Johanna Hoffman

Beauty and Sustainability

What is beauty?  Who “gets” it? Why have we, as a society, put so much stock in what is “beautiful” that we easily ignore our health, finances, family and other valued portions of our life to achieve that which is considered beautiful?

Let’s take the Green & Main Initiative for example.  As seen through the eyes of someone who lives in the neighborhood yet whose interests are such that they have come to appreciate the simplicity of freshly painted walls, 50-year guaranteed roofing shingles, newly paved concrete driveway and underground sprinkler system as guidelines to a beautiful project may see this initiative as anything BUT able to fit into any one of those categories.  Take yet another neighbor who has learned to appreciate abstract art, building history and aesthetics, sustainability and the “chi” they feel.  Neither neighbor feels that their outlook is particularly beautiful as individual components, but when each neighbors components are all married together, make the beauty they enjoy.

As quoted by Green & Main project innovator and owner, Chaden Halfhill, “People are starting to expect some shade of green in their housing like they used to expect a two-car garage or a certain number of bedrooms.”  Will this “shade of green” be enough to keep the variation of neighbors feeling it meets their individual ideas of beauty?  We certainly hope so.

Crosscut view of soil and live plant material for the vegetative roof.

Incorporating Green Beauty

One way the initiative is incorporating beauty is by the addition of a natural, vegetative roof.  Rooftop Sedum will be assisting Green & Main with the native, indigenous plant material needed to incorporate the efficiencies of the vegetative roof with a pleasing aesthetic look and feel.  As seen by the examples, vegetative rooftop designs can be easy to maintain.  Native plants are to be handpicked by Rooftop Sedum and professionally installed, per LEED and city specifications, and then maintained by the building owner, in this case Indigo Dawn.

Some of the benefits of having native plant material on your roof:

• More aesthetically pleasing than gravel, tar or asphalt
• Reduces the “urban island heat effect”
• Up to 40 decibel reduction in indoor noise, especially benefiting those who live next to an airport
• Helps reduce the risk of fire

Vegetative roof in an urban setting.

Rooftop Sedum is located in Davenport, IA.  Since its inception in 2006, they grow plants native to Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas.  Being a member of the USGBC (United States Green Building Council) was one of the primary reasons they were chosen to provide this product for the Green & Main Initiative.

It is with a great deal of time and patience that we have begun to see the progress on the ‘ole building at 19^th & Center.  It’s actually becoming quite pleasing.  Straight lines of the addition walls as they are being built handshaking with the dirt work being done for the foundation progress. “Keep it up boys, we are on our way!”

Beautiful?  We think so.

– Johanna Hoffman is a database administrator and project manager for Indigo Dawn and the Green & Main Pilot Project. She likes to make smoothies with avocados and fruit, enjoying them in the evening on her second-floor patio.

Johanna Hoffman

Profiles in Green is an on-going series on how people incorporate or express sustainability in their lives.

Growing Up and Through

Green & Main, “a pilot project improving the renovation of an abandoned mixed-use brick building located at 800 19th Street in the Sherman Hill Historic District” (as described by sharegoodenergy.org), was just a rundown brick building that my friends and I used to drive by as we came from the city’s west side to hit “the loop.”

In the years since actively chasing boys at the loop, peppered with heart break, a few too many alcoholic beverages, late nights and a family with children who are now grown and following their own paths, I evolved from being a child growing up in the ‘70’s to early ‘80’s into an individual who is conscious of what I put in my body – both internally and externally.

I have made a number of life changes, each of which has left a mark someplace, much like a grove of trees leveled for parking expansion or driving down what used to be a “top notch” neighborhood to see that 1/3 of the housing stock is vacant, abandoned and generally an eye-sore. I did not want to be an eye-sore any longer (to myself or others I cared about) and I began to really evaluate my time here on Earth. Beginning with the impact I make by choosing the services I use, the products I purchase and where my money comes from, I began with me. Next, I looked at the people in my life and what I liked about them. I began to immerse myself in books and groups that supported my growing and changing interests. The long and short of it is that I began a more holistic approach to life.

Life Changes and Sustainability

More recently, I was temporarily living in a type of communal environment with a free-spirited Reiki master, whom I found through holistic connections. My personal interests in health, healing and the earth all manifested into one very obvious move for me to make – dump my then dead-end job in Pella that I commuted to daily (I might as well have picked Timbuktu) from Des Moines and apply at Indigo Dawn (the development company that owns Green & Main and is also responsible for producing the Natural Living Expo and its newest addition, the Healthy Living Expo). I was in HOG HEAVEN! I had sustainability on all levels at home and at my job.

This move meant giving up certain niceties like paid vacation, sick time and health benefits. However, I felt more at home and I was doing something I valued in all parts of my life. As a side note, years previously I had purchased a Victorian home in Riverbend and went through the multi-year process of restoring it. Because the house was on the National Register of Historic Places, I was able to apply for grants from the city and state.

So, take my interest in historic residences and couple it with holistic sensibilities and we have how I became interested in Green & Main. And, in the process…Whoa…I gained a life.

Editor’s note: For other comments by Johanna Hoffman, visit here.

– Johanna Hoffman is a database administrator and project manager for Indigo Dawn and the Green & Main Pilot Project. She loves to drum and to dance.