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Sustainable Design: Current Trends and Measurement Tools

Dan Williams, FAIA, is a nationally recognized expert in sustainable architecture and planning. He is past chair of the National AIA’s Committee on the Environment (COTE). His projects incorporate issues in ecology, economic development, transportation, agriculture, education and natural resource protection. His projects range in scale from the design of regional watersheds to designing educational facilities for physically challenged children. Mr. Williams has worked with communities around the country, creating master plans for natural resource protection and working with residents and agencies toward the rebuilding of towns and cities after natural disasters. For over 25 years as an architect and urban and regional planner, Mr. Williams has worked with clients and communities in the design, protection and preservation of the environment through architecture, urban design/planning informed by ecological principles.

Henry Siegel, FAIA, a member of the COTE Advisory Group, is founding principal of Siegel & Strain Architects in Emeryville, California. Siegel & Strain is recognized as a leader in sustainable design; the firm has won five national and several regional awards for sustainable design and research, including three national AIA COTE Top Ten Green Projects of the Year. Mr. Siegel served on the jury for this national award in 2005. The firm has received many other awards for general design excellence for these and other projects, demonstrating that sustainable design is also good design, and vice versa. Mr. Siegel has taught sustainable planning at the School of Architecture at University of California, Berkeley, and has spoken widely on ecological design. He serves as a member of the University’s Design Review Committee.

With growing energy needs and an atmosphere of shrinking resources, sustainability has become one of the most important issues in architectural design in the last 30 years. Dan Williams, FAIA, and Henry Siegel, FAIA, founding principal of Siegel and Strain Architects, give an overview of sustainability programs and how they can be incorporated into the design process. Sustainability is not the formulaic application of scientific or mechanical principles, but rather, it requires a sophisticated, intuitive approach to the problem of limited resources, while at the same time, satisfying the client’s practical and aesthetic demands.

For Mr. Williams and Mr. Siegel, designing a building that is “unplugged” can be done with a transformation in knowledge, not just in design process. They encourage architects to revisit common parts of the design process, like site analysis, with climate and site ecology in mind. Although sustainability can be a daunting problem, there has been significant advancement in how architects can meet the challenge.

Podcast: 2006/08/15 -- 16:27

Presenters: Dan Williams, FAIA and Henry Siegel, FAIA

XML:   http://www.idimultimedia.net/clients/aia_podcast/podcast.xml

iTunes:   http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=160877729

MP3:  http://www.idimultimedia.net/clients/aia_podcast/08072006/williams.mp3