Profile-by-LaurenS

Forrest Linebarger: A Balance F

by Lauren Salinero

rom the street, Forrest Linebarger’s house looks like any other 1940s ranch house: a large hedge bordering the street, peeling beige paint, a brick chimney; but it is anything but normal. Linebarger’s house - like Linebarger himself - is a being of divided constitution. It sits in the hazy grey area where the jurisdiction of man gives way to the domain of animals, holding dual citizenship to both the credit unions and beauty salons of Loyola Corners and the wild expanses of Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve.

Even inside the house, neon modern art hangs above rustic white washed cabinets, and a dining room furnished in retro vinyl and chrome resides next to a study packed with mahogany bookshelves and hefty volumes. Perhaps most dichotomous is the basement, where rough-hewn shelves holding carefully labeled jars of homemade preserves and curries can be seen from the glossy exercise machines and weight rack, and a clothesline loaded with boxer-briefs sags above a Nigerian “zeer pot” air conditioning system of nested clay pots separated with sand.

Linebarger lives a completely green lifestyle, air drying his clothes, growing his own food, and raising lifestock for eggs and cheese

This duality is something Linebarger has gotten used to as both the CEO VOX Design Group and a backyard farmer. He has managed to build a successful green architecture firm while simultaneously growing and maintaining a small farm in his backyard. VOX Design Group has created some of the Bay Area’s most environmentally friendly buildings, and is renowned for using creative methods to construct zero-energy homes. In between meetings and managing employees, Linebarger finds time to tend to the chickens, goats, and plants that provide 80% of his diet while hosting the elementary school classes that take field trips to his backyard. Through his farming and involvement in the green home design movement, Linebarger has managed to find a balance and purpose in his life that few of us will ever achieve.

But finding this balance was no easy task.

Linebarger was born in Mountain View and, apart from summer trips to a farm in Washington, was raised entirely in suburbs. After attending the University of California Berkeley, Linebarger graduated with his architecture degree in 1992 and promptly set about advertising as an architect specializing in green design.

However, after several months with no clients and little interest in sustainable building, a disappointed Linebarger was forced to transition back to traditional architecture. While working as a traditional architect, Linbarger watched as green technologies became

cheaper and concern with the environment became increasingly widespread. Finally, in 2003, Linebarger made the decision to try green architecture once more, founding VOX Design Group. Soon, business was booming and VOX was able to accept only clients with the intention to build green. Riding the success of his new company, he bought a new home of his own in 2005, a modest old ranch house located not 20 yards from Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve. Linebarger soon became captivated by the rare strawberry guava tree that grew on his new property, recalling “I was so amazed at how good this fruit was...so that started me on a whole kick of ‘what are all the foods that I could eat, that they don’t have in supermarkets because they don’t ship well or they don’t harvest well?’ and ever since, I’ve been growing more and more food.”

Since the inception of his green architecture firm, Linebarger has been breaking new ground in his field, and his interest in urban farming has only helped him develop new innovations. Like the “zeer pot” air conditioning system in his basement, many of the technologies he implements in clients’ homes were tested and perfected on a smaller scale in Linebarger’s own home. Linebarger claims that some of his best work has to do with designing systems that link technologies together; one of his favorite projects was a wall of plants he built in a client’s living room. These plants were fed and nurtured with water siphoned out

-1-

of an outdoor pond that held several kinds of fish, and the pond was maintained with grey water that passed through a reconstructed wetland every time the client showered, all with the net result of cleaning and oxygenating the air in the living room.

As one would expect, these aren’t the sorts of techniques usually taught in architecture school.

Linebarger invests hours of time training each of his employees, and is constantly coming up with new ideas. When asked where he finds the inspiration for these new technologies, he cites “history and quirky people” (when asked to define “quirky people”, Linebarger laughs and says “backwoods people”). Ken Arends, Vice President at VOX, says that their company is always interested in new green technologies, and is constantly looking for ways to put these technologies into use. For example, VOX builders recently waited several months while ultra-insulated, triple-paned windows were shipped from their only manufacturer in Germany (Arends). In addition to these new cutting-edge technologies, Linebarger incorporates centuries-old building techniques into his buildings, like insulating roofs with plants, shading rooms with long eaves, and keeping spaces cool by building them underground. Linebarger has somehow managed to blend slick modern architecture and new technologies with age old building practices and a distinctly hippie sentimentality, commenting, “Moving forward is really trying to get in touch with our past.”

No matter how unusual his methods, everyone can agree that Linebarger builds some of the greenest buildings around, and at a cost equivalent to that of a traditional home. VOX Design Group has been a member of the U.S. Green Building Council since 2009, and Linebarger himself is a certified LEED Accredited Professional. LEED, or the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System, is a certification system for the nation’s most energy efficient buildings, and has certified many of Linebarger’s projects (“Leadership in Energy”).

For all his awards and certifications, when on the farm, Linebarger seems just like any other proud farmer. On our first meeting, I trailed behind Linebarger as he made his afterwork rounds of the farm that’s packed into a space that would usually be just the right size for a pool, a nice lawn, and maybe a rosebush or two. The first thing I noticed were the free range chickens strutting and clucking around the property, scratching around under bushes and hopping through holes in the fence around the goat enclosure to keep Linebarger’s three pigmy goats company. As Linebarger calmly leads me around his farm he occasionally pauses to thrust his arm shoulder-deep into a thicket of leaves and stems to retrieve whatever happens to be ripe, casually snags berries to snack on or offer as samples, tends to his animals, and points out particularly interesting points of interest. By the end of the tour,

-2-

we have tomatoes, zucchini, and ringing. For Linebarger, permagoat milk, have eaten eaten both culture “restores balance to our raspberries and gooseberries, and lives and lets us know where we have misplaced a couple of eggs came from. It lets us feel the Earth, somewhere along the way. understand the complexity of our

For Linebarger, his farm lives, and feel one with the world goes far beyond simple gardening. around us.”

He characterizes his urban farm As green technology speeds ing as a type of “permaculture”, ahead at a rate faster than even an approach to land-management government building codes can that integrates the functions of keep up with (“Policy and Govanimals, plants, humans, and the ernment”), Linebarger plans to Earth to create highly efficient and continue to farm as people have for self-perpetuating sources of food thousands of years. Frequently, he and human habitat (Seinfeld). welcomes students from a nearInstead of being an “ornamenby elementary school to tour his tal wasteland”, the space around backyard, where they learn not only Linebarger’s house provides habitat how to milk goats and pick tomafor native species and about 80% toes, but also that this type of lifeof Linebarger’s food. Starting with style is possible. And while no one a single strawberry guava tree, expects these children to grow up Linebarger quickly expanded his to have their own backyard farms, farm, building a greenhouse to hopefully witnessing Linebarger’s grow fresh produce in dedication to the Earth the winter and a barn will inspire them to to house chickens and have a similar concern “What I’m goats. Coming from a for the planet as adults. trying to do is suburban background, Linebarger balances learn about how sometimes bewilderLinebarger says he had to live.” to “learn by doing”, ingly dissonant lifebut that he found help styles, yet manages to from a community handle himself with a of people that are equally interseemingly effortless grace. He’s shy ested in self-sufficiency and local about discussing his dreams and asproduction. Now, Linebarger is pirations, and shrugs of any admiexperimenting with various types ration of his lifestyle as if the only of goat cheese and is hard at work shocking part about it is that more pickling and preserving his harvest people don’t do it. He understands in preparation for the oncoming that our planet’s environmental winter. Producing all this food is problems won’t be solved in his lifenot easy, and could certainly be time, but he’s content in knowing done much more efficiently with a that he did his best to contribute to trip to the farmer’s market. Howthe solution, explaining “Although ever, when laboring in his backyard I don’t think I’m having a global Linebarger is not only growing his impact at all, what I’m trying to own food, but carefully tending to do is learn about how to live. And his connection to the natural world hopefully, others will add to that, lest he become lost in the flurry of and we can all learn how to live a business that keeps the awards roll- better life. That’s kinda what I’m ing in and his cellphone continually trying to do, find a balance.”

-4-