Pliny Fisk III
Pliny Fisk 1944-2026
I was in the back and away from my phone when it began to ring or whatever it does now. Rarely do I make an effort to get to it. If it's important, they'll leave a message, but this time I ran to answer like a teenager in the sixties. It was GV.
The moment I heard the emotion in her voice, I knew what words were coming:
"Pliny passed away last night."
She gave me some details and I asked if he passed peacefully, and she said yes.
Given that I am the Godfather of her son Ariel, I asked if I can drop by in a few hours and bring some food for the family. Three out of the four kids were already here with grandkids and all.
I met Pliny Fisk 50 years ago in the architectural lab at the University of Texas. We were both building passive solar homes at the time and he was going to use an earth-air exchanger to help cool the house. I was considering doing the same with my half buried replica of a 19th century Texas ice house.
It was in the crucible of exploration and scientific adventurism that we forged our friendship. His infectious enthusiasm was his superpower. There were always new things, new possibilities, new discoveries. Sometimes, perhaps even often, they didn't work or they weren't practical. The earth/air exchangers turned out to be legionaires disease breeders.
But he was a fountain of ideas and hope and change.
This from Texas Architect:
Driving down FM 969 in Austin, one would never imagine that just off the road lies one of the world’s most influential and progressive centers for sustainable architecture and planning: the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, known colloquially as Max’s Pot. Founded in 1975, Max’s Pot is run by Pliny Fisk III and his partner, Gail Vittori, along with a rotating cast of overall-clad designers who can be found around the center—some drafting, others welding.
Fisk, who bears a remarkable resemblance to both Albert Einstein and Anton Newcombe, studied at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s, where he earned master’s degrees in both architecture and landscape architecture. Exposed to Louis Kahn, Ian McHarg, Ross Ashby, and others, Fisk became fascinated with systems thinking and the natural environment as they relate to the built environment, developing a rich architectural philosophy early in his career.
Originally called the Laboratory for Maximum Potential Building Systems, the CMPBS office was first built for the University of Texas School of Architecture in 1973. Fisk, along with his then-partner, Daria Bolton Fisk, received the university’s approval to establish an architecture laboratory focused on forward-thinking design pedagogy, green building, and hands-on construction. True to the philosophy of green building from the outset, the Fisks rejected UT’s plan to equip the lab with standard electricity, running water, and cooling, choosing instead to figure those systems out themselves.
Soon after its opening, however, UT began to distance itself from the Lab. Tensions peaked in 1975 when a letter arrived from the United Nations inviting the Fisks and students to present at Habitat ’76 in Vancouver. The letter was addressed to “Max’s Pot, School of Architecture, UT Austin”—by then the accepted nickname for the Lab. The university had a fit over the use of this unauthorized moniker, to which Fisk famously replied, “Don’t worry—it’s just the United Nations, after all.” That same year, the Laboratory for Maximum Potential Building Systems became the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, an independent nonprofit."
I was on the Board of the Center in those early days. I was the auctioneer at several fund raisers. Occasionally, Pliny would give me a chance to represent the fledgling center at a Solar Conference. And in so doing, he brought me into the discussions and consciousness of those worlds.
And it would lead to my speeches and presentations throughout the Americas and in Europe.
This from wikipedia:
Pliny Fisk III (May 30, 1944 – July 27, 2026) was a co-founder and co-director of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (CMPBS),[1] a sustainable design and planning organization established in 1975. Fisk also served as Fellow in Sustainable Urbanism and Fellow in Health Systems Design at Texas A & M University, where he held a joint position as signature faculty in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Planning.[2] Fisk previously held positions at Ball State University, the University of Texas at Austin, Mississippi State University and the University of Oklahoma.
But Fisk was no ivory tower academic.
When the Lo-Vaca Gathering Company shut off the natural gas supply to the small town of Crystal City, Texas, in the fall of 1977, Fisk developed the idea of using Army surplus wood stoves and abundant mesquite for heating. By January 1978, Crystal City residents had installed nearly 1,000 wood stoves.
In subsequent years, the Center led an effort to manufacture and install inexpensive solar hot water heaters using salvaged materials. The production of the solar collectors also helped bolster the job market of Crystal City.
Somewhere in there, I remember going down to Crystal City to get Pliny out of jail. He was being held for exciting the natives.
In 1983, Fisk was sponsored by the Center for Investigation and Documentation of the Atlantic Coast (CIDCA) to set into motion a large scale indigenous housing program for the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast. Fisk's goal in the project was to draw upon the available natural and human resources of the region to address an extreme housing shortage.
In 1991, the Texas Department of Agriculture (and Laredo Junior College) hired Fisk and CMPBS to design and build a demonstration farm (outside the South Texas city of Laredo).
In 2002 Fisk was awarded the U.S. Green Building Council’s first Sacred Tree Award in the public sector category.[18][19] He was also a recipient of the Passive Solar Pioneer Award (from the American Solar Energy Society)
All of this would have been impossible without GV. (Gail Vittori), his long time partner and co-director of the Center. For Gail's contributions were and are critical.
But perhaps most importantly they should be recognized as the creators of the Green Building Programs that are in so many communities and cities today.
For in 1991, Fisk and Vittori developed "A Conceptual and Contextual Framework for the City of Austin" that served as the basis for the formation of the world's first municipal green building program (now operating as Austin Energy Green Building).[15][16] The cooperative effort earned the United Nations Earth Summit Award for Exemplary Public Environmental Initiative, in 1992 (the only United States organization to receive recognition at the Earth Summit).
At the large late afternoon gathering at the Center on Wednesday, perhaps 30 people spoke after Gail thanked everyone for coming. All those there had some connection with Pliny and Gail that was deep and personal.
For me, I spoke of Pliny's power to inspire us to do the important things and to strive to make things better, And I reminded us all that here in Texas we have about 40 GWs of Wind, almost 40 GWs of Solar, 20 GWs of storage. That's enough to provide over 50 % of our power on many of our days.
The record will show he made a difference during his walk with us.
And that he brought us Serious Commotion.
That to have known him,
was a Grace.
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Labels: advanced tech, climate change, earthfamily, our living space, personal philosophy, save the planet
posted by oZ @ 3:40 PM
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