Do a Google search for the expression "going local" and it will take a fraction of a second to find more than a half billion results. Most relate to food, but issues of economic stability, business development, community identity, cultural conservation, and environmental sustainability are intricately woven into the public’s thirst for local choices.

Consider the farmer’s market. It is the fastest-growing food retail category in the U.S., and an embodiment of the local movement. These markets are critical to participants in the 100 Mile Food Challenge, which urges people to eat only food grown, produced, and sold within one hundred miles of their home. When food from the world over is so easily and predominantly available, how feasible is it to eat within those confines? Could the same kind of challenge be explored for architecture?

As a southern California resident, I have access to at least five nearby farmer's markets, and one of the most agriculturally productive regions in the world - the California Central Valley - is fewer than two hundred miles away. With some minor compromises, sourcing all my food from within a one-hundred mile radius is achievable. But would the task be as easy for someone living in Las Vegas, surrounded by desert, or in Hawai’i, surrounded by water? The compromises there would not only have to be more extensive, but also more significant.

When it comes to buildings, the situation is the same. The US Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program rewards points for sourcing products within a five-hundred mile radius. I know first-hand that for some locations those points are unattainable. Two years ago I designed a retail store located in Miami Beach, and when I struck a five-hundred mile circle around the project site, half of that area was ocean, while the other half was in Everglades National Park, also largely under water. Locally sourced building materials were simply not an option.

Despite obvious barriers like that, there are still a number of strategies that can be implemented to localize architecture. Starbucks has been testing a new concept that attempts to make meaningful and authentic connections to the communities being served by their stores. Naming the stores based on location - 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea, for example - the retailer locally sources building materials, employs local artisans and craftspeople to build custom components, and highlights culturally relevant community attributes through store architecture and interior design.

What can you do if you are not designing new stores for a global retailer yet still prefer to source local building materials and services? In just the past three years a number of web-based services have been created to help facilitate salvage and waste reuse. One of them is essentially a dating service for resources; another focuses exclusively on materials salvaged through building deconstruction; a third is an on-line community that has facilitated a crowd-source listing of projects and products deemed worthy of consideration and which is moving toward an emphasis on LEED.

And the options for innovative local sourcing don’t stop there. Please join me on December 9, 2010 at 9:00 a.m. PST for a free webinar titled Localizing Architecture: New Thinking In Sustainable Materials, where I’ll review case study examples of local sourcing successes, and examine existing companies, services, tools, and strategies that can help architects, designers, contractors, and home-owners source local, and ideally, sustainable materials.

About the Author
Kevin has worked in the retail industry for more than twenty years, championing cutting edge design, carefully integrated architecture and store décor, creative brand development, insightful business strategy, inventive conceptual approaches and innovative use of materials and production methods via key projects for Tesco’s Fresh & Easy, Whole Foods Market, Kroger Co., and Wegmans.

Kevin founded the L.A. design and consulting studio thread collaborative. His team researches, develops, designs, and writes about innovative strategies to achieve sustainable building development.

He educates and lectures from local, regional, and national platforms, including UCLA Extension, SCI-Arc, The Bartlett, and FMI, AIA, ASID, IRDC, and Neo-Con events. He developed The Climate Project’s Built Environment Module, a slideshow of current technologies and strategies for better buildings. Kevin is a member of VMSD magazine’s editorial advisory board. His architectural models and drawings are in the permanent collection of Architecture and Design at SF MOMA.