cities in the country that we were emulating, we noted that one of their linchpins of revitalization was the redevelopment of historic buildings or the kind of faux-lofting of new, or newer buildings to provide that kind of lifestyle, that kind of urbanist lifestyle for folks that chose to live in those kinds of dwellings.”
You hear the word “lifestyle” a lot when you talk about lofts. In fact, they’ve become almost synonymous with a certain lifestyle, and not just in the minds of developers and urban planners.
FLAHERTY: “When you think of loft apartments, what words do you think of?”
PERSON 1: “Urban living.”
PERSON 2: “Maybe urban contemporary types, younger…”
PERSON 3: “Young, urban, hip.”
PERSON 4: “Maybe en vogue for city living, kind of stylish…”
But what is it about lofts? Doug Kelbaugh’s the dean of architecture and urban planning at the University of Michigan.
“Lofts have a certain cache… they started in London and New York, where older manufacturing buildings or warehouses, in the case of London, were converted by urban pioneers, often artists, into large, open spaces, typically without separate rooms, and now it’s become sort of a lifestyle issue.”
But luxury lofts like Union Square are a far cry from the gritty artists’ lofts of 1970’s New York. They often have amenities like pools, gyms and game rooms.
“What will happen, is you’ll come up this stairway – there’ll be a landing here – and then there’ll be a second stairway that goes up through the roof to your private rooftop deck…”
Developers often like to call any apartment with big windows and exposed brick a “loft.” University of Illinois Geographer, David Wilson, says it’s all a matter of marketing, that developers aren’t just selling an apartment, they’re selling an identity.
“Developers and builders look at them and they see certain physical attributes: high ceilings, large, expansive windows, and so forth, and they seize upon the idea of marketing these physical attributes. And the marketing process hooks up to the notion of, ‘Let’s play to the identity of these people. Let’s make them appealing, let’s make them attractive.'”
So when people see apartments that look like lofts, they don’t think about washing those big windows, they think of having the hip, urban lifestyle that the windows imply. Take Hannah Thurston. She’s a 23-year-old student. She and her husband are putting down a deposit on one of the Union Square apartments.
“I’m hoping that the other people moving in will be great neighbors. Obviously, we’ll have a lot in common being young professionals, obviously there are a lot of nice perks.”
But whatever developers’ motivations, and whatever people might think of them, lofts are succeeding at one thing: they’re bringing at least some new people many of the nation’s abandoned city centers.
Instead of a traditional classroom, the students of Goodwillie Environmental School are learning outside. (Photo by Michel Collot)
Most 5th and 6th graders right now are enjoying outdoor activities during their summer vacation. But at one public school, the outdoors is part of the curriculum, year round. The school aims to turn kids who love the outdoors into lifelong stewards of the earth. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:
Transcript
Most fifth and sixth graders right now are enjoying outdoor activities
during their summer vacation, but at one public school, the outdoors is
part of the curriculum, year-round. The school aims to turn kids who love
the outdoors into lifelong stewards of the earth. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton
reports.
(Sound of sawing wood)
Sawing logs is hard work, especially for fifth graders like Amelia, Leoni,
and Taylor. The results can be seen in this rustic, but sturdy log cabin
overlooking the Goodwillie Environmental School. The cabin was built almost
entirely by the fifth grade class in half hour shifts, because the work is
so demanding.
“We worked on the chinking, the floor inside here – I did that
chinking! And then we worked on the floor inside here – and
when we get enough bricks, that’s what the fireplace is going to look like.”
The students get most of their instruction in science, math, history, and
other subjects as they hike through the woods or work on an outdoor project
like the cabin. Of course, they spend some of their time in the classrooms
in the southwest Michigan school. But today, volunteer George Stegmeyer is
building a kiln, where he will fire raw bricks for the cabin’s fireplace. The
bricks were made by the students with mud they dug from the grounds.
Stegmeyer explains how the hot air will move through the kiln and then blast
through the chimney.
“Just like firing pottery, it reconfigures the molecules so that they are no longer water-soluble.”
The students call Stegmeyer “grandpa,” an example of the extended family
atmosphere of the school. Only about fifty children are selected each year:
the ones who show a passion for the outdoors. Parent Peter Chan says it’s
not for every kid, but he wishes all school districts had an option like
this.
“I spent from sunup to sundown, most of the time, I can remember playing outdoors, if not exploring
the fields, the farmer orchard, or the woods by my house. Unfortunately
today, children don’t have that experience.”
Chan went to a similar school when he was young. He’s now a meteorologist.
He’s enthusiastic about his son having the same opportunity. Some of the
parents might worry that their child could fall behind in traditional
coursework here. But fifth-grade teacher Rick Gillett says there’s nothing
to fear. Students consistently score one hundred on the state’s annual standardized
test, all without “teaching to the test.”
“For instance, in the science test, when you get into the physics, in inclined planes and pulleys,
when you’ve actually used them in building the log cabin, it makes sense. You really understand how
the physics work.”
Gillett says he doesn’t expect every student in the outdoor school to become
a biologist or forest ranger, but he does expect the school to make a
lasting difference. He says some of his former students have come back
to see him when they’ve reached college age. He says that’s when it really
seems to sink in how much they learned here.
“I really do… I think that once it’s in your heart you’re never going to get it out of
there.”
That already seems to be the case with most of the students. Fifth-graders
Spencer and Evan can’t wait until sixth grade, when they’ll have a chance to
tackle a project in the Native American village that’s tucked into the woods
below the log cabin. They show off the two buildings that previous sixth
graders built: an Ojibwa smokehouse and a winterhouse.
“This is the inner bark of basswood it basically ties whole thing together, holds it up. These go
down about five feet into the ground, these go down about ten feet into the ground, so as you can
see it’s very, very sturdy.”
This fall, a brand new group of fifth graders will arrive at Goodwillie
Environmental School. They’ll take up where the last class left off and
build the fireplace for the cabin. Along the way, they will also pick up
the knowledge, experience, and passion for the outdoors that will help them
be lifelong stewards of the earth in years to come.
Fly ash particles at 2,000x magnification.
