The (Almost) All-American Home

When Karen Lantz, a Houston architect, was in high school, the Armco steel plant where her father had worked for two decades shut down. “He was 47”. “It was tough.” He found other jobs, but the financial loss stung, and the family’s options became more limited. Lantz put herself through community college and then architecture school at University of Houston. Now 37, Lantz is a working architect, but in 2009, when she started planning her dream house in grip of a recession, her father’s experience weighed on her. People all over United States were out of work; if she bought American-made products for the house, she could do her part. But how far could she take it? Was it possible to build a house entirely of products made in America? Some things were easy. Karen Lantz traveled to a quarry in Lueders, Tex., to find chocolate-brown limestone. Marble chips made up her terrazzo came from Marble Falls. She found Heatlok Soy 200 foam insulation in Arlington, windows manufactured in Stafford. Other items required her to look further afield: Lantz bought shower drains from Iowa, a skylight made in South Carolina, hose valves made in Alabama, fences from California and baseboards from Georgia. She developed the skills of a private investigator. Some companies would claim “Made in U.S.A.” when they had just a sales office in U.S.; others claimed American provenance when they were assembled here from foreign parts, like the pool finish contained Australian sand. Lantz’s toughest battles were over what she calls “jewelry and accessories in architecture,” like appliances, faucets and lighting fixtures. “If you Google ‘made in U.S.A.,’ it can be bad,” she said. “It’s not high design. That’s what’s tough, and that’s what our industrial designers are weak on.” So it was with the edge pulls: handles that would fit flush along the face of cabinets made of shimmering, dark-hued sinker cypress reclaimed from Florida river bottoms. Karen Lantz showed me 2 such pulls. To my eye, they looked pretty much the same. Each had clean lines and a soft finish of gently weathered bronze. Each felt equally heavy in hand. “This one?” Lantz said, picking up the pull on left and turning it over for my inspection. “From Italy. 9 dollars.” She picked up the one on her right. “This one?”. “China. 4 dollars.” The U.S.-made pull that was closest to what she wanted cost $72. She called company after company trying to do better. When she asked why American pulls cost so much more than those made overseas, the answers ranged from “We make them here” to “It’s a classic.” Time passed; cabinet installers grew restless. Finally, Lantz gave in and bought Italian. (She has tried to avoid Chinese products since problems with contaminated drywall surfaced in the early 2000s.) “I needed 160 of them,” she explained. “It was a big price difference, I just couldn’t do it. I tried, but I just couldn’t do it.” Near completion on house, Lantz estimates she came within 90% of her goal. In addition to pulls, gave in to sinks from Germany and faucets from Italy, and when Lantz fell in love with solar panels designed in Colorado but manufactured in China, she threw in the towel. Lantz calculates that the cost of her Made in the U.S.A. house to a client, who would have to pay an architect, contractor, etc, would come in at around $250 a square foot, more than some custom luxury homes in Houston but less than most. Karen Lantz figures she made something of lasting value. “I built it to be here 100 years,” she said. “But if the day comes, it’s all recyclable” (source: NYTimes – 13/10/2012) 

REFLEXIONES EN TORNO A DOS EXPERIENCIAS

¿Qué factores permiten preservar la integración voluntaria entre naciones soberanas? A pesar de las profundas diferencias, existen elementos comunes entre las experiencias de la UE y del Mercosur. Ellos permiten plantear algunas reflexiones motivadas por las crisis que actualmente están encarando en sus procesos de integración. ¿Qué tienen de común ambas experiencias?: un espacio geográfico regional compartido por un grupo de naciones soberanas y conectadas entre sí; el carácter voluntario de una asociación entre naciones que no pretenden dejar de ser soberanas y procuran lograr objetivos comunes que tienen un alcance multidimensional –políticos, económicos, sociales, culturales-; la ausencia de una garantía de la irreversibilidad de la asociación pactada, a pesar de tener en lo formal un carácter permanente. ¿De qué podría depender la sostenibilidad en el largo plazo de la idea estratégica de trabajar juntas naciones que comparten un espacio geográfico regional?: la adaptación a la dinámica de cambios contextuales; la flexibilidad en los métodos de trabajo, fortaleza de algunos factores de sustentabilidad de la voluntad asociativa. ¿Qué criterios permitirían apreciar potencial de irreversibilidad de una asociación voluntaria entre naciones soberanas que comparten un espacio geográfico regional?: la precisión de los diagnósticos sobre las opciones de inserción internacional de cada uno de los países asociados; calidad de mecanismos de concertación de los intereses nacionales, y densidad de intereses ofensivos de cada uno de los asociados y, en especial, la identificación de los ciudadanos con el proyecto común. Tres son las conclusiones tentativas de una reflexión basada en la comparación de las crisis por las que están atravesando ambos procesos de integración: no existe un modelo único sobre cómo tornar sustentable en el tiempo la construcción de asociación permanente entre naciones soberanas que comparten un espacio geográfico regional; objetivos y métodos de trabajo conjunto deben ser continuamente adaptados a cambios contextuales; variable clave para explicar y predecir irreversibilidad de este tipo de procesos integración, calidad de estrategias de inserción externa de cada país participante (…..)

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