People, Planet, Design by Corey Squire

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People, Planet, Design

People, Planet, Design A Practical Guide to Realizing Architecture’s Potential

Corey Squire

Illustrated by Helena Zambrano

© 2023 Corey Squire All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 2000 M Street, NW, Suite 480-B, Washington, DC 20036-3319.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023934898 All Island Press books are printed on environmentally responsible materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Keywords: access; American Institute of Architects (AIA) Committee on the Environment (COTE); architectural practice; beauty; carbon emissions; climate change; comfort; communication; concrete; design excellence; design process; energy efficiency; equity; health; high-performance building; human health; indoor air quality; leadership; mass timber; material selection; net-zero; resilience; resource conservation; reuse; scale; sustainability; universal design; water management

For Félix, and the planet

Contents

Foreword by Z Smith

xi

Preface

xv

Acknowledgments

xxi

Part I: Theory

1

Chapter 1: Form and Function

3

Chapter 2: Benefits and Barriers

24

Part II: Practice

65

Chapter 3: Effective Communication

47

Chapter 4: Vision

69

Chapter 6: Design Process

101

Chapter 5: Culture

79

Chapter 7: Information, Resources, and Knowledge

126

Part III: Design

145

Chapter 8: Scale

149

Chapter 9: Windows

160

Chapter 11: The Roof

212

Chapter 10: Air Quality and Quantity

188

Chapter 12: Structure

230

Chapter 14: Interior Finishes

279

Chapter 13: Electricity

253

Chapter 15: The Benefits of Trees ix

296

x

Contents

Chapter 16: Access

305

Notes



About the Author and Illustrator



Chapter 17: User Behavior

Suggested Reading and Resources

322



Foreword

By Z Smith, FAIA, PhD, LEED Fellow, WELL AP

This book is for all those who believe that the purpose of buildings is to provide shelter, comfort, and delight for those who spend time in them, while promoting better communities and a world worth living in. It provides designers with a collection of tools, concepts, practices, and inspiration that empowers. And it’s a lot of fun.

Nearly a century ago, Le Corbusier asserted that “a house is a machine for living in.” Much of building design and construction seems to follow this mechanistic view of buildings as assemblages of components and systems working like clockwork to provide a neutral, characterless environment—inoffensive temperature, humidity, light, and sound levels no matter what the conditions outside. Meanwhile, architectural education, and the designs receiving praise and awards, seem disconnected from these goals and constraints, instead focusing on whatever it takes to be visually stunning.

Instead, this book makes the case for a human-centered architecture that integrates beauty and delight with comfort and an awareness of the impact of every design choice on the people who will use the building, the community, and the planet.

And it couldn’t come at a more crucial time.

Most buildings today are so unpleasant to be in that when people are asked to close their eyes and envision themselves where they are happiest, remarkably few envision somewhere inside a building. The indoors are stifling us, sometimes even killing us. We are now emerging from what was, we now realize, a pandemic of the indoors—where the airborne spread could have been reduced by better filtration, increased outdoor air intake, or just opening the damned windows. Even during “normal” times, buildings expose occupants to materials linked to negative health and productivity impacts—materials made from xi

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chemicals produced at plants next door to poor and minority communities suffering from elevated rates of cancer and lung disease.

Meanwhile, the construction and operation of buildings is responsible for 40 percent of climate-changing carbon emissions. There are fewer than 3 million architects in a world of nearly 8 billion people, so this means architects have outsized leverage. In the United States, the design choices made by the typical architecture firm employee each year can reduce emissions by an amount equal to 300 times that produced by an average American.

The transformation will be made easier by the inexorable yet still astonishing transformation to clean energy. Buildings can help accelerate this transition, not just through mundane technology substitutions— heat pumps for combustion—but by unlocking the power of the most sophisticated building management system ever seen: the occupants of the buildings themselves.

In fact, simple technological substitution could result in a world just as inequitable and alienated as our world today—where the residents of solar-powered gated communities make their long commutes alone in their electric cars. The world is going to be remade, so why not address the two great challenges of our age—climate and equity—in an integrated, coherent way?

The transition from today’s destructive ways of living to something better has often been framed as self-denial: “What are you willing to give up?” Instead, this book asks, “What would you be willing to gain?”

Would you be willing to have buildings be more joyful, more beautiful, more comfortable? Would you be willing to pay less for utilities?

Would you be willing to spend time in buildings that helped you move more and be healthier, in communities where everything you need is close by, where everyone felt welcome?

So how do we get there?

Amory Lovins remarked, “Some say, ‘Technology is the answer.’ But what was the question?” This suggests we should focus first on the outcomes we want—“Hot showers and cold beer”—and then deploy technology with a light, elegant touch to reach those outcomes. For example, while a lighting standard might call for a horizontal illuminance of 50 foot-candles (implicitly throughout a space), we might

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focus first on what drove this goal—“I want to be able to comfortably read something printed on paper”—and ask how best to meet that need, knowing that different people will have different requirements to meet that goal.

This book provides a compendium of processes for successful outcomes in architectural practice from both a process and a technology perspective but always starts by asking us to be clear about what we’re trying to use technology to achieve. It posits that what we mean by buildings is really a system of physical components and people, that what we ask buildings to do needs to start with culture, and that what we expect buildings to do is culturally determined, often based on cultural norms on the part of building owners and design professionals.

It reminds us that we would do well to question the assumptions that have led to how we build today and how we might build and live instead.

When we focus on the desired outcomes—that buildings shelter us from the elements without disconnecting us from the world, that buildings provide the quality of air, light, and views we now know to be essential to health, productivity, and joy—we can move beyond the checklist mentality that has captured much of the design community.

Yet designing beyond the checklist does not mean designing without measurement. “What we need,” observed architect Clark Brockman, “is compelling imagery supported by righteous data.” This is the concept behind the AIA’s Framework for Design Excellence that the author and illustrator of this book did so much to advance. The Framework organizes how we approach and evaluate design along ten measures, from health, equity, and community to energy and water, inviting a pairing of imagery with metrics but prizing the integration of these approaches into a single coherent whole above all, with an approach to design that acknowledges that buildings can learn from their occupants and that observations of how structures and occupants work together (or don’t!) can be fed forward into designs informed by what has been learned.

The approach to thinking about buildings embodied in the Framework also suggests a better way to think about the practice of architecture. Because the author has worked both as a member of staff

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within award-winning practices and as a consultant to many others, this book offers an essential perspective with practical advice to designers who seek to transform their own practices.

After starting with theory—an examination of what architecture is for and how we might center human experience in design—and moving through techniques to organize architectural practice toward achieving these clearer goals—this book takes a fresh look at the building components that architects deploy in design and how they can be deployed coherently in service of human-centered, climate-aware, and equitable design.

We have a world to win. Let’s get to it.

Preface Environmental scientist Donella Meadows proposed a theory of leverage points that describe the most effective places to intervene in a system to bring about change. At the surface level, you can change numbers fairly easily, but only with a middling impact. An example is designing a building to an updated energy code. Increasing an R-value or a seasonal energy efficiency ratio (SEER) rating will improve energy efficiency, but the resulting building and its associated outcomes will be mostly the same. Intervening a little deeper, at the level of a feedback loop, is more difficult, but the result, if successful, will be more impactful. An example is adding a requirement for energy performance metrics to a design award submission. Changing incentives will change behavior and result in a deeper, more durable shift than upgrading numbers alone. The deepest place to intervene in a system is at the level of the paradigm. A paradigm is an accepted model of how the world works. Paradigms are deeply entrenched in culture and very difficult to budge. Any attempt to change a paradigm will be met with strong resistance, but if it is accomplished, the potential impacts can be swift and profound.

Identifying the levers that can unlock change is the purpose of this book. During my career as an architect and sustainable design leader, both within architecture firms and consulting from the outside, I’ve worked with architects to create higher-performance buildings. The goals of greater health, greater equity, fewer toxins, and fewer carbon emissions are nearly universally accepted. Nobody wants to pollute unnecessarily, live among hazardous chemicals, or harm people through the process of design and construction. Yet achieving these universally desired outcomes remains difficult. In fact, it often seems like a fight.

The architects who strive to deliver kinder, gentler, globally beneficial designs often feel as if they’d been relegated to the trenches, struggling inch by inch for a little less vinyl or slightly better daylight. For those who seek better outcomes from the built environment, the force xv

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standing in the way is traditional practice. A collection of accepted norms, subpar codes, entrenched supply chains, and moneyed interests is working hand in hand to deliver a built environment that nobody actually wants to live in. The weight of traditional practice can feel all encompassing and is often enough to crush best intentions and redirect an architect’s best efforts toward more of the same, transforming design from an aspirational endeavor for making the world a better place into a struggle for incremental improvement.

Traditional practice manifests in two distinct ways. The first is the lowest common denominator of code minimum, budget constraints, or efforts to maximize short-term return on investment. In this case, the significant design decisions have already been made on a spreadsheet, and assumptions of what’s good, what’s acceptable, and what’s possible resist questioning. The other expression of traditional practice is through form making. This is the idea that design’s role is to create something visually stunning rather than meaningful or consequential.

The image is held up as the ideal rather than real impact on real people.

Of course, architectural design doesn’t have to be this way. Creating beautiful buildings that positively affect the world doesn’t have to be a fight where one side wins and the other loses. Design excellence is an alternative to traditional practice. This is the idea that design can and should seek a higher bar for impact and outcomes. Looking good or delivering for investors represents only a tiny portion of architecture’s full potential. What if, in addition, great design was defined by its ability to cool the planet, heal communities, enhance ecological functioning, and advance justice? A holistic interpretation of design excellence is the paradigm shift that allows architecture to reach its full potential.

But to accomplish this, we’ll first need to deal with traditional practice.

Rather than charge head on against deeply established norms and customs, the better path is to seek out the leverage points.

After years of working to advance sustainability goals within a practice, I became frustrated with the day-to-day fight for the things that everyone already wanted. Trying to address the challenge of higher performance from the other end of the spectrum, I served on the American Institute of Architects (AIA) National Committee on the Environment (COTE), where I co-authored the AIA’s Framework for

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Design Excellence. This was an attempt to redefine the meaning of design, to shift the goal of architecture toward outcomes and impacts, and to broaden the circle of concern beyond individual property lines.

With the widespread adoption and use of the Framework, it’s clear that the architecture profession is ready to move beyond traditional practice. What still needs to be worked out is the practical path to get there.

With my sustainable design experience spanning from the level of a project to the level of the institute, I left practice and founded a consulting firm called Dept. of Sustainability. The goal was to help architecture firms achieve high-performance outcomes for health, climate, and equity without the fight or frustration. I knew it must be possible. After all, so many practitioners are talking about carbon reduction and social equity, signing pledges and commitments, and using the Framework for Design Excellence to guide their work. Through my practice, I saw glimpses of what the profession has the potential to be: small actions that resulted in big impact, design work driven by deep human caring, and new ideas presented in a way that changed the perspective of everyone at the table. Guided by these moments as inspiration, my consulting work, culminating in this book, is an attempt to answer the question of how architects can achieve great outcomes in the face of traditional practice. To succeed, we’ll need to imagine a better future, understand what it takes to get there, and then effectively deliver it.

The book is divided into three parts, each essential for advancing the planet-saving potential of architectural design. Part 1, “Theory,” explores the history of sustainable design and proposes new ways of conceiving architecture’s purpose. This section also outlines what architecture can achieve, what’s standing in the way, and how to communicate through existing barriers. Part II, “Practice,” describes the individual elements that make up a high-performance practice.

These are the small facets of culture and process that can lead to an environment where high-performing buildings emerge on their own or otherwise create the friction that results in subpar design and ongoing frustration. Finally, part III, “Design,” provides a plan of action. These chapters, organized by building system, highlight the areas that can

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lead to the greatest impact and zero in on the design strategies that will result in healthy, equitable, and beautiful high-performance buildings.

A few themes are evident throughout these sections. The first is a focus on culture and an encouragement to always question the prevailing wisdom. Often, what seems practical or necessary is not a universal truth but a reflection of cultural norms. It’s useful to frequently step back and consider the broader context. Reliance on best practices is another theme, especially as they relate to the balance between time and accuracy. Too often, the desire for greater accuracy becomes the enemy and time is wasted homing in on an answer beyond the point of it mattering. Buildings should generally run east to west, but optimizing to the degree will never be a worthwhile endeavor. Any effort that improves design needs to be considered against the time it takes to accomplish. Pareto’s equilibrium, commonly known as the 80–20 rule—that the first 20 percent of the effort can achieve 80 percent of the impact—is an effective way to evaluate effort against outcomes. In addition, it’s important to recognize that what’s interesting and what’s important might not be the same. We’re often overly drawn to things we can see, leaving so many important but invisible outcomes, such as acoustics, air quality, supply chains, and preparation for future hazards, on the table. Finally, so much comes down to the power of creativity and the opportunity to have fun. Historically, sustainability has too often taken the form of rigid rules or a rigorous checklist, prioritizing austerity over opportunity. In contrast, setting the right goals and then creating a space for creative problem solving will always result in a better process and product.

It’s important to add a note on the word sustainability. Although this is technically a book about sustainable design, that phrase can be limiting. As much as possible, I avoid using sustainable or sustainable design in favor of design, good design, or design excellence. A holistic vision of design is what this book and this movement are about, as opposed to creating a subset of the architecture profession for those who love trees or get a thrill out of calculating an energy use intensity.

When I was in architecture school, a professor of mine thought that sustainability was a trend, like Brutalism, from which we will wake up and return to true Design, the wastefulness and antihuman outcomes

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that resulted in great magazine photography. Instead of being a trend, it’s better to think of sustainability as a constraint, a physical manifestation of reality, that is more analogous to gravity than it is to Art Nouveau. In the past, architects could be forgiven for not understanding the negative impacts that derive from certain forms, materials, or strategies. The same could have been said for egress pre– building codes or access pre–Americans with Disabilities Act. Today this is no longer the case. Sustainable design was useful for building awareness of environmental issues, but its usefulness as a subset of design has come to an end. Today there is just design: good design that addresses relevant issues and bad design that turns a blind eye.

After working with dozens of firms and years of thinking through the question of what leads to better design, in the end, a lot comes down to earnestness. Earnestness cannot be created, but where it exists, which is almost everywhere in design professions, it can be nurtured.

The right environment can harness earnest human caring and direct that energy into excellent design work. The intention of this book is to help create that environment. The world needs beautiful, equitable, high-performance buildings. My hope is that this book will identify leverage points to make it happen.

Portland, Oregon January 2023

Acknowledgments So many people contributed to the ideas in this book, and I’m grateful for all the conversations with friends and colleagues on sustainability and architecture that informed my thinking. I’d like to offer a particular thanks to the following: Helena Zambrano, who developed the ideas in this book with me over more than a decade of daily conversations about sustainability, architecture, and life. None of it would have been possible without her.

Z Smith, who helped develop my personal and professional confidence that good ideas can change the world and encouraged me to share them.

Marsha Maytum, with whom I developed the quixotic idea that the definition of good design could be shifted to encompass sustainability.

Her confidence that this idea will succeed in transforming the architecture profession has been a daily inspiration.

Kristof Irwin, who reminded me to always focus on the human dimensions of design decisions. He’s the only engineer I know who begins decision discussions with a reminder of our common human limbic systems.

Tate Walker, who traveled the country with me to spread the word on design excellence, which provided so many opportunities for digging deep into the most effective sustainable design strategies and the challenges to getting them implemented.

Fran Moskowitz, who read every draft, for raising me and encouraging me to follow a lifelong passion for a sustainable world.

In addition, countless others helped inform my worldview on sustainable design, by providing insights into specific topics covered in the book, collaborating with me on various projects of the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment, or inspiring me with a unique thought before I ever set pen to paper. I’d like to thank Aaron Bush, Adam Heisserer, Amy Running, Andrea Love, Angela Brooks, Anne Hicks Harney, Anne Schopf, Bill Leddy, Billie Faircloth, xxi

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Betsy del Monte, Carl Elefante, Dan Hart, Gunnar Hubbard, Henry Siegel, Jake Dunn, Jonathan Feldman, Julie Hiromoto, Larry Strain, Mary Ann Lazarus, Michelle Amt, Mike Manzi, Nadav Malin, Noah Marble, Phaedra Svec, Robert Hoang, Scott Mooney, Susan Ubbelohde, Thuy Le, Torrey Carleton, Varun Kohli, Victor Olgyay, Vikram Sami, and Vivian Loftness.

I’d also like to thank Kira Gould for encouraging me to actually start writing and Heather Boyer and the whole team at Island Press for seeing potential in my idea for this book and helping me make it happen.

Finally, I want to thank the principals at Bora Architecture and Interiors, Amy Donohue, Brad Demby, Chris Linn, Jeanie Lai, John O’Toole, Michael Tingley, and Stefee Knudsen, for giving me the most generous gift, time to write.

Part I

Theory

1

Chapter 

Form and Function

T

he important thing about architecture is that it relates to everything. Buildings serve as a backdrop for our lives, not just as a neutral stage set but as active players in the project of human progress. Architecture is how society tells its story. While art might seek an ideal, the built environment demonstrates reality, telling the story of a civilization in its totality by signaling what’s important, who has value, and how a society functions. For as long as buildings have been around, they have leveraged available technology to provide for people’s needs while embodying the values and aspirations of the cultures that designed and built them. By the beginning of the twentyfirst century, however, the interests and passions of the architectural profession had diverged from the interests of the public. New buildings that seemed disconnected from everyday human concerns and did not address society’s needs swung at but missed the spirit of the day while undermining and miscommunicating architecture’s potential.

No single cause is entirely responsible for this schism, but cheap energy coupled with technological optimism helped disconnect architectural design from the concerns of those who use or inhabit build3

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ings. As a long string of inventions including air conditioning, electric lighting, synthetic materials, and even window film promised to solve the problems that were traditionally addressed by design, the public came to see technology as a magic bullet. At the same time, design awards and industry magazines focused on image over impact, creating bad incentives and leading architecture to become bogged down by insignificant details or meaningless aims. All the while, as society faced ever-larger questions and crises, spanning from climate change to income inequality, architecture was not seen as part of the solution.

From the general public’s perspective, architecture exists in a realm completely separate from most people’s everyday lives. Exposure to architecture in the press and media tends to cover public works more focused on impressing other architects than serving the public good.

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Often the angle is spectacular new forms, as was the case with the World Trade Center Metro Hub by Santiago Calatrava. Otherwise, the angle is sensational, with claims about how the city of the future will be 3D printed or connected with driverless cars, even though these hyped “innovations” do not address any actual problem that society is facing. Beyond the top-line stories of extravagance, the way that the public most frequently engages with architecture is through styles.

Most people can identify a Tudor or a Colonial, and to many, architecture is a collection of ornamental features that distinguish a Georgian from a Craftsman from a Greek Revival. The result is that the public discourse on architecture is no deeper than a building’s exterior cladding.

In early 2020, when the Trump administration proposed an executive order mandating new federal buildings be designed to appear Classical, the pushback from the media and political class was entirely through the lens of style. To a casual bystander, it would seem that the inclusion or lack of fluted columns is what determines the quality of a building and the idea that buildings could serve a more significant civic role never came up. “Modernist architecture is ugly and based on the egos of elitist architects” was the political right’s cartoon argument in favor of the resolution. The response from the left typically pointed out that only fascist societies legally mandate a particular artistic expression. Below the surface, both sides of the political divide seemed to agree that buildings are blank canvases and what matters is their outward appearance. Few thought to propose that federal buildings could be mandated to generate value for the occupants or community through outcomes such as a healthy work environment or support for local habitat, all while remaining column-capital-neutral. The fact that everyone who partook in this conversation missed this point—that buildings are functional objects with the potential to do good—is the result of architecture’s long slide into the wilderness, the loss of the profession’s ability to recognize and communicate its relevance.

The situation is only minimally better within the architecture community, where the discussions around design are different but too often similarly misplaced. Here, esoteric concerns such as “transparency” or “dynamism” tend to crowd out real-world outcomes such as comfort or

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pollution. Many architects readily accept excessive glare and thermal discomfort for the sake of conceptual transparency through the use of unnecessarily large expanses of glass. Rather than this Faustian bargain being called out by peers as a harmful design flaw, many subpar projects are lauded. Their openness is admired from afar via photographs, and harmful designs are recognized with awards by those who never occupied the space adjacent to the western facade on a summer afternoon.

An example is the San Francisco Federal Building, completed in 2007, an ambitious project with energy reduction, health, and productivity goals that didn’t apply any strategies that would lead to the architect’s stated outcomes. Continuous south-facing glazing with no solar protection other than a perforated scrim resulted in near-continuous glare at the southern workstations, among other less-than-ideal outcomes. Another example is Chicago’s Aqua Tower, completed in 2009.

The building’s stunning geometric form glows like a radiator in the winter night as heat escapes through the thermal bridge at every floor slab. In this case, excess energy use, and thus unnecessary air pollution, was accepted for the sake of an interesting shape. It is said that when the design team first imagined this expressive form, they assumed that thermal breaks in the slab between indoors and outdoors would let them reduce the negative impacts inherent in this form, but when time came to cut costs, the thermal breaks were deleted and the form lived on. In both this case and that of the San Francisco Federal Building, the architect decided to prioritize formal expression without the strategies necessary to make it work for people.

Although the Aqua Tower and San Francisco Federal Building both missed opportunities to demonstrate architecture’s potential for positive impact by choosing image over outcomes, the height of irresponsibility might be the Parco della Musica by Renzo Piano Architects, a beautiful performing art center in Rome completed in 2002. To pay homage to the traditional materials of the ancient city, the project was conceived as a composition of thin red bricks, travertine flooring, and hammered lead (lead!) roofs to cover the three performance spaces.

The poetry of the material palette and the project’s deference to the historic context is the stuff of great architectural theory, but the roof is literally toxic. Rain, which is naturally slightly acidic, leaches mate-

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rial from those panels and washes lead into nearby soil and waterways, where it accumulates. In 2019, another building with a lead roof, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, caught fire, with the resulting smoke plume littering the city center’s parks and playgrounds with toxic ash. We can’t fault the tenth-century Parisians for their material selection because they didn’t yet understand the full health implications of various metals, but for an architect practicing in the twenty-first century to place “material honesty” over human health is an indication of how adrift some corners of the profession had become. The Romans also used lead for wine goblets and plumbing, but there would have been an appropriate level of concern if the Parco’s concession stand served chianti in a leaded chalice.

By elevating concepts such as “transparency,” “dynamic form,” or “material honesty” to the status of accepted value, architects devote energy and resources toward achieving outcomes that in the end either don’t matter or can cause unnecessary harm.

In the interwar period, artist Marcel Duchamp railed against the concept of “retinal art,” which he defined as “art produced purely for the eyes.” By the twenty-first century, the idea of architectural design being purely retinal has become an accepted fact in some corners of the industry. The opposite of retinal art is art that engages the mind, and this idea led to the Dada, Modern, and Contemporary movements.

The resulting work was profound, but a movement in the art world is inherently limited in real-world impact because of its small scale and minimal interaction with the population. Architecture is different. Its scale and ubiquity lead to a much greater impact, both positive and negative. The opposite of retinal architecture is architecture that engages the eyes and mind but also the heart, the lungs, the forests, and the atmosphere. This is the architecture that can rise to the moment and reconnect design with the outcomes that matter most.

The Built Environment’s Inherent Relevance Before design can begin to address big problems, it’s necessary to first establish the degree to which architecture is a relevant force in people’s day-to-day lives. This claim of relevancy is not at all evident when

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viewed through the lens of “architecture as style” or “architecture as poetry” but crystal clear when the lens through which we view architectural design shifts toward outcomes. Architecture’s relevance is based on three key features: ubiquity, scale, and, most significantly, impact.

Architecture, in one form or another, is everywhere, comprising our entire physical environment. North Americans spend over 90 percent of their lives in buildings, with most of the remaining 10 percent in either a car or designed outdoor spaces.1 With the possible exception of being far off in a remote part of the natural world, most people move through their lives entirely in spaces that were intentionally designed.

In addition, architecture exists on an enormous scale unmatched by practically any other human endeavor. The material resources, economic capital, and brain power needed to design and construct the built environment are enormous. The construction sector accounts for 13 percent of global gross domestic product and 7 percent of the global workforce, with buildings responsible for 36 percent of the world’s final energy use and 39 percent of carbon emissions.2,3 Above all, architecture’s relevance derives from its impact. Based on its scale, intensity, and reach, it’s easy to see how decisions made with the pen can be mightier than those made with the backhoe. After all, it’s the pen that controls the backhoe as well as the light coming through windows, the impurities in the air, and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. When we look at design through the lens of its real impact on people’s lives, it’s clear that architecture is not only relevant but deeply impactful.

Each morning, we wake up in a space that was designed, a bedroom, and based on the room’s properties, we might feel rested or groggy, ready to face the day or already looking for the first opportunity to doze off. The quality and quantity of light, the attenuation of sound, and the purity of the air are just a few of the environmental conditions that result from someone’s design decisions. All of these factors affect sleep, which then affects our mood, relationships, ambitions, and health. With these compounding impacts in mind, the bedroom can be elevated conceptually from a place that holds a bed to a space that holds deep potential to foster human thriving.

During our waking hours, the built environment continues to affect

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everything from the quality of the water we drink to the chemicals that come into contact with our skin. Architecture influences what we see, hear, and smell, where we live and how we travel, our success at work or school, and even the balance of stress and reward hormones in our bodies. An example is the concentration of carbon dioxide in our schools and offices; a single, invisible factor significantly impacts our memory, alertness, and mental and emotional functioning. The factors determining CO2 concentration in buildings include fan speed, damper size, run schedules, and operable windows. Each of these factors is designed, and these decisions affect the minds of those who spend time in the space. Furthermore, a simple action can lead to a causal loop and perpetuate itself: The architect or engineer whose decisions lead to poor air quality in one building might themselves be suffering from poor air quality in their own work space due to another designer’s oversight or bad choices. In contrast, the creative genius in the inspirational environment might go on to design an even more inspirational environment for others. Similar examples of impacts and causal loops could be illustrated for many other aspects of the indoor environment, including thermal comfort, light quality, contact with nature, or the presence of environmental toxins. Each time the story would be the same—the well-being of building occupants is a tangible outcome of design.

The full impacts of architecture, however, are not contained by a building’s four walls. Repercussions of design decisions will ripple outwards in both time and space. A simple decision about decking material can revitalize a local industry or lead to deforestation of the Amazon thousands of miles away. A decision about insulation can result in carbon sequestration or exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions, affecting the lives of people who have yet to be born. When aggregated, small impacts from individual actions can lead to global crises, many of which the world is facing today. Alternatively, the small-scale and large-scale impacts of great design can lead to the solutions.

“Architects don’t need to seek relevance, only seize it” was the rallying cry of Carl Elefante, 2018 president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) who emphasized architecture’s potential to address global issues, such as climate change, as an opportunity for the profes-

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sion to reclaim a seat at the table of public leadership. Elefante’s insight was that many architects were initially attracted to the profession with the goal of building a better world, but at some point the direct connection between day-to-day practice and real-world impacts became blurred. Building design has reached in many different directions in a search for relevance, when in reality the answer was right in front of us all along. The planet needs saving, and design carries planet-saving potential. Based on the zeitgeist of today, great design can be achieved only by the projects that move in that direction. A new vision of design excellence is how architecture can seize relevance—first conceptually, by shifting mindsets about the purpose of architecture, and then practically by doing the work that heals the world.

The Spirit of the Day Great design is not a static concept but a reflection of the priorities of a given context. A building must always keep the rain out, mediate the climate, and provide security for the inhabitants, and successful works of architecture have been serving these purposes for millennia. For a building to be considered excellent, however, meeting these primary objectives has never been enough. At different times and in different places, there is always a higher objective for a project to aspire to. This is the realm of design excellence, the intersection between providing for basic needs and advancing on the priorities of the day. The buildings that are most celebrated do not all look a certain way, as they would if great design were a matter of appearance. A work by Francesco Borromini and a work by Le Corbusier have very little in common, yet both architects designed buildings that are widely considered examples of great architecture. Both were hugely talented, but neither architect would be likely to find their work accepted to the same degree today.

It’s not that the fundamental purpose of a building has changed or that we see physical forms any differently but that the zeitgeist has shifted.

These great buildings of the past were striving to achieve a vision that’s no longer relevant.

At the height of the Italian Renaissance, elaborate ornamental architecture was used by the Catholic Church to represent Heaven on

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Earth. Achieving passage to the afterlife was a primary objective of that culture, and the most celebrated buildings were the ones that came the closest to achieving it. Borromini’s church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane is an example of design excellence in that era. Complex forms of domes and coffers intersect in a way that’s awe-inspiring, pushing the limits of technology to create increasingly extravagant visions of paradise. A few centuries later, great architecture no longer reached for the heavens because interest in the afterlife was pushed aside by other concerns. To some in the early twentieth century, buildings became a vehicle to usher in modernity. “A house is a machine for living” was a mantra of Le Corbusier as he saw technology and industry transform planes, trains, and automobiles. New materials such as reinforced concrete and sheet glass allowed for new architectural forms and the development of an architectural ideal to align with the mass production spirit of the day. Leveraging the curtain wall and the piloti to elevate buildings above their historic constraints, the rational forms and pure geometry of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye demonstrated design excellence in the era of heavy industry.

A few decades later, the Lever House, a glass tower designed by Skidmore, Owlings, and Merrill, took these ideas one step further. Built in the international style after the end of World War II, the project represents design excellence in the era of technological optimism. The floor-to-ceiling glass, identical on all four sides, demonstrated the dominance of technology over nature. Minor concerns, such as heating or the location of the sun, could now be solved with energy or fancy new equipment. Architecture was freed from constraints such as site or climate to pursue a pure, sleek, geometric vision of the future.

“Same building, heat it in Oslo, cool it in Bangkok” is how William McDonough caricatured the movement.

Simultaneously, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, many autocratic regimes feared dissent and empowerment of the people, and thus buildings that were celebrated by these societies were designed for control. In this context, great architecture was represented by oppressive housing blocks that preserved the political system and imposing civic buildings that brought glory to the state.

The turn of the twenty-first century brought new computer-based

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geometric forms that got out ahead of purpose and reason, leading to a Cambrian explosion of sweeping formal expression. The more curves the better, and the laws of gravity were designed to be broken. Design excellence in the era of computational possibilities became a race toward the absurd.

This progression leads right up to the present day, where the problems are real, mostly of our making, and gathering at our doorstep.

Architecture is in a unique position to address society’s diverse challenges, and just as in times past, great design will be defined by the issues of the day. In the twenty-first century, these are the heat waves, wildfires, plagues, inequality, habitat loss, loneliness, and many more calamities that society is increasingly confronted with.

In the era of climate change, design excellence can represent a vision of architecture that addresses big problems. It’s an approach that elevates people to the center of design decisions and dissolves the site line as the boundary of the architects’ considerations. As the world faces mounting challenges, it’s become increasingly clear that design has complex, far-reaching consequences. Through mindfulness and intention, however, the power of design can be harnessed as a force for good. And it should be. Design can be deployed against wild weather and rising tides, income inequality, and every other impediment to human thriving. Architects can rethink the purpose of their craft and resume their role as civic leaders. Architects can demonstrate design as a process for building the world that people want to live in. As we face the challenges of the twenty-first century, architecture can reclaim relevance by proposing the solutions.

Sustainability and Design To many architects, sustainability represented the path out of the wilderness. The negative environmental impacts of common building practices were well understood, and organizations such as the AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) and the US Green Building Council (USGBC) were founded in the early 1990s to advocate for architecture that lessened their environmental impacts. COTE, a knowledge community of architects, developed an awards program,

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the COTE Top Ten, that evaluated projects against ten measures of sustainable design, recognizing handsome, high-performing buildings with design awards. The COTE Top Ten recipients served as an early example of design’s potential to solve real-world problems. Around the same time, the USGBC launched the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, which popularized and in many ways defined sustainable architecture. The rating system began to transform some market norms, particularly volatile organic compound levels in paints and sealants, and made sustainable design a household name.

As the sustainable design movement matured, the emergence of Architecture 2030 was a major milestone, and AIA’s adoption of its 2030 Commitment represented an important boost for the idea that architecture’s relevance derives from its ability to solve problems.

Focusing on energy, because its negative impacts were well understood and it’s easy to measure and track, the program asked architecture firms to commit to achieving a net-zero energy portfolio by the year 2030.

Firms that accept the challenge, 1,100 and counting, must develop a Sustainability Action Plan and then each year report the aggregate energy reduction across their portfolio. First launched in 2008 with a 50 percent reduction target, the plan was to step down by 10 percent every five years until all signatories achieve an average 100 percent energy reduction by 2030. The success of the program was threefold.

First, from an education standpoint, the concept of benchmarking and the language of measurement (e.g., energy use intensity, net-zero) entered the architect’s lexicon. Second, the focus on energy modeling helped advance the idea that some important aspects of architecture cannot be seen. Finally, the program helped solidify the idea that design comes with responsibilities. Initially, most firms that reported their performance achieved nothing close to the committed goal, but that wasn’t the point. Suddenly many architects were measuring impacts and paying attention. By promoting the program, the AIA took a strong stance toward rethinking the purpose of architecture, even if initially it was focused only on energy conservation.

Building on the 2030 Commitment’s momentum, 2018 updates to the architect’s code of professional ethics formalized the architect’s

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responsibility for the outcomes of design. Although the existing ethical code made it clear that members of the profession are not allowed to lie, cheat, or steal, it turned out that architects had no formal moral responsibility for the consequences of design decisions, not even a Hippocratic-like commitment to do no harm. Among other topics, the new standards around environmental equity and justice state that “members make reasonable efforts to advise their clients and employers of their obligations to the environment, including: access to clean air, water, sunlight and energy for all; sustainable production, extraction, transportation and consumption practices; a built environment that equitably supports human health and well-being and is resistant to climate change; and restoring degraded or depleted natural resources.”

Although it’s unlikely to happen, technically, not having this conversation could cost an architect their license.

The combination of these two initiatives began bringing new ideas about the role and purpose of architecture to the surface. Inspired by 2030 Commitment reporting, energy use metrics began appearing in submissions for architectural design awards, sending the message that factors beyond appearance represent important qualities of design.

As impactful as these initiatives were, the label of sustainability stood in the way of universal adoption. Sustainable architecture carries baggage from movements going back to the 1970s, where, to many, sustainability seemed irreconcilable with design. There were the earth ships that celebrated eccentricity over effective strategies; the emergence of sick building syndrome, caused in part by prioritizing energy conservation without thinking through the potential consequences for human health; and later, the popular LEED rating system, which prioritized rigid checklists over creative problem solving. Even as sustainable design gained reach and prominence due to increasing awareness of looming crises, the idea that “sustainable” buildings look a certain way or that “sustainability” will add cost were accepted as fact among advocates and detractors alike. The myth that sustainability equated to spending more money on a less attractive product took hold as camps were formed between those who prioritize design and those who prioritize sustainability. The one thing that every architect seems to agree on is that sustainable design is a good thing, but probably not

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for this project. As long as architecture’s relevance remains tied up in a movement that’s widely understood to be counter to good design, its reach will be limited to those who act from a place of altruism.

When we dig a bit deeper, two things become clear. The first is that the assumed altruism of sustainable design is not altruism at all but higher-quality buildings that benefit the client in addition to the community and planet. The second is that without the baggage of the past—the cartoon “green buildings” that sport awkward features or a process prescribed by a checklist—the tension between design and performance disappears. Although there are clear examples of what sustainable design does not look like, there is no limitation, other than the designer’s imagination, on how high-performance design can appear. Daylight, passive strategies to deliver thermal comfort, and resource conservation have been fundamental to architectural design for thousands of years before being rebranded as “sustainable design features” and have resulted in as many beautiful buildings as forgettable ones. For the architecture profession to take seriously its planet-saving potential, the perceived incompatibility of design and performance needs to come to an end.

This is where the COTE Top Ten winners can show a way forward, showcasing the successful integration of performance and design. Unlike participants in other programs that recognize projects for aligning to narrow criteria such as appearance or energy performance, the COTE Top Ten winners need to cover it all, achieving high performance through beautiful design. These are projects where form expresses function and where images and metrics are held in equal standing. “Performing beautifully” is how these projects are often described, and during the first few decades of the program, a body of work consisting of hundreds of beautiful, responsible, and multifunctional projects emerged. These projects demonstrate that great works of architecture can do good from a social and environmental standpoint and that doing good results in great works of architecture.

In the last decade, an idea emerged that the COTE Top Ten framework could be broadened to not just define excellence in sustainability for a single awards program but to redefine the very meaning of good design for an architectural profession in search of relevance. Citizen

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architects submitted a proposal to the AIA’s board and membership to adopt the COTE Top Ten framework as new formal definition of good design, and when the resolution came up for a vote at the 2019 AIA National Convention in Las Vegas, an overwhelming majority of the membership voted to adopt the COTE Top Ten measures as the AIA’s new Framework for Design Excellence.

Although it will take years to fully realize, a conceptual shift in design thinking is well under way. Sustainability is not a subset of design but a collection of core considerations that good design is to address in a meaningful and impactful way. As more and more projects demonstrate the value and opportunities of aligning form with function, the false choice between performance and design will continue to melt away. What might be emerging is a new paradigm for design excellence in the era of climate change.

Design To better define design excellence, it makes sense to step back and consider the idea of design, a concept that suffers from a multiplicity of meanings. Design can be the process of reinventing an everyday object with improved qualities, such as the Nest thermostat, or a strategy for encouraging users to see the world in a new way, such as the Philippe Starck lemon juicer.4 Design can support human health through safety interventions, promote wellness (e.g., circadian lighting on some modern jetliners), or conserve energy through the aerodynamic contours of a performance car. The purpose of design can be to wow, to serve, to improve, or to reconsider.

As architects, what are we talking about when we talk about design? To some, design is about creating evocative visual forms, while to others it’s about solving real-world problems. What often comes to mind is the concept of “Design with a capital D,” that is, creating a form or composition that is so well curated or articulated that it elicits an emotional response. This is the realm of the artist, a field that is often coupled with architecture but stands apart because of one major difference: function. Design in the world of art is pure form. It’s unburdened by function and thus free to provoke without

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consequences. This is why civilization holds art in such high esteem.

Art challenges us, makes us question our preconceptions, and stands apart from many real-world constraints. Great art can play with our emotions. An hour spent contemplating Monet’s Water Lilies would be very different from an hour spent contemplating Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. These are both great works of art, yet one provides the viewer with a peaceful experience and the other offers something significantly more intense. Architecture doesn’t work like this because of the depth and reach of its real impacts on the physical world. After either of these experiences with great works of art, we go home, where we’re immersed in the real-world consequences of design.

The opposite end of the spectrum is the design of some everyday objects. A traffic cone is an example of pure function. The shape allows it to stand, and the color allows it to be seen. The material was chosen to be durable, lightweight, and inexpensive enough to deploy in large numbers. After serving its purpose once, it can be moved to a new location and serve its purpose again. As an object, it doesn’t need to be loved or even to be liked. It’s just the physical manifestation of cold, hard function. Architecture can’t mimic a traffic cone for the same reason that it can’t mimic a Picasso. Designing purely for function would result in the Soviet housing blocks that provide for human needs on paper but result in real-world misery. In contrast, designing purely for form would result in beautiful but useless spaces such as The Vessel at Hudson Yards in New York. Objects of pure form or pure function are both fundamentally detached from human needs. This is why design, as it relates to architecture and other useful objects that we value, has always existed at the intersection of form and function. The more closely a building integrates the two, the better the design.

The union of form and function, form that follows function, and Louis Sullivan’s architectural maxim, “Form ever follows function,” are useful ways of thinking about architectural design. In 1896 when Sullivan wrote the article making this point, architecture had been a manifestation of form following function since the times of Vitruvius.5 This was more by necessity than by choice because before electricity, building geometry that responded to context was the only way a building could function. If occupants needed to see, there had to be

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windows. Ironically, this tradition was about to come to an end. At the time of Sullivan’s quote, the use of electric lighting in buildings was becoming widespread, with the effect of divorcing a building’s form from its ability to provide the occupants with light. This led to deeper floor plates and lower ceilings, two characteristics that diminish the quality of an architectural space by driving people to the interior and limiting connection with the outdoors.

Air conditioning came next, with the effect of divorcing a building’s facade from its ability to provide comfort. Rather than using geometry to keep the heat of the sun out, architects could now rely on readilyavailable energy. The result was expansive glass curtain walls, which still (mostly) kept the rain out but brought glare, thermal asymmetry, and high energy use along for the ride. New advances in technology seemed limitless, and since electricity would cover the functional aspects of a building, architects were free to focus purely on form.

This pattern continued through most of the twentieth century, with each technological improvement driving a wider wedge between form and function. The bigger the rift became, the more the quality of the architectural space was diminished, yet on the surface, function appeared to remain the same. Since the outcomes of architectural strategies are interconnected, changing a design response to one variable will result in unintended consequences in others. A single design strategy might benefit multiple outcomes, and if it’s replaced with a strategy that benefits only one outcome, what was previously taken for granted would now go unaddressed.

Air conditioning, which relies on energy, seemed more freeing than

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natural ventilation, which imposes spatial constraints on the design.

The spaces that use air conditioning might be just as comfortable as the spaces that relied on natural ventilation, but while one problem was solved, another was created. In this case, an unintended consequence of overreliance on mechanical heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems led to high energy use and low air quality, a fact that many came to understand during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Plastics and other synthetic building materials arrived on the construction scene in the middle of the twentieth century, with a similar impact to electric lights and air conditioning. Spray foam insulation, vinyl flooring, construction adhesives, and many other new products offered chemicals as the solutions to problems that had traditionally been addressed through design. With each new product, the architect was further freed from earthly constraints while function became more and more dependent on technology. In the case of synthetic building materials, the unintended consequence is poison in our homes and the environment.

Between the time of Sullivan’s quote and the close of the twentieth century, the practice of architecture had all but lost daylight, resulting in a disconnect with nature; passive strategies, resulting in a lack of resilience; and traditional construction methods, resulting in environmental toxins. All the while, it seems as though buildings retained the same level of “function.” Behind all these technological innovations was cheap energy in the form of fossil fuels. What was cheap and easy for some made the planet more toxic for others. In the words of Philip Johnson, “Don’t build a glass house if you’re worried about saving money on heating.”6 Taking his own advice, Johnson famously used his glass house mostly as a pavilion for parties while actually living in a brick house nearby, with much more restrained glazing.

With the worst impulses of the international style finally behind us, current trends are beginning to once again unite form and function.

The public’s increasing awareness of global climate crises, a cultural embrace of health and wellness, and deepening concern for correcting social inequities have put pressure on architecture to respond. At the same time, popular products, from the iPhone to the Tesla, demonstrate that the perceived trade-off between form and function need not

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exist. As the hundred-year schism comes to a close, architects are faced with a much more complex and interconnected world than Vitruvius or Sullivan. Today’s decision-making landscape is scattered with landmines, and as the above examples demonstrate, bad outcomes can seem perfectly functional when considered at surface level. In the past, we thought of function as serving a particular use or purpose. The function of a jacket is warmth, the function of a house is shelter. To fully understand the function of an object or a design in the twenty-first century, it’s become necessary to broaden the definition and look further into space and time.

The traditional concept of function references an object at a single point in time. This is function of the first order. An example is an electric light bulb. Need light to see? Just turn it on and you have it. It’s perfectly useful at the time and place where light is needed.

Another example of a first-order function is a window. The window can also provide light in a particular time and place, as long as the light is needed during the day. A table to enjoy a meal, a bicycle to travel, and a roof to keep the rain out are all examples of traditional first-order function.

Second-order function adds an overlay of time and accounts for some of the less obvious or immediate impacts of a design. Looking at the aggregate impacts of the two lighting strategies over a ten-year period, it’s easy to see how the window can be more functional than the light bulb. The operational costs for the light bulb add up over those years to some amount that someone will need to pay. The bulb will burn out and need to be replaced. Conversely, the window provides light for free. Beyond financial considerations, the light that the window provides is of higher quality, and its color automatically changes in accordance with our natural rhythms over the course of a day. This is not something that will be felt on day one, but the difference between working day in and day out under natural light versus artificial light results in measurable health impacts over a period of time. Supporting health is a second-order function of the windows that is not offered by a space lit solely with electric light. Other examples include strategies that enhance indoor environmental quality as well as durability, longevity, and resilience.

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Third-order function adds an additional overlay of both space and time. These are the long-term, far-reaching impacts of design decisions, the ones that come back to get you and everyone else. Third-order function broadens the sphere of considerations to include the benefits or harm felt by people far removed from the design at hand, such as those who extract or manufacture building materials, live near power plants, depend on natural resources, or inhabit a warming planet.

Ipê is a durable, attractive tropical hardwood that’s sometimes used as a decking material because of its first- and second-order function.

Looking at the full upstream impacts of the choice to use ipê, it’s clear that deforestation of the Amazon is not a functional outcome for those who call the rainforest home. In addition, the long-term global impacts of deforestation might eventually make their way back to the sunbathers on the ipê deck, either through the effects of climate change or the general downgrading of global ecological services. Ipê and other tropical species probably fail the test of third-order function and thus fall short of a holistic interpretation of good design.

Considering third-order function is a tall order. Even the abovementioned window contains atmosphere-warming embodied carbon.

Can any design strategy provide function to all people in all places at all times? This was much simpler before synthetic materials and global supply chains. Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond probably didn’t fan the flames of global catastrophes, but it was unlikely to do much good either. An occupational hazard of designing within the complexity of the modern age is the potential for far-reaching, unforeseen consequences. The opportunity, however, is the ability to magnify positive impacts. Rather than choosing ipê for the deck, the designer could choose a new product that provides the same first- and second-order function but is from a small local company that’s working to revitalize the town’s economy. Simple actions can aggregate into global good.

Applying this broad definition of function to architecture can expand the idea of form in exciting ways. Form that follows function is the goal of design, just as it was for Sullivan and Vitruvius, but because function can now encompass so much more depth, the formal responses can be equally substantial. Design excellence takes the con-

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cept one step further. Rather than merely follow function, form can express and enhance function. A single material choice, when skillfully applied, can represent the junction of present-day and future needs.

Sustainably harvested wood used as structure or interior finish can comfort with its biophilic properties, cool the atmosphere through carbon storage, and ensure healthy forests for future generations. A single shade structure can conserve energy, block glare, direct views, shed water, and eventually be deconstructed and reused for a different purpose. The opportunity is for the occupants to gradually understand the ever-evolving function of each design decision so that the project educates as it nurtures and gracefully adapts to confront anticipated challenges.

The aggregate of multifunctional, expressive design strategies can develop into a lexicon of design excellence in the era of climate change.

As more and more projects formally and functionally align to form a new architectural paradigm, the conversation will shift from what a building looks like, to what a building does, to what a building can be.