Green and sweet:
This tiny, perfect eco-village is made out of sugar and gingerbread

The Ottawa Citizen: Saturday, November 22, 2008

The design and building industry, she says, is at an environmental tipping point. "As designers, we're the ones who need to be laying the railway track and leading the way."

That means that whether she's designing and building decks or garden pavilions or kitchens and bathrooms, Kaiser is looking at everything from durability to the use of sustainable materials.

Thinking of her jumbled, friendly gingerbread village, she also points out how different it is from the streetscapes of too many suburban developments. "I don't think people wanted to have their houses with a big garage on the front and no front porch to be able to relate to each other and watch kids go by," she says, thinking of how a sense of community can help propel a common commitment to the environment.

Kaiser says we also need to get away from development projects that attract homogenous buyers whose common viewpoints limit more global thinking.

Government, meanwhile, could encourage more communal living and consequent environmental stewardship through more intensive development and by changing ridiculous zoning laws that segregate residential from commercial and other areas.

That's the point of having pigs in the middle of her gingerbread village, she says.

"Urban diversity is a good thing. Everything is mixed up and confused in nature. Carrots and peas touch each other."