Green ArchiTEXT

Bob Berkebile: On a Changing Climate & the Next Big Thing(s) in Green Architecture

By Martin C. Pedersen

The green building movement doesn’t have one founder—it has several. One of them, without question, is Bob Berkebile, a founding principal at BNIM in Kansas City. In the 1990s Berkebile was part of the small circle of architects, designers and businesspeople who helped create the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program. He served as a delegate at the Earth Summit in Rio. Later, he took certification a step further and created (with Jason McLennan) the Living Building Challenge, a vigorous standard that exceeds LEED Platinum and serves as both aspiration and model. 

My conversation with Berkebile is the second installment in The Next Building Environment Today series, a collaboration between Metropolis magazine and Architecture 2030. Each month I interview an internationally recognized leader in the green building movement. Here Berkebile talks about the recent Bank of America controversy, his new concept of Urban Acupuncture, early efforts in China, and the Architecture 2030 Palette:

Martin C. Pedersen: You followed the controversy surrounding the Bank of America building in New York. What was your take on the New Republic article accusing the building of being an energy hog?

Bob Berkebile: I don’t know all the facts, but the early responses suggest that it’s being compared unfavorably to the Empire State, but that’s still relatively empty and Bank of America is full. Again, I don’t know the facts. What I do know is, when a system is undergoing change—and I would argue that LEED has created more change in our industry than any other single thing in my professional career—when that amount of change occurs, there are always pushbacks. Several months ago US Today did two feature articles, saying that LEED is broken. When you look at the overall energy numbers, buildings have improved significantly. But the LEED system, as it has matured, is a like a natural system. Are you familiar with the S-curve that defines the vitality over time of a natural system?

MCP: No.

BB: It’s a very interesting. Let’s take, for example, an oak forest. You have an X- and Y-axis. The vertical is vitality; the horizontal is time. You plant an acorn, and initially that s-curve is below the line, because it’s taking nutrients, taking resources from the soil, water and sun, and not producing anything. As it becomes a tree, then it starts being productive. It’s sequestering carbon, managing water, sharing nutrients with other plant systems.  As time goes forward that S turns up and becomes a steep incline as it increases its contribution and vitality. Then as the forest matures and gets to the climax phase, the line starts bending down again. So the graph looks like an S on its side. Then what happens in a natural system is something modifies it, like fire, and that regenerates the forest, and restarts the S-curve. That might be where we’re at in the green building movement. READ MORE >>

via www.metropolismag.com

Popular Mechanics: How to Build a Greener Office Building - Seattle's Bullitt Center

By Tim Newcomb

Seattle's new Bullitt Center—which will house eco-conscious tenants such as the International Living Future Institute and the University of Washington Integrated Design Lab—is the brainchild of Bullitt Foundation president Denis Hayes. He's the guy who coordinated the first Earth Day, which, not surprisingly, will serve as the grand opening date for the center. Hayes spent more than two years sourcing materials for the office building as part of his attempt to build the largest structure to qualify for the Living Design Challenge.

The solar panels dangling over the downtown Seattle sidewalks and the composting toilets on the sixth floor have gotten most of the publicity as the Bullitt Center has grown skyward. But there's more to sustainability for a 50,000-square-foot structure than net-zero energy usage (check), onsite wastewater treatment (check, check), and harvesting rainwater (check, check, check): The builders have tried to filter out all toxic chemicals from the construction process. Here's how. READ MORE >>

via www.popularmechanics.com

Spatial Agency: Moving Beyond Architecture

Spatial Agency is a project that presents a new way of looking at how buildings and space can be produced. Moving away from architecture's traditional focus on the look and making of buildings, Spatial Agency proposes a much more expansive field of opportunities in which architects and non-architects can operate. It suggests other ways of doing architecture.

In the spirit of Cedric Price the project started with the belief that a building is not necessarily the best solution to a spatial problem. The project attempts to uncover a second history of architecture, one that moves sharply away from the figure of the architect as individual hero, and replaces it with a much more collaborative approach in which agents act with, and on behalf of, others.

In all the examples on this website, there is a transformative intent to make the status quo better, but the means are very varied, from activism to pedagogy, publications to networking, making stuff to making policy - all done in the name of empowering others. In Bruno Latour's terms, critical attention is shifted from architecture as a matter of fact to architecture as a matter of concern. As matters of fact, buildings can be subjected to rules and methods, and they can be treated as objects on their own terms. As matters of concern, they enter into socially embedded networks, in which the consequences of architecture are of much more significance than the objects of architecture.

...

This website is an extendable repository of examples of Spatial Agency. The database is sortable into broad thematic areas that group the motivations (why?), locations (where?) and means (how?) of Spatial Agency. READ MORE >>

via www.spatialagency.net

The Tower at PNC Plaza: A Building That Breathes | CoExist

Sometimes, a skyscraper isn’t just a skyscraper. It’s a community gathering space, a building that offers respite from typical stale indoor office environments, a model of sustainability for others to follow, a breathing--but not living--entity. PNC Bank’s new 33-story global headquarters, set to be built in Pittsburgh, is that place.

Today’s "green" high-rises can be placed in two categories, according to Hao Ko, a senior associate and design director at Gensler and the lead on the PNC project. They’re either bicycles that use onsite resources and are only as big as the site will allow, or they’re hybrid SUVs, basically just normative high-rises that have fancy technology added to make them high-performing.

Bicycle buildings like the Cascadia Center Bullitt Foundation and the Council House 2 can only climb six to eight stories, while hybrid SUV buildings like One Bryant Park don’t have a great MPG, to keep the analogy going. Ko hopes that the Tower at PNC Plaza can be like the Tesla of the green skyscraper world: slick, fun to drive, and efficient, too.

Ko defines a green building a little differently than most people: It’s a building that isn’t just energy efficient, but people-focused as well. In a sense, that takes a building beyond just sustainability into the realm of resilience, where having connections to neighbors and the larger community is key. READ MORE >>

via www.fastcoexist.com

The Well Building Standard: Marrying Science & Technology to Architecture (via Clinton Global Initiative)

Buildings That Heal

By James Smith

Pedestrians walk through the Winter Garden Atrium in the World Financial Center in 2011 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

No doubt you have personally experienced the benefits of a well-designed building—just as you have also been troubled or frustrated by one that is designed poorly, even if you couldn’t put your finger on why. Research shows that the design of a building could affect your health or even be an aid in your healing process.

Age-old design concepts aim to provide better living and work environments. Basic design principles include natural lighting, proper ventilation, and something as simple and obvious as a good view. A lot of these principles have been ignored over the past 50 years, mostly for financial reasons, lack of interest, and simplistic beliefs such as “bigger is better.” READ MORE >>

via www.theepochtimes.com

Canada's SFU child care building gives back to the Earth

By Randy Shore

The new child care building at Simon Fraser University is designed to collect more water than it flushes and generate enough energy to sustain itself and have some left over for its neighbours.

More than just sustainable, the UniverCity Childcare Centre is poised to be a net contributor rather than a consumer of energy and precious resources.

“We thought if we are going to put anybody in the greenest building in Canada we should start with the kids,” said project leader Dale Mikkelsen. “That way what is weird to us just becomes normal to them. They will move on and wonder why they aren’t flushing the toilet with rainwater.”

SFU’s Community Trust, which develops and administers the on-campus sustainable community, opted to attempt a Living Building-certified structure, a standard that when fully achieved goes beyond the industry’s usual sustainable building standards.

Most buildings in the neighbourhood are built to silver and gold LEED standard, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system.

But the sustainability knob on the Living Building standard goes up to 11. READ MORE >>

via www.vancouversun.com

GOOD: 4 Lessons Learned From Designing the World's Greenest Building

By Sarah Laskow

When it comes to green building, the design firm Perkins+Will is doing pretty well. They have more LEED-accredited employees than any other design firm in the country. They’ve created a gutsy list of ethical, healthy building materials to guide design and construction decisions. And they've made their mark with inventive reuse and innovative projects.

These sustainability successes mean that when Perkins+Will designs its own offices, there’s a lot of pressure to get it right. In its new Atlanta office, the firm more than managed to live up to its values: Company leaders will announce today that the office is the highest-rated LEED building ever constructed. Paula Vaughan, who co-directs Perkins+Will's sustainable design initiative, talked to GOOD about the process of designing the building. Here are four lessons we took away.

Don’t count chits. While the team designing the building looked at LEED requirements, Vaughan says they weren’t aiming to top the LEED charts. Instead, they focused on created a space that reflected the firm’s values and improved the experience of people working there. “We really have to do what we say we do,” Vaughan says.

Stick to your principles. It wasn’t always simple. The original building on the site had a parking lot on the ground floor, and while the team knew a strong urban design would feature ground-level retail or another public space there, parking is a valuable commodity in car-centric Atlanta. The designers had to ask themselves: Do we really want to lose that parking? “We snapped out of it a minute later, though," says Vaughan. “Of course we wanted to lose the parking.” The building’s first floor now houses the Museum of Design Atlanta. READ MORE >>

via www.good.is

RMI: Transforming America’s Built Environment (Video)

Slick new video from the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) promoting its Reinventing Fire initiative:

By Rebecca Cole

Reinventing Fire identifies how America’s buildings could use 19 percent less energy in 2050—despite 70 percent more floorspace—simply by aggressively adopting today’s building efficiency techniques and design strategies.

Watch now, and learn:

• How savvy building owners and entrepreneurs can capture a $1.4 trillion opportunity by building efficiency into their core business.
• How integrative design makes big saving cheaper by revealing smarter ways to design an entire building and all its interacting systems together—further raising energy savings to over two-thirds of buildings’ officially projected 2050 energy use.
• How smart policies, standards and codes to accelerate energy efficiency deliver many benefits that can make business operations easier and unlock more opportunity.
• How a successful energy efficiency revolution could revitalize the real-estate sector, create jobs, and help to rejuvenate the national economy.

via blog.rmi.org

Beyond LEED: Regenerative Design: A Symposium - January 27 & 28

What looks to be a fascinating event debuts this week, January 27 and 28, at the University of Texas-Austin School of Architecture. "Beyond LEED: Regenerative Design: A Symposium" will include:

• Bob Berkebile (BNIM): "Promoting Obsolescence: A journey toward regenerative design"
• Bill Browning (Terrapin Bright Green): "Letting Deep Ecological History Determine Building Performance Metrics"
• Ray Cole (University of British Columbia): "Beyond LEED: Embracing holism, engaging complexity & accepting uncertainty"
• Gail Vittori (Center for Maxium Building Potential Systems): "Stewarding the Common Good"

...and many other big thinkers. Should be amazing.

"During the two-day Beyond LEED: Regenerative Design symposium, nationally and internationally known leaders will present their visions of sustainable design and participate in dialogue about the next generation of green building strategies, standards, certification, and performance evaluation."

Visit the event site.