A Conversation With Green Building Pioneer Dennis Allen

Dennis Allen founded Allen Construction in 1983 as a way to combine his love of the environment with his love of building, but also as a way to put his values into action. The employee-owned company in Santa Barbara is, like its founder, a nationally recognized authority on environmentally friendly building practices.

A community leader in every sense, Dennis has served as a member of the County of Santa Barbara’s Innovative Building Review Program, chairs the Dean’s Council of the Bren Graduate School of Environmental Science and Management at UCSB, is currently a board member at the Museum of Natural History, and writes the “Going Green” column for the Santa Barbara Independent.

Dennis spoke with Bluedot writer and editor Jim Miller. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jim Miller: What got you started in building, and green building specifically?

Dennis Allen: [During the Vietnam War] I was classified as a conscientious objector, and I did my alternative service in Europe, working a lot of the time in Eastern Europe and trying to build bridges between socialist Europe and the western part of Europe. And it was fascinating but difficult work. When I got back to the States, the Vietnam War was raging, and I just felt I had to do everything I could to try to bring it to a close, so I got a job [with the peace movement] up in San Francisco. 

[During that time] I audited a course down in Stanford that was about finite resources and global tensions and possible conflicts around them. In the middle of that course, the oil embargo of 1973 happened. And that got me — it got all of us in that class — to talk about solar energy and alternative energy, renewable energy. Through that, I got interested in harnessing sun for homes. Eventually, that led into my building and becoming what we for a long time called a green builder. 

JM: I understand a UCSB dean asked you in 1975 to build a solar house despite the fact that you didn't have any experience building.

DA: It was kind of good luck. I had talked to him about it and said, “You know, you ought to do a solar house since you're going to be doing a new house.” About six months after that, he called me and said, “I can't find anybody in Santa Barbara that knows anything about solar energy. Will you build me a house?” And I said, “Sure.” I got this neighbor fellow to come down with me, and the two of us built this house together, and it was the first solar house in Santa Barbara. It's still there.

JM: Thinking back on the past 50 years, do you feel like the building industry has made good progress?

We have made good headway. I mean, for those of us who are passionate about it, it probably never feels fast enough. But in the early ’70s, California started Title 24, which is an energy code, and every three years they have updated that code to make a requirement that every residence, especially new ones, but sometimes even remodeled ones if they're extensive enough, have to step up to a higher standard of building efficiency. And now that's evolved to where new houses have to be all electric, and have to be wired for solar, and many of them put on solar photovoltaics. Some of them are even doing battery backup so that they’re hooked to the grid, but they don't have to suffer brownouts and blackouts. 

I would have to qualify that to say that's mostly in California. It's happening in some other places, but not nearly as far-reaching as it is here. And California, in terms of building requirements for energy efficiency, and low toxicity, and using minimum resources, and clean water, and so forth, it's kind of leading the whole world. People from the state government are called upon to consult with other governments everywhere on the planet. That's pretty amazing.

JM: Have you had situations where embracing a new technology has backfired on you, or have they usually helped you?

DA: I can't say that I've really run into problems, but I've been, and our team has been, very, very thorough in the whole process of using a new material. We spent a lot of time not just relying on the manufacturer — because they always are doing very positive promotion of their materials — but also going through some of the building science institutes and the National Homebuilders Association, where we've gotten to know some of the top people who were doing research on these products. If they didn't know how the installation process went, they would give us names of other builders in the country that had tried [the products] out. We'd call them up and have a heart-to-heart talk with them about the pros and cons of using these products. In some cases, we spent quite a bit of time but ran into a dead end and said, “Well, this sounds too risky.” So I think that protected us from getting into trouble. Once you build something, you own it, even if it's the architect who designed it.

JM: Is there a lot of information-sharing in the green building space among companies that you might consider competitors?

DA: I always found that. And I always tried to be very open. In fact, I was pushing our contractors association here in Santa Barbara to move into greener things, and some other — I guess you'd say competitors — but fellow contractors would often ask questions, and I was always very open to share anything I knew. 

JM: Are there any building technologies or materials that you're particularly excited about right now? 

DA: Well, I guess I've shifted a lot of my thinking from just energy-efficiency and operational energy, which we've made a heck of a lot of progress on, to the point where you can have a zero-energy home or building now. But there's a lot of carbon that gets released from the whole building process. You probably know the term: embodied carbon [the carbon impact of the materials themselves]. A lot of my interest and attention is trying to really bring that down and move into what you might call negative-carbon buildings, so that the buildings actually capture and store more carbon than they give off in the building process. 

It's pretty rare still, but I'm hoping that can happen. And some of the big offenders, especially concrete, are trying to get that down to very close to zero. There's a lot of innovation going on with the carbon in concrete. I think it's just a matter of time and finding out what configurations can become mainstream.

JM: Is there a tension between sustainability and affordability in green building, and building generally?

DA: A lot of people think there is. I think one of the reasons we were successful was that we [paid attention to budgets], unlike a lot of the architects that would get excited about green building and weren't paying attention to the costs. You really have to keep a tight rein on budgets, because otherwise the client will often not do the sustainable or green elements. We always tried to find those things that would reduce the cost. 

For example, sometimes by making the house tighter and stronger, you could reduce the size of the heating or cooling equipment. And now you can use a heat pump that will be cooling and heating, whereas in the past you'd have a heating system and air conditioning as well. If you can stay away from ducts, like you can with a lot of these heat pumps now, those things will actually be cheaper than the old systems, which means that then you can spend maybe a little more on something else. 

JM: You've also talked and written about the intersection between green buildings and green neighborhoods and green communities with better public transit and better green space. How did you get interested in that aspect of sustainability?

DA: I guess it was the realization as we started getting more and more what you'd call green homes, you could have a community full of green homes and not necessarily have a sustainable community. So we needed to think more comprehensively. And a big part of that, of course, is trying to design communities with greater densities and more access to recreation and entertainment and things like that right near your home, so you don't have to jump in the car for everything. It's kind of the opposite of the way Los Angeles, intentionally or unintentionally, sprawled, where you have to jump in the car to do almost everything. 

A lot of my excitement and awareness about the opportunities grew from having spent some time in Europe. Europe, of course, was designed before the automobile. And it's not that the automobile has not been impactful, but some of them are returning to more walkability, 15-minute neighborhoods kind of ideas, things like that.

JM: Do you think that denser, walkable development, especially in a place like Santa Barbara, is a harder sell than green building? It seems like a lot of resistance to those ideas are among people who would otherwise describe themselves as pro-environment. 

DA: Yeah, I'd probably have to say it's a harder sell here than it is in Europe, but there's a very strong awareness now. I've been involved with some of the downtown core discussions [about that]. I think the overwhelming number of people in the city of Santa Barbara who spend any time downtown favor the walking and the biking and some restrictions on cars. We'll probably end up with a compromise.

JM: You’ve written the “Going Green” column for the last few years for our partners at the Independent, and you write about a wide variety of issues. How did that come about?

DA: Well, Matt Kettmann from the Independent reached out to me and said, “You're retired. Will you write a column about green building for us?” So I said, “Sure.” Slowly it sort of moved into more environmental concerns, especially climate. But it's always been rooted in some aspect of green building. I'm just interested in all this stuff. I grew up spending time in nature, and it’s such a critical thing for me, and it's a renewal. Like next week, I'm going up into the high country of the Sierras for 10 days. I try to do that every year. We have the same core group that does that every year. So that's really big, but I also love building, so I've kind of melded those two together a lot. In my articles, even though they're brief, I try to always have some point of optimism at the end of them.

JM: What you're saying about a renewal up in the Sierras really reminds me of John Muir. He felt the same way; his refuge, his renewal was up in the Sierras.

DA: I've just kind of absorbed a lot of stuff about nature through the years. And when you go into that area, you see all these amazing wildflowers and meadows and different trees, and how winds and lightning and storms have impacted stuff. You just absorb that, and you just realize the magic of nature and how blessed we are. I mean, we're part of that, though most of us don't live that way. 

The more [nature] you can incorporate either in your living area or your neighborhood, the healthier it is for everybody. They've found out in schools that children are better if they're looking out on greenery. Same thing in hospitals, stays are shorter. But also, even in our homes on a daily basis. Even the pictures you choose to put up can keep that lit, because we all evolved from just being full-time in the natural world and part of it. And the more of that that we can keep in touch with and feel like we're part of, the better off we are.