The Builders

A cleaner environment starts at home and at work. Now, how's that headache?

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Tackling toxic environments one room at a time

The things we build our homes with! The late Nestor Noe founded San Diego-based AFM 25 years ago because he was tired of seeing colleagues at his paint company getting sick as a result of exposure to toxic materials. Then a new and even scarier problem emerged: More and more medical professionals were reporting that patients were suffering mysterious allergylike reactions to their everyday environments. AFM connected with doctors in the new field of environmental medicine and began designing a line of building and consumer products--paints, stains, wood finishes, sealers, cleaners--that would not sicken people with chemical sensitivities. As awareness about indoor air pollution rose in the 1990s, the company realized the size of the opportunity and embraced the green label wholeheartedly. Its products are available at green building supply stores nationwide.

Now AFM's standards for what makes a product "safe" or "nontoxic" are more stringent than those of competitors. "Chemically sensitive people are still something we're structured around," says CEO Sam Goldberg. "The goal is that anything we produce will work for those people." If that happens to result in a healthier environment for everyone, so much the better.

Modernism is coming your way--on a flatbed

There's a saying in the world of prefab housing: Having your house built on-site is like having your car built in your driveway. The point is waste. The building industry creates 136 million tons of waste annually, much of it excess materials left in the mud on the building site.

Architect Michelle Kaufmann is making a dent in that mountain of waste. Michelle Kaufmann Designs, based in Oakland, California, has helped to usher in the next generation of prefabricated housing: ecologically astute, energy-efficient, factory-built homes with modernist verve (and with approachable prices; the total cost of a home tops out at about $250 a square foot). Because they're built indoors after meticulous planning, construction waste is essentially eliminated. And the houses are beautiful, mixing elements such as geothermal heating and cooling systems with modern touches such as clerestory windows, Cor-Ten steel siding, and gliding glass doors. Her breakthrough design, the Glidehouse, is on display at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

Kaufmann has just purchased a 10,000-square-foot factory, the first facility in the U.S. dedicated to the construction of green prefabs. It will allow her to produce up to 50 houses a year, including a new line of designs, called mkSolaire, that are meant for smaller urban lots.

Sometimes the old ways are the best ways. Like when they don't cause liver damage

Croft Elsaesser knew what was causing his headaches. He worked in the building trades, applying decorative finishes to residential interiors with paints, shellacs, urethanes, and oil glazes. What all those materials have in common are volatile organic compounds, or VOCs--toxic chemicals that can damage the liver, kidneys, and nervous system. Elsaesser decided there had to be a better way. He began researching the way buildings were finished before the advent of chemicals and learned about the plasters that had been used for centuries in Europe, earthen clay mixed with sand.

Elsaesser has brought back that tradition with American Clay, the company he founded in Albuquerque in 2002. With the help of his mother, Carol Baumgartel, an interior designer and a ceramist, Elsaesser developed a line of refined clays receptive to most colors, in a range of textures, and containing none of those nasty VOCs. The materials quickly caught on among contractors in the Southwest, where people are accustomed to working with clay. And the company is fast developing a national presence. In 2004, the National Association of Home Builders honored American Clay for "a product that has the best potential to advance the cause of resource-efficient home construction." Sales for 2006 are projected to hit $2.5 million.

Elsaesser continues to look to the past for inspiration. He recently eliminated polypropylene plastic linings from American Clay's packaging in favor of flour sacks. And the best fringe benefit of all? No more headaches.

It's the wood that's actually a grass that's a darn handsome way to address deforestation and global warming

Environmentally oriented builders love bamboo. It is the world's fastest-growing woody plant (some species grow a foot a day), which means a bamboo stand can yield up to 25 times as much timber in a given period as a comparable stand of trees. It's also tough, so it's perfect for floors.

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