David Schrom from Magic joined us today to talk about Magic, an intentional community in Palo Alto. They are building a second residence on their campus, and would love to collaborate with us, sharing ideas and experiences.

Magic is overwhelmed with the hundreds of questions that come with designing a green building, and as luck would have it, our time has just opened up. This could be a great opportunity to apply our research conclusions, and find new research questions to explore. They could use our time and knowledge, and we could use their knowledge and connections. They’re dealing with exactly the same issues and questions that we are, and they’re doing it right now, making the decisions in the near future, and they’re open to all of our ideas. Essentially, the Magic residence could serve as a small scale test run for green dorm ideas, giving us the experience we need to make the Green Dorm that much better.

David has invited us to join them for supper at Magic, and we’re definitely going to take him up on it – I’m coordinating with him about specifics and will let you know.

 

Sam Says:

The Magic talk was very cool.  There are many opportunities to develop least cost life services solutions in a real building.  The house is designed within a tight budget framework which means that there is a rich opportunity for innovation.   Public transit is near the site.  The house currently has almost no insulation.  We could figure out an inexpensive way to install high R-value “Passivhaus” quality insulation.  

Solar energy for the site is difficult because solar panels are expensive.  We could get a hodge-podge of discount solar panels panels for the site and use micro-inverters to integrate all of the panels for optimum power production.