CA40 - 👟 Step 1 | Start here
How to set up a sustainability workshop that will set the project on the right foot.
NEWSWORTHY
THE POLL
THE TOPIC
I’m sure you’ve heard this one before:
“If You Fail to Plan, You Are Planning to Fail” — Benjamin Franklin
My first job in architecture taught me this lesson about sustainable design.
I had been given my first project to lead and I had ambitions to design a high-performance building with all of the key features I had studied in school.
The problem was that I never planned to bring my client along for the ride. Rather than inviting them on the journey, I started out without getting on the same page.
You can probably guess what happened.
I presented my first concept and my client was like “We didn’t ask for this”….
Well, I guess that’s because I never asked … lesson learned.
So how do you bring your clients along on the sustainable journey?
It starts with a Workshop. You can call it what you want, I call it a Sustainability Workshop.
Simple, but clear.
Let’s look at what makes up a good workshop.
1// Education
It’s easy to assume that your clients know what sustainable design means. Maybe they do, but most likely they don’t, or at least not as much as you. So make sure this is where you start. This isn’t meant to feel condescending or egotistical, it’s about making sure your client is fully aware of the issues in the world so they can make informed decisions. Here are a few topics I like to cover in mine:
// Climate Change 101 - What are GHG emissions doing to our world? Don’t be sensationalist, but let’s look at what [insert the city you live in] will look like in 100 years. I like to use Climatedata.ca for Canadian information.
// Embodied + Operational Carbon - Where do emissions in buildings come from? There are two sources and most clients only think about operating their building. You can explain it this simply. Carbon is a lot like money. You invest a large amount of upfront capital to build and then smaller amounts every year to operate. Same with carbon. Large upfront, smaller amounts to operate every year.
// Water use - Water is often overlooked but is something important to cover at this stage to help illustrate the importance of water conservation and recycling in the design of high-performance buildings.
// Materials - There can be a lot to cover when it comes to materials, but a simple explanation of the chemicals that can be in materials will help to set the stage for the next steps
// Mobility - Again, this can be overlooked at the building scale, but I like to talk about how important bike and active transportation facilities in a building contribute to the larger network.
2// Inspire
After providing some education to make sure everyone is on the same page it’s helpful to go through some things that can address some of the issues outlined above and improve the design of the building. The challenging thing here is to balance big issues with small solutions. You don’t want to make this a shopping cart of items to pick:
“I’ll take two window shades, three bike stalls, and one heat pump”
But rather to get your client thinking about:
“ I want a building that costs me less to operate and produces less GHG. How do I make that happen?”
Focus less on specific elements and more on big strategies. This gives you as the designer a chance to provide a solution that best meets what they are looking for. As you might know, if the goal is lower energy many different solutions depend on the building type, location, and use.
To reiterate - Understanding the client's big-picture aspirations is more important than the specifics of where they want the bike stalls (at this point)
3// Engagement
This is probably the most important point. You want your client(s) and user groups engaged and working to understand what they want. I’ve seen this done in many ways, but a foolproof way is to use pictures. Pictures help people engage with ideas and help them communicate what they can’t put into words. For example:
Your client may look at this picture and say “I want something like that” which you can use to help them dig out that they want a walkable location, they want a lot of greener on the site, they want flexible space. So many different things.
Engage your clients and get them to talk about what they want. With the lens of sustainability, you would be amazed how much your client actually does want the same things as you.
TLDR:
Start every project with a sustainability workshop they should:
1/ Educate your client on what sustainability means
2/ Present sustainable design directions
3/ Engage and encourage participation
THE PERSON
Dani Hill Hansen is an architect and sustainable design engineer at EFFEKT in Copenhagen, DK. Here LI profile has a great bio: Buildings like trees, cities like forests 🌲Nature-based solutions 🍄A degrowth mindset ☀️Systems thinking for sustainable transformation♻️
THE PROJECT
The UBC Gateway project in Vancouver, BC is going to be stunning and it has many goals. It is planned to be Zero Carbon Certified and LEED Gold. It is a partnership between Perkins Will and Schmidt Hammer Lassen and will be completed later this year. Check out some of the beautiful Mass Timber spaces!
I love the story of you as a young architect, just assuming and not bringing the client on board. It seems you learned your lesson, many architects don't!