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There are drawbacks to this unbudgeable stubbornness, of course. Despite the inventiveness that it accompanies, it is at its roots a resistance to change. And the changes that the society has shown itself willing to make so far are small ones. They do not inconvenience in serious ways. Yes to insulation, no to public transportation. Write to the nice people at Vermont Castings for a Defiant wood stove brochure, set aside, for the moment, the necessity to think through a profound unease about nuclear power and a disbelief in the quick fix of synthetic fuels. Get through the winter, and make the tough decisions later.
This season of makeshift and grumbling, however, may turn out to have been the period in which the U.S., without really noticing that its attitudes have shifted, passed a balance point toward the acceptance of solar energy. A principle of architecture's postmodern school is that architecture is not an instrument of social change; it reflects social change. If that is true, then the solar age may be on its way. In San Diego County, all new residences built after Jan. 1, 1980, must have solar hot-water heaters. In Santa Fe, solar-home builders Wayne and Susan Nichols estimate that a combination of air-lock entries, good insulation and solar heat radiating from a green house and rockbed system houses could reduce heating costs by up to 90%. When the town fathers of Soldiers Grove, Wis., voted to rebuild their often flooded town well above the Kickapoo River, they instructed the architects to design a thermally efficient community, with solar heat in municipal faculties, a supermarket and housing project for the elderly. In Middletown, R.I., a 2,700-sq.-ft. dwelling gets its heat from a passive solar design incorporating a solarium and uses no conventional heating system whatsoever. Its architect, Lee Porter Butler of San Francisco, has built 14 other similar houses, has 95 more in the planning and construction stages, and guarantees that if his heating ideas do not work satisfactorily, he will install a conventional furnace. Across the country, some 200 houses have been built incorpo- rating the heat-saving features —heavy insulation and windows that face south—of the Illnois LoCal house, designed in the mid-'70s by University of Illinois ar chitects and engineers.
Engineer-Architect Fred Dubin, who considers conservation "a national security issue," is currently engaged in 75 energy-conserving projects involving new and existing buildings. He is developing an integrated energy system for large buildings that uses wind and photovoltaic cells for generating electricity, then recaptures waste heat from the cells for heating water. The imaginative Dubin has also conceived a vast underground heating and cooling system for Washington's Market Square Development complex.