Swamp Yankee Architect: Recycling as a Lifestyle
Whether we like it or not, every architect is a recycler.
The Barn of Fun. Photograph by Bob Gunderson.
Whether we like it or not, every architect is a recycler.
The phrase “Swamp Yankee” is neither a diss nor a stereotype. Swamp Yankees lived in pre-20th-century New England. They were those poor folk who could only afford to live near water – where disease, vermin and bad weather regularly wrecked lives. Those folk never threw anything out that could be reused (someday). They bartered and they salvaged as a way of life. There was never waste (“waste not, want not”). Swamp Yankees made recycling a lifestyle. Sustainability was not a Green choice – it was the way they survived.
I am a Swamp Yankee Architect.
