We have got a lot of things we feel you should be reading. First up on the hit parade? A fabulous article by Sam Strike and The Suburban and Wayne Times. She's right: why can't developers seem to care as much about adaptive reuse as other things? Next an interesting article in Philadelphia Magazine about Inga Saffron. Next? A major whine from a Main Line residential realtor and McMansion Specialist in Philadelphia Magazine - apparently, the economy is Matt Lauer's fault? (who knew?). We will also note that there are a couple terrific articles in Main Line Life about Ardmore we would love to promote, but can't yet find online....
What we've got
By Sam Strike

These days in construction, it’s often LEED this and LEED that.

The Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design rating system from the U.S. Green Building Council is indeed a way that builders are getting public props for utilizing sustainable and eco-friendly systems and building details.

Using daylight, low-VOC paint, recycled this-or-that: such new realities in building are welcome, should be applauded and will probably eventually be mandated (as they already are in some cities).

But there has been a type of “green” building that has in some ways gone unnoticed. It’s the back to basics, why-didn’t-I-think-of-that concept: not throwing away what is already there.

Apparently preservation isn’t just hyped by historians anymore.

Some area developers and architects are specializing, rather successfully, in “adaptive reuse,” which basically means using the whole or parts of existing structures instead of building anew.

James Campbell, of Campbell Thomas and Co. Architects and Planners, a firm that has undergone numerous reuse projects, was posed the question: what is so “green” about keeping up an old building?

For one, he said, it recycles materials.....“LEED certification is a great step forward in the U.S. but it should be combined with a mandatory regime of building deconstruction (rather than demolition) to conserve building materials,” according to Milliss.....In “The Green Issue” of Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, contributing editor Dwight Young penned a poem, “All there is to be,” .... www.nationaltrust.org, www.adaptivereuse.net,
www.nps.gov/history/hps/tps/tax

Philadelphia Magazine: Why Are Men Who Build Skyscrapers Afraid of This Woman?
Maybe because she isn’t afraid to call a much-hyped downtown condo “a Frankenstein mix of historical elements.” Which is how architecture critic Inga Saffron has become the Inquirer’s most powerful voice in the city
By Richard Rys

Surrounded by steel and glass, she stands in the lobby of the Comcast Center, gazing up and around, doing the mental calculus that comes naturally after eight years in this job. Inga Saffron takes a long look at Humanity in Motion, the installation by sculptor Jonathan Borofsky that fills this cavernous entryway.....Saffron isn’t just a critic — she’s a reporter and, often, an advocate in her weekly “Changing Skyline” column. Those roles muddy the journalistic waters at times, but in a city with a planning agency that’s asleep at the wheel and a tangled, ineffective zoning code, her words carry great weight. She not only applauds forward-thinking projects, like an aggressive remodeling of the Kimmel Center to draw more traffic, but pursues a vision of what Philadelphia could become. When Saffron wrote a five-part series on development along the Delaware River, she didn’t simply check off all the obvious blunders and squandered opportunities there — she saw lessons in how Louisville and North Jersey transformed their waterfronts, and took aim at a seemingly immovable object, Interstate 95, calling it a noose around the neck of Penn’s Landing. It’s not just architecture and aesthetics she’s writing about, but how the “built world,” as she calls it, affects us all in very real ways. Absent are the haughty academic pretensions some critics rely on. She knows those wouldn’t play here; they don’t for her, either. Instead, it’s her passion for cities — for this city — that drives her, making what could be a dull subject seem vital, demanding higher standards, and sending a message to every developer whose vision ends at the bottom line and every architect who plays it safe: Build at your own peril.

The Philadelphia Magazine article is very long and well worth the read.
How Matt Lauer Is Wrecking the Philly Real Estate Market
One of the Main Line’s star realtors has a bone to pick with the media
By Lavinia Smerconish

Hmmm...sounds like someone wants to be on the Today show?