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| <back | home Sustainable Development: Dennis Allen's Intelligent Designs by Suzanne Arthur Allen Associates is not your run-of-the-mill general contractor. Which isn’t surprising, because Dennis Allen, who spearheads the Santa Barbara green building firm, is far from your average contractor. He was named Builder of the Year in 2004 by the Santa Barbara Contractors’ Association. Although his main business is building smart homes, Allen’s commitment to the environment goes far beyond the building aspect straight to the heart of sustainable communities. “Good design is essential,” he declares. “Good construction, and good use of resources. When you put all those together you can have sustainable development.” When talking about design, Allen is never simply referring to building design. He means applying conscious principles of design to houses, neighborhoods and communities in order to make all these interrelated components more livable, and ultimately more sustainable. Allen Associates has been praised and awarded numerous times for their generous contributions to sustainable development on California’s central coast. The firm’s work, though, extends beyond California to the Hawaiian Islands and into the Deep South. As he puts it, they are “not just working for the rich and famous.” After last summer’s savage hurricanes, Allen Associates acted as the main drivers on a Habitat for Humanity residence for a family in Bay St. Louis in southern Mississippi. “The elderly, uninsured homeowner is a grandmother,” Allen explains, “who lives on a fixed income of about $700 per month and is the main support for her extended family, who live with her.” The two homes on the family property were utterly demolished by Katrina. Working with Habitat for Humanity, Allen’s firm built the family a new house in three months, completing it just before Christmas at a cost of $90-95 per square foot (see photo below). Local Bay St. Louis city council members were impressed by the low cost and the house design, which fits into the Southern vernacular. So far, the house is the only one Allen Associates has built in the region, but with the city’s encouragement they are exploring the possibility of partnering with a Bay St. Louis building company to continue rebuilding in the heavily damaged port town. Since starting as a pioneer in solar home building in the mid-1970s, Allen has allowed his deeply rooted commitment to ecology be his guide. He says that when designing green homes, experience helps. Allen Associates aims to keep building processes and outcomes green while paying attention to health aspects, recycling and using materials as efficiently as possibly. As in the Bay St. Louis project, the firm is also sensitive to designing in the traditional architecture of the region in which they build. Allen learned early on to incorporate mainstream aesthetic values along with the sustainable elements of the buildings. Knowing that sometimes building green costs more, he has learned that many of his clients will take ecologically-friendly steps they may not have otherwise taken, once they have come to trust his firm on the use of sustainable materials. “As long as you know what you’re doing, and homeowners trust you to let them make up their minds, they’re usually open to greener building methods. In return, the new homeowners get unexpected benefits. Their monthly energy bills are reduced, and they’re living in a toxin-free environment. “Even where you have good outside air quality,” says Allen, “due to toxins in standard building material, the inside air can be up to 10 times more polluted than in downtown urban areas. It doesn’t have to be that way.” The term ‘sustainable development,’ according to Allen, could have been considered an oxymoron for the past 40-50 years: taking virgin land and building on it without considering how the process of building or the developing communities themselves affected the environment. “But we do need sensible housing,” he says. “We need homes that fit into communities, so food doesn’t travel far, and cultural amenities are close by.” Allen sees evidence that development is moving in a more sustainable direction. In keeping with the philosophy of sustainability, Allen’s firm tries to walk its talk. Instead of driving gas-guzzler trucks, Allen’s construction project managers motor around in Prius hybrids, subsidized by Allen Associates. There are currently ten Priuses in the company. Every month, employees who take the bus to work, carpool, or otherwise take a practical step toward sustainability, earn a ticket that can be entered into a drawing for a $100 cash prize. Allen confirms that good employees are motivated to work for a company dedicated to sustainability. They can be assured they’re being taken care of in a genuinely holistic way. They aren’t forced to work in a toxic atmosphere. Valle Verde is a retirement community of about 400 residents and 200 staff. The original campus is 40 years old, located in Santa Barbara on 65 acres. Community leaders recently embraced Allen’s proposal to turn it into a totally sustainable village. The Valle Verde leaders, in their 70s, 80s and 90s, few of whom would particularly call themselves environmentalists, welcomed the plan that will aim to reconvert the buildings over a 20-year period, using green materials and processes. Allen Associates will create buildings needing minimal maintenance, eliminate the use of pesticides, and in general scrutinize the entire community for wholesome qualities. Allen admits his firm is “blessed to do a lot of exciting projects.” Several years ago he participated in the master planning of Sedgwick Reserve, the largest of the University of California’s Nature Reserve Systems. Recently he’s been given the green light to build its main ranch house to platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards. There are only 12 platinum LEED buildings in the world. One is the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, on the UCSB campus. The Sedgwick Reserve ranch house will be the second LEED structure in Santa Barbara County. Another project near and dear to Allen’s heart is happening in the San Roque area in Santa Barbara. Working with a young, growing family, the firm is updating a 1950s house to state-of-the-art sustainable standards. They are adding another bedroom to the 1200-square foot house to accommodate a new baby, replacing windows and walls, installing an on-demand water heater for both space heating and domestic hot water, and using green building materials. Kept within the family’s modest budget, Allen is especially excited about this project because of its potential to become a model for responsible development in California and beyond. Suzanne Arthur is a regular contributor to HopeDance. See her other articles in this issue. She can be reached at sjarthur@gmail.com. <back | top^ |