Casa de Roo Manifesto

We began saving magazine tear sheets during the summer of 1998. House hunting followed more than a year later. The criteria were straightforward: a view attached to a habitable house not to exceed our stated budget (never mind what the bank says we can afford). Selecting 2007 as a good year to start planning the remodel, we moved into our humble lakeside home on June 30, 2000.

While our desires (mine, at least) were aesthetics-driven, reality soon took over. The previous owner was a do-it-yourself-wronger. The deck is decaying and the roof was bad to begin with. The 20 skylights? Don’t get me started! Of course, they leak. Now the bathroom ceiling does, too. Ahead of schedule, the remodel went from daydream to destiny.

Earlier this year we began sifting through the hundreds of pretty pictures of modern homes and culling the collection down to a more manageable pile. Our style remained consistent over the years and we scanned in our top picks to provide inspiration for the future. Then we analyzed the current state of the house, documenting it all in a photo book called, “Everywhere you look: Beauty!” A highlight is our new topographic survey. Lakeland Surveying made this first major investment in the addition as much fun as buying art (they are also the brains behind EvilHot brand Habanero Hot Sauce).

Countless drafts later, weighing in at 37 pages, the modern dream house “Manifesto” was to prove an excellent tool for articulating our needs and vision.

Radical Industrialist is Rock Star of environmental ethics

An audience more passionate than Shakira fans after a satisfying concert stood and clapped. And clapped. And clapped. Minutes later, the crowd of business people, academics, students and government workers was still clapping. Who was the self-styled Radical Industrialist inspiring such an exuberant standing ovation?

Ray Anderson.

I first learned about the Founder & Chairman of the Board-Interface from the book and movie, The Corporation. As a Dwell Magazine subscriber, I’ve long desired his eco-friendly FLOR™ modular carpeting.

His Friday breakfast presentation, “Mid Course Correction,” was sponsored by the Silberman College of Business’ Institute for Sustainable Enterprise at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Now a “recovering plunderer of the earth,” he began transforming his company in 1994. While the status quo is “a powerful opiate,” Anderson notes that complying with the law is not an environmental vision. Already reducing net greenhouse gases by 10 percent since 1994, Mission Zero compels Interface “to eliminate any negative impact ... on the environment by the year 2020.”

The Kyoto Protocol calls for industrialized nations to reduce their collective greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% below their 1990 baseline from 2008 to 2012. My country refuses to ratify the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, stating it “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.” Meanwhile, Interface’s sustainable design provided a “wellspring of innovation,” not to mention good PR and profit.

Anderson tells us, “We are each part of the web of life and we have a choice to make during our brief time on this planet: to hurt it or to help it.” Now I must determine my role in helping.

Good design helps us remember

I awoke on Monday with my heart heavy and declared a news blackout. Instead of hearing about September 11 from a variety of thoughtful angles on NPR, John P. Strelecky read me his book, The Why Café.

Question one, “why am I here,” is still inspiring internal discussion. Question two, “do I fear death,” was easy to answer, even on the fifth anniversary of such a tragic day. “No.” Perhaps the events in 2001 helped me live my life so that the answer would today be, “no.” Hours were no longer something to “fritter and waste … in an offhand way” (Pink Floyd, “Time,” Dark Side of the Moon, 1973; Lyrics). But was I fulfilled (question three)? That, too, would require more pondering.

Waking before 5 a.m., I looked out the window and tried to make sense of the thin band of light glimmering across the lake. Following it up to the heavens, I stared in wonder until the answer made its way to my consciousness: Tribute in Light (Wikipedia). Elegant. Simple. Powerful. Appropriate. Good design! I stood barefoot on the deck in the 51°F chill to admire the shaft of light (two merged into one from my vantage point in Morris County, NJ) and the sparkle of the stars while route 80 hummed in the background.

I remembered seeing the smoking towers from my office window, smelling the acrid air, not knowing the fate of the people (or the world), looking up into a sky devoid of airplanes in this busy section or airspace. Watching the lightening sky, I spied the red port side light of a small jet. Gradually, the sunrise replaced the 88 searchlights. A new day.