Is it finally time for the jewel box house?

"The built environment accounts for up to half the world's energy use, material consumption and toxic emissions." Bill Valentine, HOK

I have been waiting in vain for my demographic cohort, the boomers, to start building their promised "jewel box" homes. What I saw instead for the newly empty nests was a rush to McMansions - the bigger, the better. With the recent emphasis on building green, maybe the time has finally arrived. I recently discovered Bill Valentine's article on the Greener Building website: Voluntary Simplicity: Making Smaller Better, he asks that we "invest money into quality instead of size." As chairman of the large architectural firm HOK, he states the case succinctly and as a design architect, he knows that "innovative solutions have emerged from being forced to plan smaller, tighter, less expensive buildings."

Now, if all the NIMBY's of the world will only allow that to happen...