Biography
JENNIFER CORSON, M.Arch., is a self-proclaimed "jack of all and master none" with an odd job description: architect, salvager/recycler, entrepreneur, green developer, cafe owner and mother (not necessarily in that order).
Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Corson is a partner in Solterre Design and owner of Renovators Resource. She is currently blending green building and business with two green commercial development companies within both rural and urban Nova Scotia.
Green Story
Jennifer Corson's great-grandfather was a stonemason who moved from Italy to Canada with his two brothers. Together they built some of the most significant structures in their small Canadian town. "If I had made the connection to my building roots," Corson says now, "I would have gone straight to the construction trades." Instead, she followed some wise person’s suggestion to combine her interests in math and the arts and enroll in an architecture program.
"One thing ledLight-emitting diode. Illumination technology that produces light by running electrical current through a semiconductor diode. LED lamps are much longer lasting and much more energy efficient than incandescent lamps; unlike fluorescent lamps, LED lamps do not contain mercury and can be readily dimmed. to another and next I knew I was building earthen structures in West Africa on a thesis term," Corson continues. "The proverbial ‘light bulb’ moment occurred, standing in remote Guinea, realizing that the nicest place to sleep is built with local materials (not being able to afford or access things from afar), cooled with natural ventilation (simple holes in an earthen wall), and designed with whatever creative details can be built with simple materials and your hands."
Back on North American soil, these ideas of local, affordable, recyclable and renewable, and beautiful have stayed prevalent in Corson's design work. "Although no longer building earthen structures, our design company’s mandate is to design green—always, and without question," she affirms.
Architect first, Corson is a salvager second (the latter role descending, she thinks, from the Scottish side of her family lineage). "A client’s design job reignited the salvage-minded approach that I witnessed in Africa," she recalls. The client wanted a solar-oriented, energy-efficient home that looked 100 years old. "It seemed ludicrous to me to specify new wood and beat it up to look old," Corson says. She went dumpster diving, talked to contractors, and realized there was an opportunity to divert tons of materials that were otherwise going to the landfill. The result, now 14 years old, is Nova Scotia’s oldest all-used building material facility.
"Green building to me refers to an ultimate goal, still intangible, that we have yet to achieve," Corson declares. "It is a lot of fun and hard work learning how to design and build green buildings (a term that is already over- and inappropriately used). Every project we touch gives us a learning experience that we use on the next project to help us get to that goal."
