BUILDING SUSTAINABLY

Ahmad: They are looking at it more from a holistic approach and seeing the landscape is changing. They have to provide a product that is appealing to the market not just now but 10 years from now, and they’re asking for more sustainable designs as a result. Part of that bigger picture is creating an eco-friendly environment for the staff. It’s a lot more focused on the experience of the staff and employees. Leaders want to make sure that workers are excited to come to the office.

Terri: When the green building movement started to take hold in Europe, you began seeing floor plates shrink so that everybody would have access to daylight. And that improved productivity because people working in those environments tended to be happier. They tended to call in sick less. And so then that started to make its way into North American corporate culture.

Jason: To see the discussion evolve and become more widespread, it’s really exciting. We’re now asking – how can we lower our carbon footprint and make the building’s habitat better and healthier? You see that in certifications. There’s the Living Building Challenge, there’s WELL — that program has gained a lot of traction. Everyone’s got to meet code requirements, and they’ve only become more stringent. And a lot of companies want to speak to sustainability publicly in their marketing and PR efforts.

Jason: Our team designed a research and development facility in Fitchburg (Wisconsin) where we used a dual skin facade. One of many benefits was wrapping the whole building in a greenhouse pseudo-mechanical space to passively heat just with the sun while air naturally ventilated the building. And by doing that, we could increase the amount of time that you’d be able to open the windows from maybe two months to nine months. That resulted in much lower energy use and a much healthier environment.

Terri: When I’m thinking about architecturally exposed structural steel (AESS) and sustainability, I’m thinking about not putting in drywall. Steel becomes the architectural design feature. Drywall, which is not recyclable, needs to get repaired or painted at some point. With high-strength steel, you’ve got bigger spans, fewer columns, and less material needed. Less material required makes a building more sustainable. The more material we use, the less sustainable it becomes.

Ahmad: In most commercial buildings we’re talking about, steel is the major material we would use. It’s the preferred material because its high strength and stiffness allow us to have shallower depth members, span longer distances, and allow for column-free spaces. But not all steel is made the same way. In one recent project, the client was thinking about using imported steel. We asked them: “Do you know how the steel is produced? Is it recycled? What was the source of energy used to produce it?” When you look at companies like Nucor, they are at the forefront in addressing sustainability (Nucor uses recycled scrap-based electric arc furnace (EAF) technology at all of its U.S. mills). You also see the use of high-strength concrete, meaning less material is needed. Everything’s possible.

Terri: Steel, because you can recycle it. And companies like Nucor put scrap steel into (EAFs) that don’t rely on coal, making it the cleanest, most efficient way to manufacture steel commercially. But it’s a very complicated issue, and it’s one that varies around the country based on what your grid looks like and whether you’ve got a hydroelectric dam nearby where you can say you have access to clean electricity as opposed to still using a coal-fired plant.

Ahmad: Resiliency and climate adaptability are also part of sustainability and can depend on location. For example, suppose you’re building in an area prone to flooding. In that case, you need a structure that protects you from water surge and flooding while avoiding collateral damage from corrosion. We saw that here in New York City and also in New Jersey with Hurricane Sandy in 2012. And we’re seeing what recently happened in Florida with Hurricane Ian. We’ve even done internal tests on different tree sizes to make sure we understand how they’ll resist the forces.

Terri: Building owners will probably have to pay higher design fees because there’s a lot more technical stuff that has to be figured out when you’re making a building sustainable. There has to be more analysis done in terms of your systems, your energy flows in the building, making sure that you are specifying all the correct materials, sourcing the best windows, calculating for shading devices and things like that. And if you wanted a certification like LEED, that also costs money too. You need to get building owners engaged so they understand that in the end, the benefits of building sustainability can outweigh the costs.

Ahmad: Some institutions are creating better metrics to track sustainability. And I’m expecting that every few years, we’ll get a new set of procedures and protocols and ideas to improve sustainability further or reduce embodied or operational carbon.

Jason: I’ve had multiple conversations about just creating irresistible space. I’m an architect who got into the industry because I was excited about the opportunity to make people’s lives a little bit better. We spend so much of our lives indoors. Healthier spaces inherently are de-stressor places, too. It’s about using maybe a steel-wood hybrid, maybe using indoor planting, views to the outside, natural daylight, fresh air. The more we can include those things in our designs, the better off we can make people that use them.