A longer line for a shorter wait

We are currently working on two green retail stores, so the subject of waiting in line is something I have been thinking about a great deal lately.

Whole Foods has been experimenting with a new strategy for dealing with long line waits.

Their concept: the longer the line, the shorter the wait.

In it's New York stores, customers form a serpentine single line that feeds into an array of cash registers.

Banks have used a similar system for decades. But supermarkets, fearing a long line will scare off shoppers, have generally favored the one-line-per-register system.

Dilbert: The Green Consultant

The Minister of Information

Great interview with Edward Tufte, the godfather of information design.
His field is almost sui generis, containing bits and pieces of art direction, data-crunching, economics, historical research, and plain old expository writing. It’s often labeled “information architecture,” or “analytic design.” Tufte himself describes it many ways, but one is drawn from a classic piece of science writing: “escaping Flatland,” or using paper’s two dimensions to convey several more. Another, more acidic description: “getting design out of fashion and out of the hands of Microsoft.”


Be sure to check out the Case Study.

Eight Ways to Implement Green Principles into Your Practice

Kitchen & Bath Business Magazine interviewed me for this article on how to add green to your design business.. These are the same tips I suggest to all of the architects, engineers and designers we consult with to help them green their firms.

I welcome your suggestions and additions to this list...

Malcolm Wells: Underground Organic Architect

This article on one of my mentors, Malcolm Wells, the father of underground building.

More on Malcolm here.

I first discovered Mac through this book in 1985. I wrote him a letter and we have been friends since. Beyond the ideas, his sketches are so evocative and extraordinary.

Let’s Get Vertical

Common Ground has a great article on designing buildings as vertical landscapes.

Vertical farming reads like an idea from a 1950s science fiction novel: dedicate the top six or ten stories of a skyscraper to agriculture, use the building’s own redistributed greywater to fertilize the crops, and then transform the biomass waste from the farm into pellet fuel that, in turn, powers the building. Besides being carbon neutral and self-sustaining once it gets up and running, vertical farming’s other implications — less actual land needed for farms, less fuel needed to transport food — are far-reaching and inspiring. Last month, a story on the possibilities of vertical farming in New York magazine set the eco-blogosphere on fire — not bad for a concept that some architects claim is at least fifteen years away.

Let’s Get Vertical
Are “living buildings” a step to agriculture in the skies?
Read the article here