There’s an interesting story in the St. Pete Times about cigar factories and green building. It’s about architecture and building in the past using what we would call today “green” building techniques.

Here’s what an engineer who has renovated one of the factories says about the green side of the buildings:

Think of all the energy saved by not demolishing the structure and building a new one, he says. It’s recycling, in a big way.

Now, step inside. Built in 1903, long before air conditioning, early builders had to maximize ventilation in the building. Large windows span the walls. You can open them from the bottom half up, or the top half down, allowing for cross-ventilation.

“The building is inherently an energy-efficient building,” he says.

Notice its long eastern and western walls, and short north and south walls. Because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the building was designed to take in the minimum amount of heat, and the maximum amount of lighting.

Venture into the basement. It’s warm outside, but cool in here. That’s because of the airtight, 22-inch thick masonry walls, designed to keep tobacco leaves cool.

I took a class years ago in Sustainable Architecture and it was interesting to find out that many of the best practices were not new but had been around for ages and had recently been discarded. In the past, builders and societies had no choice but to conserve their resources, so that was the focus of their design. In modern, plentiful times, the focus became fast and cheap. Cheap is not always a bad thing. When it means the difference between sleeping outside and in a home, cheap is good. But sometimes cheap becomes expensive in the long run. This is when we have to reexamine our design focus.

Maybe it’s good to reuse existing buildings. Maybe it’s good to build smaller but use better quality materials. Maybe it’s good to not separate commercial and residential so much.

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