Redefining Sustainability: New Directions for Designing Our Future

Designing schools can provide many rewards, but it is also a practice that comes with great responsibility. As a nation, we will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on school construction over the next 10 to 20 years. We can choose whether to design the next generation of schools to teach about a more sustainable way of living, to use minimal energy, to eliminate the creation of toxins and waste, and to be interdependent with natural systems.
—Conference chair Gerald (Butch) Reifert, AIA

Seattle was the site of the Committee on Architecture for Education (CAE) conference on sustainability because it is the only area in the United States in which five projects have received an AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten Green Projects Award. Conference participants toured several of these projects over the course of three full and stimulating days. They encountered speakers who challenged them to design beyond green: beyond reduced environmental impact to no impact, and ultimately to making a positive contribution to the environment. They learned about designing buildings that honor the place in which they are built and the natural systems that cradle that place—and about borrowing sustainable designs from nature, which has solved so many design problems so elegantly. Participants heard about the latest brain research and its implications for school design. They considered achievements and opportunities for further advocacy in federal, local, and professional arenas, as well as ways to create an acceptance for—and ultimately a demand for—innovative and sustainable design in our society.

Opening Remarks
Chair of the CAE Leadership Group: Cheri Hendricks, Assoc. AIA

So, why are we here? In the next 10 to 20 years, the United States will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the construction of schools, which will last an average of 80 years each. Because of the energy they consume and the greenhouse gases they emit, buildings are the number one contributor to climate change.

Our goal for this conference is no less than to fundamentally change the way school design is practiced. While designing high-performance schools and designing to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) standards have been important to raising awareness of these issues, the truth is that these are just baby steps that will not reduce our impact enough to matter.

We have scouted the horizon to find those pioneers who have clues about how to understand our work as interventions in ecological systems, rather than as isolated projects. We have brought folks who can point to ways to work with materials and systems that mimic the natural world and thus eliminate toxins and waste rather than producing them. We will look at ways to provoke radical changes in our individual and collective behaviors. May this learning environment we create by our being together inspire us and equip us to move forward into a new way of practice.

Sustainable Cities: An Urban Myth?
Keynote Speaker: William E. Rees, PhD, FRSC

We can measure the human load by calculating our ecological footprint: the area of land and water ecosystems required to produce the resources a population consumes and to assimilate the wastes it produces—wherever on earth that land and water may be located. Cities are parasitic, dissipative structures; they grow and maintain themselves by increasing entropy in the rest of the ecosystem. Every city occupies an area elsewhere on the planet that is hundreds of acres larger than the city itself. “Sustainable city” is an oxymoron unless we completely rethink urban living.

What does this mean for North Americans? Canadians and Americans need an average of 9 hectares (22.24 acres) per capita to satisfy our consumer lifestyle. Our fair earth share today is 1.8 hectares (4.45 acres), for sustainability with equity—an 80 percent reduction. We could achieve this now, but if we wait much longer and our population increases, we will lose the opportunity.

I plead with you to realize the opportunity that exists in the kind of work you do. There is hardly another profession as closely associated with manipulating the human environment as architecture and urban design. Given the huge impact of the built environment on the natural world, you have the leverage to turn things around. What an opportunity.

Defining and Practicing Regenerative Design: Moving Beyond Sustainability
Presenter: William Reed, AIA, LEED

Regeneration is not a synonym for restoration. Regeneration means to create a new spirit. There are three essential aspects to this work. The first is understanding place—this particular place—by experiencing the whole system. Second, we must harmonize information with the people who live there, to convey and hold the whole system through the story of the place, not the data. Third, regeneration requires a continual process of dialogue: if we allow the dialogue to stop, we will never create a sustainable environment.

What does sustainability require of us? It requires a new mind. We need to change from a mind that sees a world of discrete elements that can be manipulated to serve human purposes to a mind that understands the world as a single web of interconnected and interdependent living systems. To create differently we need to actually see differently. We must develop pattern literacy: the ability to see a landscape as a sophisticated, dynamic system—a virtual organism formed by energy flows and nutrient exchanges—rather than a series of two-dimensional maps and overlays.

This is really about changing who we are—reestablishing a healthy web of planetary systems and in the process finding a coevolutionary role for humanity. How do we become indigenous again, in the sense of being part of our place? Partnership with nature requires us to exercise humility and to accept feedback. It is a continuous, never-ending process of engagement.

Biomimicry: Nature as Model, Measure, and Mentor
Presenter: Rose Tocke

The natural world has something to offer us: it can inform our technologies and designs. It has solved most, if not all, of the challenges we seek to solve in the built world, from regulating temperature to creating color. An electric eel can generate 600 watts of electricity instantaneously, without harm to itself. The butterfly does not create color with pigment; it uses layers of fat cells that reflect and refract light to create structural color, which requires less energy.

Imagine a built world that operates like the natural world, where water emerges from a mining operation cleaner than it went in, where we harness the pulse of the city. Biomimicry is about going outside to find out who lives where you live and how they can live so elegantly. The clouded salamander changes its color to regulate its temperature and protect itself from the sun. What if our buildings did the same? This is about asking ourselves: how does the natural world do what we’re trying to do?

There are three ways to emulate the natural world: form (e.g., a shark’s skin, which decreases drag), process (e.g., how abalones make a nearly indestructible ceramic), and ecosystem (e.g., why chickens and cows should live together). All of these models from nature have been applied by industry: on ship’s hulls, in glass, and on farms, respectively. Nature as mentor is paradigm changing. Asking not what we can extract from it—but what we can learn from it—will change our relationship with the natural world.

AAF: Great Schools By Design
Presenter: Ronald E. Bogle, AAF, Hon. AIA

Great Schools by Design is a leadership development program focusing on education and outreach. Educational activities include school design institutes, documentaries on specific projects, and an annual community-based school design charette institute. The purpose of these activities, which have involved more than 60 school districts since 2005, is to plant the seeds of excellence.

Outreach activities include focus groups designed to invigorate the national discussion about school design and forums on specific topics. An invitational National Summit on School Design in 2006 convened a cross-section of stakeholders to address the relationship between design and learning.

The American Architectural Foundation (AAF) is seeking ways to involve people who have been underrepresented in school design. In partnership with Target, it is sponsoring a national competition that gives students an opportunity to redesign their schools—and to be part of the conversation. AAF plans a parallel competition for teachers next year.

AAF also recognizes excellence in design. In partnership with the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, it recently awarded the 2007 Richard Riley Award for Excellence in schools designed to be centers of community to Rosa Parks Elementary School, in Portland, Ore.

AIA: Sustainability 2030
Presenter: Norman Strong, FAIA

We need to get the word out: commercial buildings account for 48 percent of energy consumption in the United States, almost as much as industry (25 percent) and transportation (27 percent) combined. Architecture is the solution. By 2035, three-quarters of the U.S. building stock will be either new or renovated. This means we are in a position to reduce emissions.

AIA established carbon-emission targets in a December 2005 position statement: a minimum 50 percent reduction by 2010, increasing incrementally to net zero carbon emissions in 2030. To help, AIA offers a variety of educational resources and tools and engages in advocacy activities in a variety of venues.

Climate change is real. AIA architects have a solution. It is an ethical responsibility and a huge opportunity. It is not business as usual.

Children’s Learning and Brain Development: Designs That Encourage Learning
Keynote Speaker: Patricia K. Kuhl, PhD

The social foundations of learning are more important than we once thought. Children learn better in social environments, such as an interactive peer group, than when they’re talked at—whatever the subject area. There is something about the brain that makes this true: people are driven to communicate with other human beings.

Our research has identified two fundamental principles about learning. One is that it is computational. Babies are computational machines whose brains compute statistics on the language they hear, recording the number of times different sounds are produced; and they soon start discriminating only the vowel sounds in their own language. That computational principle operates in all learning; so environment matters, because what we hear sculpts our brain.

The brain is also social. Babies’ eyes follow the speaker’s eye gaze, which might help them acquire information and make connections, such as linking a sound and an object. High-pitched “parentese” is riveting for babies. Social cues tell them when it matters, when they should be engaged in taking statistics; if they took it all in, the brain would be too busy.

Are the classrooms of the 1950s, with the kids all at their desks facing forward, best for learning—or is it a different kind of place, where children interact with their neighbors in a more social setting, working together?

At the same time they are social, classrooms must be noiseless, in a sense. There are new classroom acoustics standards, set by the Acoustics Society of America, which made careful measurements in classrooms. Kids need a better signal-to-noise ratio than adults do; once the brain is mapped, it takes less energy to get a signal into the brain.

We also know that informal, interactive learning is highly effective. Children learn better when they are actively engaged in developing ideas—and verbalizing ideas. The verbalization itself seems to solidify knowledge in the brain. Students need classrooms that have spaces for both private and social learning.

Best Practices in Green Educational Facilities

Sidwell Friends School, Washington, D.C.
AIA COTE Top Ten Green Project 2007
Kieran Timberlake Associates, LLP (Philadelphia)
Presenter: Casey Boss

The six buildings of the middle and upper schools of the Sidwell Friends School occupy a 15-acre campus in Washington, D.C., on a ridge between two watersheds. The 2001 master plan sought to transform a disparate collection of buildings into a physical demonstration of the school’s values, unified by redeveloped landscaping. First introduced in master planning, sustainability goals continued to emerge during planning and programming as an expression of the ethic of stewardship at the core of this community. These included: understanding the whole ecological system; reconnecting the site to local geology, watershed, habitat, and natural history; and restoring the “mystery of the landscape.”

Water became a primary unifying element. Stored and filtered on the green roof, rainwater is rendered visible and aesthetic as it is directed via chain in open-faced downspouts to a trough along a ramp, to a spillway, and then to the biology pond (and an underground cistern for overflow and replenishment). The courtyard is a constructed wetland that recycles wastewater, and the terraced rice paddies reflect the topography of the landscape. The science of cleaning water through the nitrogen cycle is transformed into an aesthetic and educational event.

Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability, Vancouver, B.C.
Busby, Perkins+Will (Vancouver, B.C.)
Presenter: Amanda Sturgeon, AIA, LEED AP

The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) vision is to be an internationally recognized center, accelerating the adoption of sustainable building and urban development practices. Its leaders see this as an opportunity to make Canada a world leader in the three interconnected fields of applied sustainability: sustainable building practices, public engagement, and regional partnerships.

The planned CIRS facility will be one element in the Great Northern Way Campus on a redeveloped industrial site in Vancouver. The design team set goals that reflect the idea of a regenerative building that makes a net positive contribution. The design goals that have driven the schematic design thus far include a sustainable mobility program, greenhouse gas neutrality, net energy production, 100 percent daylighting, 100 percent rainwater collection, and on-site wastewater treatment. The ultimate intent for the building is to act as a laboratory for sustainable building technology.

One of the striking aspects of the current design illustrates the potential of electrochromatic glass to alter the appearance of the building’s façade, providing a translucent surface for solar shading by day and multimedia projections at night.

Advocacy for Sustainability
Beyond LEED: The Living Building Challenge
Federal Legislative Initiatives
Presenter: U.S. Representative Jay Inslee, Wash. (video)

This summer, with the support of the AIA, I introduced the Advanced Design in Energy for Living Efficiently Act. Crafted with the help of some talented architects, it would establish federal standards for the construction of new commercial and residential buildings that would reduce carbon emissions 40 percent by 2010 and 70 percent by 2020. It would also provide federal grants to help state and local governments meet new standards for efficiency and to encourage research in green building. It specifically addresses schools, providing federal grants to inform public school leaders about the benefits of high-performance schools and to help with the development of technical solutions and the planning and design of green buildings. This legislation would also support the development of environmental science curriculums so students can study sustainable design and provide loan guarantees for public universities that construct green buildings or renovations.

Architects will play a key role in the fight against climate change by creating green buildings that reduce environmental impacts and foster learning about sustainability. In the course of researching the book I coauthored, Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy, I got to know AIA Executive Vice President Christine McEntee; and I was really impressed with the AIA’s vision of architects playing a key role this revolution. I commend that commitment to changing global warming and to ensuring that our nation is a leader in green building practices.

City of Seattle Green Building Program
Presenter: Lucia Athens, Supervisor of the Green Building Team, Seattle

It’s important to have a point person, and that’s the Green Building Team’s role. In the beginning, some people were excited, others skeptical. We work a lot around the idea of the innovation adoption process, working with the early adopters to achieve early successes and letting other people come on board when they see that. Green building now seems mainstream in Seattle. The city has 10 certified projects in its portfolio and 35 more in process.

Located in the Department of Planning and Development, we serve as advocates inside the permitting office to help builders take advantage of incentives and deal with code issues. We also work to remove barriers to green in city codes. We advocate at the state level, usually working with other cities; we are currently working with the state department of ecology to develop a rainwater harvesting policy.

There are many advocacy opportunities, in addition to your design work. People in the industry can lobby more effectively for changes at the state level than cities can. At the community level: run for office. It’s important to have advocates in elected office. People who go into the design professions don’t usually think about that, but we need more of them. The man who was mayor in Seattle when we started the Green Building Team was a former dean of architecture. There are also opportunities at the neighborhood level; the Ballard Library is LEED-certified because that community demanded it.

The Living Building Challenge
Presenter: Greg Hepp, AIA, Cascadia Region of the Green Building Council

The metaphor of the living building is a flower. A flower harvests all of its energy and water from its site; it is adapted to the place where it lives; it operates without producing any pollution; it promotes health and well-being by processing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen; it’s an integrated system; and it’s beautiful.

The Living Building Challenge evolved from a sustainability matrix developed from building information modeling (BIM) in 2000, which compared the initial construction costs and lifespan costs for market-rate buildings, LEED-certified buildings, and a “living building.” Jason McLennan, one of the people who pioneered the living building concept, is now the director of the Cascadia Region of the Green Building Council, which has issued the Living Building Challenge.

There are no credits, just 16 simple and profound prerequisites, in six categories: site design; energy; materials; water; indoor environmental quality; and beauty and inspiration. Beauty is important because people won’t keep buildings that aren’t beautiful.

It’s very simple—but simple isn’t the same thing as easy. The living building challenge is performance-based. You can’t get a building certified until it has been in operation for at least one year, because certification is based not on what a building will do but on what it actually did.

Some people have already accepted the challenge. The Cascadia chapter will award petals for partial compliance, one for each prerequisite met. The prerequisites are challenging, but each one has been achieved somewhere. No one has yet done them all, but it is possible.

Deep Innovation: Design for Real Behavior Change
Presenters: Fred Dust and Allison Arieff, IDEO

There’s an innovative building in San Francisco designed to foster health and wellness: the elevators stop every three floors to encourage people to take the stairs. But people take the handicap elevators instead—because they don’t stop. It’s an example of how the best intentions don’t play out as intended. IDEO’s business is product design, so we understand what appeals to people. We pull, instead of push. We’re going to talk about how to get people to want sustainability and green design—how to pull them there.

Clear, straightforward communication is important. The U.K. food chain Tesco uses labels everyone can understand that identify the source, so people can make educated decisions. This is an example of how to express greenness clearly without overplaying it. You don’t need to create a museum.

What if homes came with labels? Maybe people would begin to respond to home buying the way they respond to whole foods, making informed decisions. When people talk about greenness of space they’re talking about health issues like air quality. Wellness is not as off-putting as “the environment.” It could be an easier conversation.

New York City’s Birdbath Bakery was built with the remnants of other bakeries, so the whole space is recycled. On their Web site you can click on any element and find out where it came from. It’s an opportunity to reveal things to consumers so they understand where things come from.

There’s a lot of work to do, and architects shoulder much of it. The question is how to create systems that enable and engage the end users, so they can do their part in living a green future. How do we get people to walk the stairs because that’s part of what they should do—not because the elevator stops at every third floor?

Tour Sites

• Seattle Central Library (Rem Koolhaas, OMA with LMN Architects, 2005 AIA National Honor Award)
• IslandWood Environmental Learning Center, Bainbridge Island, Wash. (Mithun, 2002 LEED Gold Certification, 2002 COTE Top Ten Green Projects winner, 2004–2005 CAE Award of Merit)
• Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle (Weiss/Manfredi)
• Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, Kirkland, Wash. (Mahlum Architects, 2006 COTE Top Ten Green Projects winner, 2006 CEFPI MacConnell Award finalist)
• Bertschi School, Seattle (The Miller/Hull Partnership, first LEED-certified independent school facility in the Pacific Northwest)
• Seattle City Hall (Bohlin Cywinski Jackson with Bassetti Architects, 2005 LEED Gold Certification)
• Ballard Library, Seattle (Bohlin Cywinski Jackson)
• Yesler Community Center, Seattle (Mithun)
• The Chapel of St. Ignatius, Seattle University (Steven Holl Architects)
• Seminar II at The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Wash. (Mahlum Architects, 2005 COTE Top Ten Green Projects winner; 2005 AIA Seattle Award of Merit)
• Morken Center at Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Wash. (Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, 2006 LEED Platinum Certification)
• Pierce County Environmental Services Building, Tacoma, Wash. (The Miller/Hull Partnership, 2004 COTE Top Ten Green Projects winner, 2003 AIA Washington Civic Design Award of Merit)
• Tacoma School of the Arts and Museum of Glass (McGranahan Architects)

CAE wants to thank the following sponsors for their contributions to the Fall 2007 conference:

Diamond
Saxton Bradley, Inc.; Mahlum Architects

Gold
Bassetti Architects; NAC/Architecture; Coughlin Porter Lundeen; Hargis Engineers; Spee West Construction

Sapphire
BLRB Architects; Olympic Reprographics; USG

Silver
Interface Engineers; National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities

Bronze
DLR Group; Tandus

Copper
Coffman Engineers; The Miller/Hull Partnership; Integrus Architecture; Hultz/BHU Cross; Flack + Kurtz; Olympic Associates; Swenson Say Faget; Harmsen Engineers; Absher Construction; AMEC; BNBuilders

Green
AHBL; Sierra-Martin Architects; McGranahan Architects; The Robinson Company; Lydig Construction; Cascade Design; Collaborative; O’Brien & Company; Carlson Architects; Weisman Design group; BRC Acoustics; 2020 Engineering; Bush, Roed & Hitchings, Inc.; PCS Structural Solutions; U.S. Green Building Council; EHS International; Pyrock