SISTER FAITH MARGARET, wearing a turquoise corduroy jacket, a flowered blouse and a wooden cross on a chain around her neck, set down a plate of freshly baked oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies on the table in the conference room of her convent on 113th Street in Morningside Heights.
Sister Claire Joy, attired in her order’s elective habit of navy robe and black rope belt, poured glasses of cold tap water. Six other men and women were seated around the table on this gray autumn afternoon, dressed in business casual.
Spread out in front of them were BlackBerrys, legal pads and architectural blueprints, along with a few samples of bricks of varying color and texture that the sisters were considering for their new “green” convent, to be built in West Harlem.
“This is the Palmetto brick?” asked Sister Claire Joy, rubbing her fingers along a sample from a South Carolina company. “I really love these crunchy-looking bricks myself.”
Sister Faith Margaret had a question.
“And are any of these local?” she asked. “We really want to use as many indigenous materials as we can.”
“I think most of these samples here are from Pennsylvania,” replied Stephen Byrns of BKSK ...