Name: How architecture can slow climate change
Uploaded: 2022-07-15
Duration: 7 min 28 s
Description: Regenerative building design goes beyond being carbon neutral - it makes a positive impact on the environment.

Regenerative building design goes beyond being carbon neutral - it makes a positive impact on the environment.

How architecture can slow climate change

Environment

how do we create something that's incredibly unique, ultra sustainable and better to live in than your typical urban multi family building The built environment. So existing stock and obviously everything that's going on with construction itself, responsible for approximately 40% of all global carbon emissions. So on the path to net zero, the sectors obviously got a really clear role to play in mitigating climate change. We're not just talking about the environment, we are talking about human health and we're talking about social impact as well to be a regenerative building. It means that you're making a commitment to having a positive impact in the world when we use the term sustainable. What we're generally referring to is the idea that something is giving back as much as it's taking from the universe. And generally speaking, when we use that term, we're thinking about the environment and when we talk about regenerative, we are talking about positive impact. So it means you're really trying to figure out how is this building going to give back to all of the planetary natural systems? How is it going to literally make people healthier by by interacting with it? By being in it by working in it. And then how is it going to have a positive social impact on the community? How is it going to bring people in to create a sense of belonging to provide jobs that are good jobs. Those are all the ways that we define regenerative design and architecture. Ridge entry design has got a lot of key benefits. It can improve air quality in the immediate area through the use of things like green roofs and skins. If we look at the design of energy systems will generate more energy than it actually needs. The options there for storage and removing the reliance on on grid supply um which then has the same knock on effect of removing the need for the infrastructure that's associated with standard energy delivery methods. And of course all of that has an impact on the local ecosystems through using rainwater storage can actually reduce that. So if he's run off and improve not only the quality of the soil but provides a reduction in the amount of possible water that's required from things like water supply and sewage etcetera as well. So this is a mid rise building that is basically built lot line to lot line. So it's extra edge ultra urban, right? It's on hikes street and capitol hill, the most famous kind of street in Seattle. We built it using traditional techniques, right? So we focus on the areas that have the biggest impact for the least cost. And so what we ended up doing was coming up with ways to do thicker walls with more insulation where needed triple pane windows that have an amazing seal from an energy perspective. So they're very insulating and so we land with this luxury building that's using 60 70 plus percent less energy than any brand new other building that's going on and for just a tiny tiny premium on the cost On the north side of the building. We have a 70-foot mural hand painted by an artist and it's really beautiful and it's got integrated lighting that changes as you walk by it and then, you know, I think that we're very smart about how we pick our finishes and how we do say our cabinets, casework, etc, and our place, we always spend more money on that stuff because it's the thing that people want. So this building a building like soulless while adults are sustainable. There's zero compromise from any perspective for anyone that lives there, right? It's beautiful from the outside, it's beautiful from the inside, but we're not asking higher rent than, you know, any new building around us really. MBS conducts a number of industry reports and we've recently launched the sustainability report for this year. What we found from that was only 14% of the respondents, which were all construction professionals from from around different areas of the sector. We're working on green projects all the time, so it didn't paint a very clear picture that people were doing this continuously. The report asked respondents to explain how important sustainability was to them. eight out of 10, that replied said that sustainability was very important topic to them as a person, which I think links into the human morals of people typically just wanting to do good. However, only four out of 10 said that it was important to their business. Now, this is going to have impact of wide and varied different options, but I think it's gonna be topics around the priority compared to other industry drivers, such as profit margins, delivery times, etcetera. Um, it's gonna sit and maybe compliance as well. It's going to sit maybe lower on the business agenda than it would be to the individual. Um, that's not responsible for keeping the business running. The unfortunate reality is that just because maybe a green building is worth more over time and that it can command higher rent and that it's healthier for us. That doesn't actually create as much market movement as we hoped it would because so many people just don't have the capital to invest in these things up front. We need to change policy and regulation to make that start to be more accessible and more required for the rest of the world. Property taxes are the number one thing that can dramatically move the needle with regard to how does the building Pencil financially. Right. So if you know, you can get a 10%, tax savings for an old sustainable building, that would be enough to make almost everybody do it at the moment, we are still trying to get construction to be sustainable. Obviously, sustainability is effectively the halfway point to regenerative design. However, projects allow it. Um, there's no reason why they can't be hitting the regenerative design requirements. Now we don't feel there has to be any sort of compromise. You can have ultra luxury and ultra sustainable. So just you can have high end buildings that are ultra sustainable and they don't have to cost a huge premium. The amount of energy that you save with smart design, better insulation, better windows, heat pump technology, et cetera. Some of the really kind of blocking and tackling things is significantly more than you saved by simply adding solar panels or something like that. But just incentivize it, incentivizes through tax savings, Incentivize it through less requirement for electrical build up things like this and people will do it. We, as designers and constructors of buildings have a lot of control over the amount of carbon that we are responsible for when we build a building. Because we can make very simple. Oftentimes zero cost decisions to lower our carbon footprint. Just by making a slightly more thoughtful decision about what we put into the building in the first place. Right? Mhm