Stories Published in Green Living

McDowell Sonoran Preserve: A Picture of Preservation

Green Living, April 2018

Scottsdale’s McDowell Sonoran Preserve (MSP) is the triumphant result of four decades of work by citizens and city, including the acquisition of more than a billion dollars of otherwise developable land. The preserve encompasses 30,580 acres and 195 miles of hiking/biking/equestrian trails in a sublime section of Earth’s most biologically diverse desert. Among the heroes of the preserve effort were legendary Mayor Herb Drinkwater, who was inspired in the 1990s by Phoenicians such as the late Senator Barry Goldwater, who helped set aside the Phoenix Mountains Preserve two decades before, providing miles of hiking and biking trails for a city reeling from sprawl. Desert EDGE, a proposed nature-education center inside the MSP has brought praise for its innovative virtual approach to desert education, though some have criticized it because, they say, it violates the terms and spirit of the agreements creating the preserve. Scottsdale City Council is awaiting the results of a citizen petition drive, due this July, to stop Desert EDGE from being built inside the MSP boundaries. Stay tuned for more.

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Celebrating Frank Lloyd Wright at 150

Green Living, June 2017

We mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Frank Lloyd Wright this year (1867−1959) for many reasons. He affirmed a truly American architecture, celebrating the unique topographies of our landscape, from the early Prairie Style, exemplified by the Robie House (1907) in Chicago, Illinois, through the later work in the Southwest such as Taliesin West (1937) in Scottsdale. He was innovative, too, such as building Fallingwater (1935) in western Pennsylvania for the Edgar J. Kaufmann family on a waterfall or designing the Guggenheim Museum (1959) in Manhattan as a spiral of galleries rather than in angular array. America’s greatest architect can also be lauded for pioneering ideas that helped promote today’s sustainable thinking, even though he would not have thought himself an environmentalist intent on world-saving. He was rather an architect intent on affirming the relationship between the built and natural environments –– a green thought for sure.

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The Clines: Recycling Arizona History

Green Living, January 2013

Arizona history and environmental awareness are both at home with the Clines, a Tempe family anchored in 150-plus years in state and territorial history. Their remodeled and expanded home, built in 1968, celebrates various influences: his growing up on a horse and cattle ranch near Payson in the Star Valley; her love of the Spanish Mission style; Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture; and the work of Greene and Greene, whose Arts and Crafts style inspires the work of Larry Langhurst and Bernie Becker of Phoenix-based Woodesign, which handcrafted the beautiful millwork. The design team also included the team of general contractor, R.D. Hendrickson, of Scottsdale-based Modern Group; Tony Sutton’s interior design firm, Est Est Incorporated, Scottsdale; and architect Joe Conk, AIA, principal of Fort Worth, Texas-based Conk Architecture.

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