Is Product Placement the Future of Sustainable Architecture?

Most buildings have a long lifespan, and in this age of environmental uncertainty it is more important than ever that the buildings we design are sustainable. However, many believe this change isn’t happening quickly enough. Enter Free Green, an American sustainable housing design firm, with an innovative solution which could speed up the transition to sustainable residential architecture.

Whilst many consider the role of the architect to be key in building design becoming more sustainable, the reality is that only 5% of homes have an architect involved in their design. But with 30% of homes built coming from stock plans, many of which are years old, Free Green believe that for housing design to become more sustainable, newer, greener stock plans will have a more positive impact than architects ever could.

In order to reach the biggest audience possible, and to provide the company with a unique selling point, Free Green decided to give away their sustainable stock plans at no cost. To generate income from their idea, product placement, a method normally used in film and TV, was integrated in all their plans.

Essentially, companies that produce sustainable products for housing construction can pay Free Green to have their designs featured with the hope that a percentage of those who use the plans will buy their goods. In order to qualify for a place on Free Green’s plans, all product must pass a selection of third party sustainability tests, as well as meet the company’s approval.

David Wax and Ben Uyeda, the company’s founders, believe:

Design isn’t a product or service, it’s a medium, and no one has ever looked at the house plan as a form of media.

Users can modify house plans online, with changes presented in a way that is easy understand. For example, improve a building’s insulation and you could see that the expense will increase mortgage repayments by $50 a month, but save $100 a month in energy bills, a method of presentation that Wax and Uyeda believe will encourage uptake of green housing improvements.

Since launching, over 44,000 plans have been downloaded and Free Green have become the world’s largest provider of house stock plans. Is product placement the future of sustainable architecture? It’s certainly worked for Free Green.

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The Box as a Product

Part 2 in the Series: ‘Can the Box Make the World a Better Place?’

On November 29^th 2007 Sainsbury’s announced they would no longer be packaging their Premium Chopped Tomatoes in cans. Instead, they would be using Tetra Pak’s ‘Tetra Recart’ package - a small rectangular box made from paperboard. Compared to a can, a box makes 33% more efficient use of space, because when transporting a can you are also transporting the unused space surrounding its cylindrical shape.

A Box is either a cube or a rectangular cuboid. It is capable of tessellating three-dimensional space, which means the solid can be infinitely repeated without gaps or overlap. A Sainsbury’s lorry full of cartons of tomatoes is basically one large rectangular cuboid containing hundreds of smaller rectangular cuboids arranged inside without gaps or overlap, and this minimal wasted space means the box is very spatially efficient. If box-like packaging was to replace cans on a large scale, the increase in spatial efficiency would mean fewer lorries on the road, and a smaller carbon footprint from our food.

With 343 people per square kilometre, Japan is one of the world’s most densely populated countries and efficient use of space is valued highly. So it is unsurprising that it was the Japanese who developed the square watermelon (seen here in a previous post). Its shape is achieved using glass boxes, and as with the Tetra Recart package, the benefits include easier shipping and storage. However, in this instance the product also becomes more functional:

Some people find [melons] a problem to store in their fridge or to cut because they roll around. These square melons will make it easier than ever to eat because they can be served in long strips rather than in the crescent shape. - Sean Poulter

So a box-like watermelon is more spatially efficient and more functional. But if the contents of a square box are not square, do we still see these improvements? A pizza is round, but a pizza box is not. As a result, there is still unused space; it’s just inside the box instead. So should we be using round pizza boxes?

John Harvey, inventor of the round pizza box, believes so: ‘it’s what a pizza box should look like, and it works so much better than what’s out there now.’ The circular box arrives at stores pre-assembled, and is stronger than the traditional pizza box. The round shape makes for a snug fit and removes the risk of a pizza losing its shape. However, production is complex and expensive, and it takes up more space in transit than the square box, which ships flat.

The simplicity of the traditional pizza box has allowed it to capture the market, and the economies of scale resulting from its success have only made it more competitive. But does this mean we are using an inferior product because of price? In this case it seems not. John Harvey may love it, but the round pizza box has received mostly negative feedback, including complaints that the snug fit makes access difficult and messy compared to the traditional pizza box. The square pizza box may have empty space, but the access it provides to the pizza means it is not unused.

So the box as a product and packaging can offer spatial efficiency, improved functionality, and economic benefits. But if we expand our interpretation of what the box is, do these benefits still exist? That question and more will be explored in Part 3.

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