Love + Regeneration, Volume 2, Issue 1

A Quarterly Journal from McLennan Design.

Rediscovering our relationship to the natural world.

Volume 2 Issue 1

ARCHITECTURE What is truly essential to biophilic design?

Read.

INQUIRY What role does CrossLaminated Timber play in regeneration?

Read.

A CLOSER LOOK What can we learn about hydrology, water conservation, and ecosystem health from the North American beaver?

Read.

MCLENNAN DESIGN

image: Kristina Avramovic Oldani

SPRING IS MY FAVORITE TIME OF YEAR. It marks the transition from the cold, dark, wet Pacific Northwest winter to longer, lighter and brighter days when trees and flowers begin to bloom. It is a hopeful time of rebirth, regeneration, and renewal, when the resiliency and insistence of life is most acutely experienced.

On Bainbridge Island as I write this, the Indian Plum is blooming, the nettles have pushed through the dirt, and soon our wetlands will be filled with skunk cabbage. Young eagles are taking to the sky for the first time and it is a joy to watch them learn to fly. Life is errupting at a furious pace all around, and it is a delight to experience.

In this issue we continue to share a host of ideas, including the first in a three-part series on biophilia that we hope revitalizes the conversation about how to introduce biophilic concepts meaningfully into design and our lives.

We also share a new video for charitable work we are doing for the non-profit The Battle Within, which provides crucial, holistic healing opportunities for veterans and first responders struggling with post-traumatic stress. Our work has always focused on charitable causes as critical ways to give back to those in need, and we are proud of this particular endeavor.

You’ll also find a celebration of the life and writing of Mary Oliver, a close look at the possibilities of cross-laminated timber in architecture, and an examination of what we might learn about restoring our earth from the amazing corvid—the North American beaver.

We truly enjoy creating this publication and have benefited from your feedback on Love + Regeneration. My hope is that it continues to be a great way to connect our ideas and work—as well as those of our partners—with a wider community, creating a space for vital conversations in our industry and communities.

To life!

Jason F. McLennan

SPRING 2019

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

JASON F. MCLENNAN

EDITORIAL TEAM

KRISTINA AVRAMOVIC OLDANI, GALEN CARLSON

CONTRIBUTORS

KRISTINA AVRAMOVIC OLDANI, JOSHUA FISHER, GALEN CARLSON, SUSAN JONES, LEO POLITI, KEVIN HYDES

SOCIAL MEDIA

March 2019, Volume 2, Issue 1 LOVE + REGENERATION is a quarterly publication of McLennan Design, LLC. Copyright 2019 by McLennan Design. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Content may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission and is intended for informational purposes only.

4

6

ASPIRE

Whose examples have we aspired to in our work toward a regenerative world?

NAVIGATE

An Elegy for Mary Oliver

10

27

28

40

DESIGN

A careful look at what is essential to biophilia and its power to transform our lives and designs.

Foundations of Biophilia 1: Nature Immersion

REMEMBER

Read about one Bainbridge Islander’s tireless efforts to restore salmon habitat in Puget Sound.

A Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Gale Cool

IDEATE

What role does Cross-Laminated Timber play in the pursuit of regeneration?

CLTHouse Case Study by Collaborator Susan Jones

EDIFY

What impacts does McLennan Design’s work have in the world? What’s next for our firm?

Exciting News from McLennan Design and Our Partners

44

VISUALIZE

How can a campus support a holistic healing experience for veterans and first responders with post-traumatic stress?

The Battle Within Campus Concept

52

ELEVATE

What roles do language and art play in regeneration? How does the work of writers and artists point the way to a living future?

The Work of Painter and Children’s Author Leo Politi

54

EMULATE

Who are our non-human teachers and what can we learn from the way they exist in the world?

A Closer Look at the North American Beaver 5

SPRING 2019

An Elegy for Mary Oliver

BY KRISTINA AVRAMOVIC OLDANI 6

Of all the souls to put pen to paper and sing the wonders of this world, none has captured my imagination and heart as completely as Mary Oliver.

Mary’s “verbs of muscle” and “adjectives of exactitude,” paired with her courageous openness and keen curiosity gave me new language for my deeply felt connection with the natural world as well as a new definition of and relationship to the idea of God. Mary’s brilliance emerged from that curious crucible of becoming—a difficult childhood. In her essay “Staying Alive,” which jumps between scenes of a harried fox and her experience of growing up, she writes: Adults can change their circumstances; children cannot. Children are powerless, and in difficult situations they are the victims of every sorrow and mischance and rage around them, for children feel all of these things but without any of the ability that adults have to change them. Whatever can take a child beyond such circumstances, therefore, is an alleviation and a blessing.

I quickly found for myself two such blessings—the natural world, and the world of writing: literature.

These were the gates through which I vanished from a difficult place.

Mary’s gift to the world was the fact that her chosen pathways of escape were, all along, not of the variety that took her further from herself, but rather led her further in.

An intuition honed from a young age recognized that in presence, not escapism, solace—and even joy—was to be found.

Her knack for presence, when coupled with the discovery that “attention without feeling…is only a report,” produced this radiant soul and penned these earnest lines: I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around as though with your arms open.

Mary’s way of being in the world, her insistence on daily witnessing with each sense sharply attuned “something that more or less kills me with delight,” gifted us volume after volume on lilies, bear, spider webs, deer, grasshoppers, geese, fox, horses, shells, and myriad other 7

natural wonders, each treated with the same breathless, nearly-but-not-quiteineffable wonder: It is what I was born for— to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world—

to instruct myself

over and over in joy […]

Oh, good scholar, I say to myself,

how can you help but grow wise with teachings such as these Her insistence on naming what she could, and thereupon deferring honor— one more sweet-as-honey answer for the wanderer whose tongue is agile, whose mind, in the world’s riotous plenty, wants syntax, connections, lists, and most of all names to set beside the multitudinous stars, flowers, sea creatures, rocks, trees.

—was matched by an equal willingness to leave unnamed and forever unknown life’s mysteries: 8

Understand, I am always trying to figure out what the soul is, and where hidden, and what shape— […]

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving, which is the way I walked on, softly, through the pale pink morning light.

In Mary, I’ve found a shining example of what it means to live into rather than shrink from the unknowable, to continually and relentlessly cultivate openness, to recognize every instinct to curl around the softness of myself as opportunity to open my arms wider and wider to the world, and to carefully and insistently exercise my wonder. Through her poetry, she’s given me a glimpse of a simple but rich experience of life, replete with everyday moments of enchantment: and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing; and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.

In death, I imagine Mary’s spirit free at last to bound on all fours, slither, or take flight, deepening the kinship she felt with all spirits in life without the encumberment of a human form. I imagine her leaving her body to commune with the deer, who no longer “leap away, leaving me there alone,” joining them to travel “over the hills and over the hills and into the impossible trees.” I imagine her soul in the clutches of the owl she once encountered, with whom she could not then confer as she so longed: aloft in the air, under his great wings, shouting praise, praise, praise 

9

SPRING 2019

DESIGN

Foundations of Biophilia

BY JASON F. MCLENNAN

10

THE EMERGENCE OF BIOPHILIA AS A CRITICAL CONSIDERATION IN ARCHITECTURE: I first wrote about the importance of biophilia in 2004 in my first book, The Philosophy of Sustainable Design. Ever since it has been a topic of great interest to me. I then included biophilia as a guiding principle in the 2.0 version of the Living Building Challenge that came out in 2009, making it the first green building program in the world to focus on the subject. Since then, I have watched the field of biophilic design evolve, gaining shape and definition and serious consideration on projects all over the globe.

However, as easily happens, a checklist mentality around biophilic design has emerged within the design industry, while simultaneously nearly anything and everything is being described as “biophilic” in order to satisfy this newfound interest. As has happened in other areas of green building, the essence and scientific basis of biophilia is being lost in point tallying; right now, a design need only include superficial applications and check the right boxes to call itself biophilic. Just stick a few biophilic patterns into an interior design and you are done!

In 2014, Terrapin Bright Green published its report 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design. This important contribution to the field identifies a range of patterns applied with the good intention of “addressing universal issues of human health and well-being.” We included reference to it in Living Building Challenge 3.0 as it was­—and has remained—the best outline yet published. But since that time, I have seen it misused and certainly misunderstood by many. At times I’ve seen it used to

justify design responses that have nothing to do with biophilia as a serious pursuit. This waters down and undermines the credibility of this fledgling design focus.

Explicitly pointing the biophilic design practitioner toward the more impactful patterns and interventions could improve the biophilic efficacy of many designs.

As I have sat with this work and seen it used by design teams from multiple talented architecture firms around the country I have come to the following key conclusions. At face value, the Patterns describe a fairly complete framing of the topic, organized into three main categories: Nature in the Space, Natural Analogs, and Nature of the Space.

But, while the authors note that “as new evidence comes to bear, it is entirely possible that some patterns will be championed over others,” they otherwise say nothing about the relative importance of each – an omission, as they are clearly not equal in their wellness impacts.

Explicitly pointing the biophilic design practitioner toward the more impactful patterns and interventions could improve the biophilic efficacy of many designs. Some of the patterns, if applied in isolation, are likely not much more effective than a placebo and make little to no impact in negating the lack of environmental stimuli that biophilic design attempts to address. For example, “visual connection to nature” is significantly more important to our well-being 11

DESIGN

SPRING 2019

12

than “biomorphic forms and patterns,” but the two erroneously share similar emphasis by many practitioners who are striving not to meet the essence of biophilia in their design moves, but the mandates of a checklist.

Further, the logic and justification for many of the patterns is built on the fact that their set of characteristics can be found in healthy, diverse, natural settings to which we need exposure. However, these same sets of characteristics can also be found in unhealthy or otherwise unbiophilic environments as well. It is important for the biophilic designer to understand that just because biophilic environments contain the components named in these patterns, those components do not necessarily add up to a positive

biophilic environment. In other words, the mere presence of the patterns of biophilia are easily and often confused with their intended effect on experience.

The Patterns authors seemed to have some wariness of this possibility when they said, “Adding multiple biophilic strategies for the sake of diversity may backfire unless they are integrative and support a unified design intent.” They also knew and acknowledged many times in their report ways in which the field needed to mature and broaden its understanding of this science and its application to this emerging design consciousness.

This three-part article series attempts to add another layer to the groundwork laid by Terrapin Bright

Green—another lens through which we can assess the success of our work as biophilic designers. I want to acknowledge it’s not the patterns themselves that add up to successful biophilic design, and that what we experience is correlated by the quality of the characteristic as well as the duration of exposure—not merely its categorical presence.

It is my hope that clearly naming what is essential to biophilia will engender a more nuanced understanding and ultimately more successful application of biophilic patterns and attributes to design.

Frameworks and checklists will always benefit designers, suggesting modalities and opportunities for incorporating biophilic experiences into our built environments so opportunities aren’t forgotten or overlooked. But it’s time to dig in deeper to what we mean when we talk about biophilia and biophilic design. We need to focus on design strategies that actually have positive impacts and do more than merely justify a design through yet another trendy lens. All of this is to say we need to understand more clearly – what is foundational to biophilia and biophilic design really? How can we clarify what matters the most?

I believe nature immersion is the single most important element of biophilia, and if we only allow ourselves adequate time in nature, we can reap bountiful biophilia associated wellness benefits.

But as a species, we’ve marched out of nature and into concrete jungles.

The three overall categories—Nature in the Space, Natural Analogs, and Nature of the Space—work as an overall framing, but there is another macro framing that I posit could be useful to practitioners in addition: 1. Opportunities for Nature Immersion 2. Opportunities for Nature Relationship 3. Opportunities for Nature Interdependencies 13

DESIGN

SPRING 2019

14

FOUNDATION 1:

Opportunities for Nature Immersion

BIOPHILIA FOUNDATION 1: NATURE IMMERSION Science is only recently corroborating the long-standing, instinctual wisdom we’ve carried as humans for millennia—that we thrive in close connection to nature. I believe nature immersion is the single most important element of biophilia, and if we only allow ourselves adequate time in nature, we can reap bountiful biophilia associated wellness benefits. But as a species, we’ve marched out of nature and into concrete jungles.

Estimates place 70% of the world’s populations in urban environments by 2050. With this migration, our connection to nature has dwindled and our feelings of isolation, loneliness, and depression have filled the vacancy.1 Harvard School of Public Health Professor John Spangler puts a number to our disconnection from nature, and it’s shocking: Americans now spend 95% of their time inside.2 At the same time, a growing body of evidence suggests that if we reconnect to nature, we will become whole again.

A key principle to establish under the framework of nature immersion is that any design that can get people outside, for as long as possible—using porches, covered walkways, courtyards, balconies, etc.—will always greatly outdistance anything that can be done inside a building. These types of design features prolong our exposure to nature, drawing down that 95%.

No amount of interior architectural biophilic design intervention will ever negate our need to spend time outside in nature, so the highest order of business for the biophilic designer—and truly society—is to

create spaces that draw people out and keep them there for more than a few minutes each day. The task isn’t the architect’s alone, but also the landscape architect’s, the urban planner’s, and each individual that occupies a building. The patterns of our lives must change, and our cities and our architecture—in order to be called biophilic—must support this change.

A key principle to establish under the framework of nature immersion is that any design that can get people outside for as long as possible—using porches, covered walkways, courtyards, balconies, etc.—will always greatly outdistance anything that can be done inside a building.

BIOPHILIC DESIGN AT THE CITY PLANNING LEVEL In “Biophilic Design: A New Scale Emerges,” my recent article, I illustrated the relationship between where we live (i.e. amount and type of exposure we have to the natural world via our everyday lives) to the relative amount of biophilic design intervention needed to optimize our health and well-being. I illustrated a logarithmic relationship between the two­—as one increases the urbanization of one’s environment, one’s need for biophilic design interventions increases exponentially.

By contrast, in rural or wild places 15

DESIGN

SPRING 2019

New York’s High Line Park, as of 2014, has averaged 5 million visitors a year since it opened in 2009.

16

where peoples’ lifestyles still revolve around a foundational connection to nature, and the outdoors are not tamed in the way they are in the city, perhaps biophilic architectural design matters little (although still nice to have).

Given so much of us live in or are moving to urban environments, we must, at a city planning scale, do the work of the biophilic designer to draw people outside through design.

What do our cities look like? City parks provide immense opportunities for immersive experiences to urban dwellers and we should urgently create more, even on a small, pocket park scale. How many parks do we have and how equitably are they dispersed? One recent,

powerful study showed significant decreases in self-reported feelings of depression in test groups tasked with restoring vacant lots in economically depressed urban areas. This study illuminates the social justice aspect inherent in any discussion about urban planning and access to nature: “neighborhood physical conditions, including vacant or dilapidated spaces, trash, and lack of quality infrastructure such as sidewalks and parks, are associated with depression and are factors that may explain the persistent prevalence of mental illness in resource-limited communities.”3 As the populations of our cities grow, it is important that public places for them to be in nature keep pace. It is my belief that everyone should have walking

distance access to a beautiful public park.

Also, as the world’s population continues to move into towns and mid-size cities grow into large cities, cities should strategically plan for and conserve sizable tracts of land as highly accessible urban wildlands.

Stanley Park in Vancouver, Forest Park in Portland, and Central Park in New York City provide crucial, substantive outlets for high quality nature immersion for their urban areas and highlight what’s possible when the conditions for wildness are fostered rather than subdued by design within city limits. These conserved parks connect people with place in a powerful way, often

providing them with an experience of what their place once looked like while simultaneously creating opportunities for the native ecology of that place to thrive. Living in close proximity to this kind of life has amazing potential to foster the stewardship mentality crucial to our wild places.

Portland’s Forest Park, at 5,200 acres, is one of the largest urban forests in the country, providing immersive nature experiences for this rapidly growing urban area.

What further opportunities can we identify to foster nature connections in cities? Do or can trails winding through untamed places connect us to the modern and convenient amenities that spurred our move as a species to cities? What is the state of our urban canopy and how can we revitalize it, and reap the associated biophilic benefits alongside all the 17

SPRING 2019

DESIGN

Architecture itself cannot mend our disconnection from nature—the inanimate can’t make us whole— but it can foster that connection by elegantly and comprehensively seizing each opportunity to connect us with nature.”

Milan’s Vertical Forest, an amazing residential building covered in trees.

Image: Shutterstock.

18

others that make trees so essential to city landscapes? What is our relationship to water in our cities?

Can we utilize design to daylight streams and storm water, creating visual and auditory connections with our life-source at every opportunity?

Are our cities walkable and bikable, with amenities spaced for pedestrian and biker access? I believe one of the reasons Americans flocked to the suburbs in the post-World War II era was for these kinds of natural connections that had been choked out of industrialized cities. As our urban populations rise, it is critical that we invite nature back into their centers, creating nature-pedestrian connections that get us walking and interacting with our surrounding natural and human communities, immersing us more often and more completely within biophilic settings.

BIOPHILIC DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE Architecture itself cannot mend our disconnection from nature – the inanimate can’t make us whole— but it can foster that connection by elegantly and comprehensively seizing each opportunity to connect us with nature. As with urban planners, the architect’s number one priority is decreasing the amount of time people spend inside through supporting nature immersion with constant connections to the outdoors and bringing the outside in.

Interior environments are, by their very nature, controlled and limited in sensory richness when compared to outside, not by a little, but by an order of magnitude of thousands.

What we experience when we’re immersed in nature is complex, layered, simultaneous, and multi-

sensory, full of variability, chaos, and other life-giving and life-affirming stimuli. Proactively bringing aspects of this experience into our interior designs certainly reminds us of our connection to nature. What we need though is not a la carte biophilic features, but exposure to the layered complexity of life.

Outside, there is no disconnect between what the senses experience.

Life’s patterns are not teased apart into their constituent pieces, neatly enumerated and categorized as non-visual connection, or visual connection. Biophilia can’t be extracted from one context, reduced to parts and pieces, and added into an environment as a formula. Like John Muir remarked, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

The biophilic designer is invited to expand their view of biophilia beyond a checklist of interior, superficial biophilic applications to this larger, more critical need: connecting their design to the outdoors at every opportunity, creating porches, courtyards, interstitial spaces, inside/ outside flow, ensuring that windows frame views down corridors, and that outdoor experiences are properly designed for their particular climate. Attention paid in design to strategically creating multiple points of entry and exit, living close to the ground from which life emerges, creating interstitial spaces that allow people to be outside for longer periods of time, and insisting that every inside space have some outside connection and natural daylight, go far to meet our biophilic needs and are the ultimate mark of a truly biophilic design. The goal of the design is to draw out and keep 19

SPRING 2019

The architect doesn’t design biophilia, they design for it.

Amazon’s spheres in Seattle provide a quality immersive experience for the company’s employees in the middle of the city. image: Galen Carlson

20

occupants immersed in nature for as much of the time as is possible and where practical to bring outside elements inside.

To think that architecture could ever negate our need for nature immersion is maybe convenient but doesn’t hold up to science. While biophilic interior design interventions do play an essential role in that they serve as reminders and symbols of our connection to nature, they are truly secondary. Ultimately, their value is also in their ability to draw us outside, by gently reminding us of an immersive experience and creating a

longing for more.

Getting outside is of course the first step, but what is the nature of the outside you get to? What is the quality of it? What is the level of immersion with diversity and quantity of life? How talented was your landscape architect?

How well does the architect draw us out? People need connection with functioning ecosystems; how does the design surrounding your structures support that? Incredible pockets of diversity and rich habitat can be created even in small urban spaces. Actively engaging in the

regeneration of the land upon which we build is a critical part of biophilic design. More attention paid to the spaces between buildings— entrances, internal courtyards, front and back yards, setbacks and city right of ways—counts, and is in fact crucial as this is often where people get the entirety of their exposure to nature in urban environments.

Through this lens, we begin to see design and architecture as supportive armature and gentle guide, and, if successful, capable of shepherding us back out each time we move in.

It is not our buildings that are truly biophilic, only the life that they support and frame and to which they connect. The architect doesn’t design biophilia, they design for it.

THE ROLE OF SOCIETY Our need to be surrounded by life and life-like processes is deeply embedded in our shared history with thousands of other species over hundreds of thousands of years. It is only in recent history that we’ve shifted to spending most of our time in nearly sterile environments and thus even need to care so much about this topic. As a result, we need and long for—consciously and subconsciously—an immersion in the kinds of environments in which we evolved. We—as individuals, as members of a community, as employers, as parents and caregivers of children—must also look for ways to draw down the amount of time we spend inside. As we’ve already seen,

Playing outside is crucial to childhood development, but school recess has been significantly reduced or eliminated in 40% of US school districts.9

END NOTES notes go here | notes go here | notes go here Ut rerum am quibusa et placeptaspel enimus restias nis quid magniti aturiaepe estem faciis velessimus is sum hilluptibus, sitiam adit voluptatur? Nonse et dolupta quaspe conse qui omnissum nobit odia dolorum et fuga. Solecepe molorep ratus, officipsunt offictur aut faccum quunt, sit reium fugit omnis ducil molupti atibus.

Ratestia sed experit iorepe secatur?

Am lam quatem sae nonsecto et audis doloresti idit fuga. Ehenihilit odite volupidem. Namuscil inuscia pro moluptiunt aut quo officiae. Ficimag nitissi verera voloribus volum, sequi adignatquam, quam repudam ad eate nem que repture mquoditas re nonsectent, im remporesto minvelite nonet alici tem sam que sitat.

One oditas commolor si bearcipsa nobis magnis aut quam volorrum latur ant volest et que venihil et del ium venienet laut quo te possus ullorpora volupid que susant.

Ulparchit, quid ea non nonsequaeped molestio cusdam expedi con et, sit al

21

SPRING 2019

our cities can and should support this, our homes and businesses and schools can and should support this.

Further, our policies should support this, reintroducing long, outside recess times for children during the school day, and biophilia breaks for employees in the work day. As individuals, we need to understand our own needs for nature immersion and advocate for our well-being, for breaks during the work day, sufficient time off, and the general flexibility to maintain adequate time in our busy lives for nature immersion.

We need to build outside time into our lives through our commutes, physical activity, and our habits and schedules. We need to insist that our children spend time outside and provide models for them of a life that 22

is connected to nature.

Further, we must understand that it is primarily the quality of the experience of nature that matters.

Not all interactions and interventions are equal in their efficacy. The impact of time spent in nature correlates with how immersive and diverse the experience is. I strongly believe if you can only spend a bit of time in nature, the more immersive and ecologically diverse the better.

A clear relationship exists between quality and quantity here; the higher the quality of an experience (as defined by biodiversity and direct exposure to the elements), the less exposure time we likely need to benefit from it (but I don’t think there is a maximum—spend as much as you

can!). Much of the outdoor time we do get is—to a large extent—tamed and manicured. Gardens, parks, and lawns all represent outdoor spaces in which we might spend a great deal of time, but which will never equal the potency of an experience in a wilder place, teeming with unmanipulated life—though certainly much better than time spent inside.

If we imagine a gradient of ecological diversity and health—with sterile interior spaces and sterile exterior spaces on one end and untamed wilderness at the other, and an associated scale of impact, we can see how the wilder and more sensory-rich the environment the more it activates all of our senses.

The more activated our senses are by our experiences outdoors, the higher the associated impact to our health and well-being.

THE QUALITY NATURE IMMERSION EXPERIENCE Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, is a new name assigned to an ancient and intuitive practice: that of regularly immersing oneself in a forest setting.

The practice doesn’t aspire to fitness benchmarks or any other quantifiable metrics. It is a deep qualitative and experiential process whereby the practitioner invites their body to utilize its full array of senses to absorb the songs, sights, patterns, bouquets, textures, and even taste of the forest. Shinrin-yoku is about noticing for the sake of noticing, and thereby remembering at a deeply intuitive level our connection to and part in the patterns and cycles, ebb and flow, inhalation and exhalation of life. There is no goal, no measuring, no checklist; the invitation given by this practice is just to engage the

senses with life, to wonder, not for some inherent usefulness, but for its own merit. E. O. Wilson famously said, “every species is a masterpiece.”

Forest bathing encourages its practitioners to be witnesses to the masterpieces that surround them in a forest setting.

Prescribed as preventative medicine in Japan, Shinrin-yoku has been proven to boost immunity,4 reduce blood pressure,5 reduce measurable and reported levels of stress,6 improve mood, increase ability to focus and problem solve,7 increase recovery from injury and illness, increase energy levels, and improve sleep. Interestingly, one study showed that walking in a forest setting for fifty minutes improves memory, while walking for that same amount of time in a city does not.8

Shinrin-yoku is about noticing for the sake of noticing, and thereby remembering at a deeply intuitive level our connection to and part in the patterns and cycles, ebb and flow, inhalation and exhalation of life.

Many immersive experiences that bring the practitioner to the present moment are powerful in similar ways: camping, fly fishing, birding, hunting, horseback riding, hiking – all of these activities place us in situations where 23

DESIGN

SPRING 2019

Rent quassit eaturias aute qui re porum doluptatia es alisciis dis prae. Itas pel ipit, nobist, con nit quiatib ustibeatibus sunt dusam dolorumque natiam aut quis magnis moditat iatiisi tatiume quis exeritam accusant aliquo velicatur atis debis suntio. Ecteseq uatquis et aut quod maximaxim quisqui restist, officto volor anditas iminciis aut ex et quid moluptat aut re lacipsae. Nam, ut ati debitat.

Nam etur aut rescipsam aped ut lab id minctore pelibus.

Henim dolore licid moluptatem facculluptas estibus ut faccum que eost, earum que qui tore, imint et volo quaeper natur?

Runt odi bla essita quidion sendam ea sedignamus.

Exero quaspelit ommolor epresciendam quam et quatium ilicitate idelest labo. Ovid quidem voloritis ex et faceper upient fugiam nobit es quame volorem olecestrum ipsam rerchillore reptatis elis andam, ipide prem corit doluptur sam eations erspedi ut fugia corepudanto eos aborerum quasperem et la qui re simus nullupi sitiorum qui offictur ratis dolorro minum nobit facearume aut dolenitae praeped quiati omnimus, cus, optatempe magnis autae pro tem nobitatem.

Cernate volupta qui oditio. Erepelit, sitiori buscid qui dessunt utas et vellatur moluptur autecto berchitas pa nis coreribus archil id ut ex evel inctem sequibus quatempe nestio.

Xim fugiae min rempos alicid molut volecus magnimoditis quo quamet est, sequis quia doloreperi corepro optatiam rehenist vellit, officipsunt ad ma doluptaquat magnatur sit odia nonse volum nonsedi onseque pligenimus, optatius de pre, officimus, sinctatiam volupta

24Alex Mondau image:

we’re entirely surrounded by nature and engage us in actions that require the entirety of our attention. It is this combination of the meditative quality of these activities with the settings in which we enjoy them that is so impactful. In fact, this most closely reflects what we’ve really evolved to do. One can argue that we are most ourselves when immersed in nature, corralling every ounce of our attention and energy toward some such task on which at some point in our evolutionary history we might have been dependent for our very survival. We tap into a primal and instinctual self in these settings.

For me, being on the water is the ultimate experience, matched only by being in the water in nature. Flyfishing is an immersive experience—requiring the engagement of each sense while standing waist deep, in two worlds at once.

CONCLUSION The biophilic designer has another role to play as well. It’s important to understand what we need most as a baseline. The designer—as a primary end user of scientific data when it comes to the study of nature immersion’s effects on people and wellness—has an obligation to be in dialogue with the research community. A feedback loop here would hone that scientific study, helping us more accurately pinpoint what our quantifiable goals should be regarding biophilia in our designs.

Ultimately, a combination of these layers—the quality of the environment, the amount of time spent in it, the relative health and vulnerabilities of the person in

question—overlap to inform how much and what kind of nature immersion is needed. While it’s not exactly a formula, we can see the relationship between all these facets and understand that, for instance, an hour in a city park doesn’t have as profound an effect as an hour in a national park. Or when we’re under a huge amount of stress, the more time we can spend outside the better, and the quality of that time increases as we seek out more sensory rich and ecologically diverse places.

When we’re under a huge amount of stress, the more time we can spend outside the better, and the quality of that time increases as we seek out more sensory rich and ecologically diverse places.

It is our job as individuals and members of design communities to recognize and deploy every opportunity to spend time in nature, creating through our designs opportunities for more life to exist, regenerating sites and bringing more vitality and diversity to the wild spaces in which we spend time—not only because building habitat is the right thing to do, but because its implications to our health and wellbeing are considerable and critical to our ability to thrive in cities. As we 25

SPRING 2019

shift our habits and practices toward creating opportunities for life, we will engage with that life more and we could see that even with more of us moving to cities each year, we’re spending more, not less time outside, as happier, healthier people.

The implications of a societal shift toward recognizing, understanding, and honoring our own biophilic natures can have profound effects not only on our health as a species, but on the health of the planet.

Environmentalist and forestry engineer Baba Dioum said, “In the end, we will conserve only what

we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.” We now understand the many and deep benefits of immersion in nature.

If we translate this understanding into knowledge that we teach our children and reintroduce into society, creating the conditions for this innate love of life to find full expression and potential in our lives, neighborhoods, cities, and beyond we will experience the true power of biophilia in connecting us, and ultimately conserving life. 

ENDNOTES 1 Bennett, Kevin. “3 Ways that City Living is Linked with Psychological Illness.”

Psychology Today. July 6, 2018.

2 Spengler, John. Harvard School of Public Health. https://www.hsph.harvard. edu/john-spengler/ 3 South EC, Hohl BC, Kondo MC, MacDonald JM, Branas CC. Effect of Greening Vacant Land on Mental Health of Community-Dwelling Adults: A Cluster Randomized Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2018;1(3):e180298. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.0298 4 Li Q, Morimoto K, Nakadai A, Inagaki H, Katsumata M, Shimizu T, Hirata Y, Hirata K, Suzuki H, Miyazaki Y, Kagawa T, Koyama Y, Ohira T, Takayama N, Krensky AM, Kawada T. Forest bathing enhances human natural killer activity and expression of anti-cancer proteins. Int J Immunopathol Pharmacol. 2007 AprJun;20(2 Suppl 2):3-8.

5 Sifferlin, Alexandra. “Why Spring is the Perfect Time to Take Your Workout Outdoors.” Time. March 30, 2017.

6 Gregory N. Bratman, J. Paul Hamilton, Kevin S. Hahn, Gretchen C. Daily, James J. Gross. Nature reduces rumination and sgPFC activation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jul 2015, 112 (28) 8567 8572; DOI:10.1073/ pnas.1510459112 7 Ketler, Alanna. “Doctors Explain How Hiking Actually Changes Our Brains.”

Collective Evolution. April 8, 2016.

8 Bergman, Marc, et al. The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting with Nature.

9 Zygmunt-Fillwalk and Bidello, 2005, as cited in The State of Play report, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

26

JASON F. McLENNAN is a highly sought out designer, consultant and thought leader.

Prior to founding McLennan Design, Jason authored the Living Building Challenge – the most stringent and progressive green building program in existence, and founded the International Living Future Institute. He is the author of six books on Sustainability and Design including the Philosophy of Sustainable Design, “the bible for green building.”

In Memory of Gale Cool

The Seattle conservation community lost a friend when Gale Cool passed away in late February.

Gale was, among many things, a passionate habitat builder who used development and determination to create two acres of salt-marsh and five acres of wetland­—providing critical habitat to salmonids, birds, and the small fish and insects that they eat—on the south end of Bainbridge Island.

In the 1980s, Gale purchased multiple tracts of land near Lynwood, including the future site of Heron Hall—the Living Building Challenge home of McLennan Design’s Jason F. McLennan. Gale’s work began after convincing multiple governmental agencies to reconnect historic water flows under an existing road to gradually rebuild a tidal estuary.

With native landscaping, and by daylighting an old stream that had been diverted by a suburban development, the estuary was established. This restorative act eased some of the hydrological dysfunction that had plagued the area for nearly 100 years. By inviting natural function back to land where water flows had been interrupted,

Gale undertook an ambitious restoration project that would be eagerly taken up by the McLennan family as part of the Heron Hall building process.

Gale’s development also legally established the precedent of providing public access to one of the island’s few sandy beaches. Though technically held privately, Gale created easements for trails to cross his property connecting people with Pleasant Beach and Schel Chelb Park.

The Shel Chelb estuary on Bainbridge Island’s south end was established by the late Gale Cool and today boasts the best birding and some of the only salmon spawning habitat on the island.

The eco-tidal zone’s function continues to improve with time and stewardship. As natural functions are allowed, the site now purifies the water that moves through it.

The Schel Chelb Park and estuary boasts the island’s best birding and some of its only salmon spawning habitat. The McLennan family’s vision of building a home with an ecological restoration component aligned with Gale’s vision for the property and created a synergistic partnership that resulted in the completion and ongoing stewardship of Gale’s restoration and habitat building work that began in the 80s.  27

Waste Ecologies A STORY OF REGENERATION

BY SUSAN JONES

ECOLOGY /oikos (house) + logy (the study of): The study of one’s House, the Earth.

The study of one’s House, the Family.

The study of one’s House, the Wood.

The study of one’s House, the Forest.

Image: Susan Jones

PRELUDE The grandfather, who had lived through mighty storms of fortune, sought a place of refuge on a high mountain top to locate his towers to broadcast to the world. He found an island not far from his home, and in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped island was a mountain. The mountain rose high above the Salish Sea, and had been a home to the proud Lummi Nation, who had known the mountain as a sacred place. When the grandfather found the land, it was in the middle of a small and beloved Park donated to the State of Washington by the shipping magnate Robert Moran. Leftover land, an almost forgotten perfect square, fit on the side of the mountain like a cubed die, just ready to roll off the mountain. Previously, the land

had been owned by an early Orcas immigrant, who logged the land–a clear-cut of the forest. The five-year old girl looked in wonder at it, at how ugly it all was. The trees lay in swags across the land, their greying trunks and fronds decaying and creating a swamp of the land, open and grey, moon-like in its disposition.

The grandfather took the girl’s hand, and they walked the moon-like grey paths, and then they knelt together.

He showed her the little three-foot high trees, just as tall as she, and they were green and spunky, and growing fast, just like she was. He stood, and picked her up, and cast his hand over the land, and said, “When you grow up, when you are my age, these little trees will be as tall as any forest you have ever seen, and you can harvest them again.” The girl pondered all these things in her heart.

CLTHouse architect: atelierjones. Image: Lara Swimmer Photography

29

IDEATE

SPRING 2019

Visiting and assessing sixty years of forest growth on the property.

Image: Susan Jones

GROWTH When the girl was not quite her grandfather’s age, she took her children to go and look for the little trees. She looked for the Douglas Fir trees and the Western White Pine trees that the grandfather had planted. They walked through the forest of tall trees. Tall hemlock trees. Tall, and growing very close together. Not very big around, and many of them simply small and not growing much at all, just growing on top of each other, trying to get light and nutrients, but crowding each other out. The trees were dark and thick against one another. The family reached out to a forester and ecologist to ask what had happened to the tall Douglas Fir and tall Western White Pine trees that their grandfather had planted.

He explained that some trees grow 30

faster than others, that forestry is not a perfect science, that it is a complex study of growth, competition for light, protection against predators, like hungry deer who prefer some species over others, and that not all trees grow alike. He explained that Washington State’s Tree, the Western Hemlock, grows the fastest of all, is known to be particularly opportunistic, and to often, crowd out other, slower growing trees like the Douglas Fir, who are stronger but slower and also well-liked by the deer. The girl who was now a woman, pondered all these things in her heart.

RESTORATION The forester explained that to care for the forest, and to restore the forest, the forest would have to be thinned. Many of the small, more

crowded Hemlock trees would have to be removed, while the Douglas Fir trees would stay. And new Douglas Fir trees and new Western White Pine trees would be planted, spaced far apart, with good light, and good browse protection from hungry deer, so that a new generation of trees would grow on the mountain top, healthier and stronger.

The family did the things that the forester told them they should do.

They let the loggers come into their forest, and the loggers cut down the hemlocks all growing closely together, and trimmed their branches, leaving them on the now squinting and light forest floor. The logs, not too terribly large, around 8� to 12�, went down the switchbacks off of the mountain, down through the State Park, down to the ferry landing, onto the ferry to cross the Salish Sea, and to the logging mills in Skagit and Snohomish Counties to be made into 2 x 4s and 2 x 6s and 2 x 8s. And the family replanted the trees, every ten feet or so, so that light and air could help them grow, some 800 trees were planted to grow for many years to come.

Because the trees had been growing on a mountain top, all crowded together, even though they were almost sixty years old, the logs were rather small. Some of them could not be used as high value 2x4 or 2x6s, and some of them went to waste, because lumber could not be cut too close to the edge of the trunk.

And some of them had deep knots in them and were not too useful for the big lumber mills. The girl who was now a woman noted that many small trees were left on the forest floor, to turn grey, to turn into slag, and to decay into the forest soil, around the

Restoration: harvesting and replanting in such a way that trees have an opportunity to thrive.

Image: Susan Jones 31

SPRING 2019

Image: Susan Jones

small, green planted trees. And she noted how much the land looked just as it had when her grandfather took her by the hand and walked with her through the land so long ago. The girl who was now a woman, pondered all these things in her heart.

REGENERATION It was at this time, that the woman, who had become an architect, was researching the most sustainable, experimental and thoughtful ways to build a new home for her family.

Researching far and wide, she came across some small, humble Austrian homes that her friends had built far away in Europe. They were quiet, with thick wooden walls, small volumes of simple white pine,

32

with hardly any visible structure.

They were on the edges of forests and towns, often with blackened exteriors, and small simple openings for light. Reading further, she read Austrian ecologists’ writing about their study of how their planted forests were managed., When you take a tree out of the forest, you plant a tree, or two or three, to replace the one mature tree you harvested, and so you always have a regenerative circle of trees growing, and trees being logged, and trees being built with, and trees being lived with, and trees being planted, planted again, for the circle to continue.

The circular stories kept continuing, as the architect studied how trees and carbon work. The trees in the

forests pull in the carbon dioxide, and hold it there, allowing the trees to grow taller, and sequester more carbon dioxide into the wood of the trees, from the branches to the trunk to the roots. When the tree is cut, the roots and branches are left in the forest and slowly decompose, releasing their stored carbon. But the trunk is harvested and cut, and its bark is taken off, and the trunk itself is cut into lumber, still sequestering all that carbon.

When the lumber is laminated together, and made into large, crosslaminated-timber panels, the carbon is still there, sequestered into the walls of buildings. And, by using the wood in such large panels, up to 10’ x 60’, it is rather easy to unscrew the connector plates that connect

the CLT panels together and reuse the large wooden panels for another project. So, there is a life after the panels’ first use, and the cycle of sequestered carbon keeps growing in the forest in the newly planted trees, and in the buildings in the cities.

Even better, if you make tall wood buildings in place of tall concrete or steel buildings, you not only sequester the carbon in the mass timber, but you replace a significant amount of carbon that is emitted in making the steel and the concrete.

The difference can be up to 40% savings in carbon emissions for a tall mass timber building versus a tall concrete building. And the woman who was now an architect, pondered all these things in her heart.

Douglas fir tree cone and seeds collected for replanting.

Image: Susan Jones

33

SPRING 2019

This page: CLTHouse dining room. Facing page, clockwise from upper left: view from patio into living room; bedroom view, rooftop deck and garden space.

Images: Lara Swimmer Photography 34

35

All images this spread: Lara Swimmer Photography

SPRING 2019

Above: Construction of CLT components Image: Susan Jones Right: Finished interior view of CNC prefabricated CLT wall Image: Lara Swimmer Photography

36

THE NEW NORTHWEST WOOD The new panels were exciting – they could be designed in new ways that the architect loved imagining. Light started to bend around the spaces, with panels that were prefabricated and dropped into place, all precut.

And even though the house was designed on a triangular lot, the angles could be cut very precisely, to very exact dimensions. Building with the new material was fast. The panels were delivered in two truckloads that stayed on site for just five hours, and the panels were erected in just twelve crane days. The spaces of the house took shape quickly, and the light began to bend and inhabit the spaces of the house just like they had been designed in the architect’s mind. The house went up quickly, and all sixty-seven prefabricated panels fit into place just like they were supposed to. The panels were made of wood, an ancient material, but prefabricated in a way that was completely new. Technology and nature combined to make a new

and regenerative way to use wood from the Pacific Northwest. And the woman who was now an architect was very happy.

LIVING WITH WOOD The woman and her family moved into the house just as her children were starting high school, and they had four years to enjoy the house together as a family, before the children went out to live their own lives. The house was beautiful and waking up to the light every morning as it grazed the natural pine, spruce and fir panels was very peaceful. In the first couple of years, walking into the house smelled just like walking through a forest in the Pacific Northwest. The house glowed with the sunlight coming through the triple-paned glass windows, and the heat soaked up in the thick walls, wrapped in 6-1/2 inches of mineral wool, so that the cold was kept out all winter, and the house was very light and warm

all year. Walking through the house with bare feet, felt like walking on the beach as a kid, or being in a sauna, and it was just as relaxing.

The wood was alive—it moved and made noises and changed over the year. It checked and cracked. The sound of the natural wood checking was explosive and loud, like a tree falling in the forest. The color of the wood slightly darkened, even under the light whitewash of the interior sealer that the architect had sealed the wood with. The light arose on one side of the house in the morning, and set on the other side, and plants grew all around the house–from apple trees, to plum trees, to fig trees, to raspberries and tomatoes on the roof. And the woman who was an architect and a mother pondered all these things in her heart and was very happy that she could give these experiences to her family.

trees she and her family planted on the land of the grandfather, on Christmas Day. The family went out after all of the presents had been unwrapped, and all of the grandchildren and all of the greatgrandchildren of the grandfather took the little two foot high Western Red Cedar trees and planted them deep into the good soil of the grandfather’s land. The trees are growing now, for the next CLTHouse to be built. And the woman pondered all of these things in her heart and was very happy. 

Western white pine new growth on the Orcas property.

Image: Susan Jones

REGENERATION After the house was finished, over the next year, on hikes through the woods, the woman collected seeds.

Seeds from Western Red Cedar trees in the UW Arboretum, seeds from Douglas Fir trees in the Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest, seeds from Alaskan Yellow Cedar trees from the University of Washington campus. The seeds collected in the house, and then finally the woman decided to plant the seeds on the rooftop, in a series of planter beds, two foot wide by two feet deep. Over the next two years, the woman grew sixty evergreen trees on the roof of the CLTHouse. After they grew up to be about two feet tall, the woman planted ten trees in a park nearby, gave ten trees to her son’s public high school, and the remaining forty 37

IDEATE

SPRING 2019

THE ANATOMY OF CROSS LAMINATED TIMBER (CLT)

2 x 6 lodgepole pine grade 2 lumber, laminated vertically for maximum strength

2 x 6 lodgepole pine grade 3 lumber, laminated vertically for maximum strength

2 x 6 lodgepole pine grade 3 lumber, small diameter tree imperfect exterior lumber cut, waste piece, laminated horizontally to create highstrength CLT panel

blue cast to wood caused by fungus deposited by beetle infestation of tree, causing death of tree in the forest

Void in grade 3 2 x 6, exterior cut-off of small diameter tree, likely discarded unless used as middle grade binder for CLT panel

4� across

SUSAN JONES FAIA LEED AP BD+C is an architect who founded her own architectural firm, atelierjones, in downtown Seattle in 2003.

She has worked on design-award winning and environmentally-forward projects for her entire 30 year career. A national leader in developing design and progressive codes for mass timber high-rises, Susan published a book in 2018 called Mass Timber | Design and Research, featuring atelierjones’ work with Mass Timber. She is a third-generation Pacific Northwesterner, who grew up in Bellingham and on Orcas Island, and visits her family there.

38

Socially just manufacturing fosters innovation and quality.

When companies care about employee welfare, it’s reflected in the quality of the products they manufacture. That’s why Aspecta is proud to announce our Chinese manufacturing partners have received the JUSTSM label – the first JUST label for an LVT manufacturer AND the first for a Chinese manufacturer in any industry! JUST helps organizations evaluate themselves through the lens of social justice and employee equity. Aspecta is taking the lead to usher in this new frontier in transparency: Social Justice.

Factory – Yangshe Town, Zhangjiagang, China

855-400-SPEC (7732) | aspectaflooring.com

39

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL PRESS RELEASE

MCLENNAN DESIGN SELECTED FOR ASHRAE PROJECT New Atlanta Headquarters Seeks Net-Zero Energy Performance

photo courtesy of Houser WAlker Architecture

EDIFY

SPRING 2019

The partnership of McLennan Design and Houser Walker Architecture, in collaboration with international engineering firm Integral Group, has been selected to lead the design of a new world headquarters for ASHRAE, the professional association of heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigerating engineers, based in Atlanta, Georgia. The design team is tasked with renovating a 69,000 SF 1970s office building to house ASHRAE’s employees to Net-Zero Energy performance levels.

Jason F. McLennan will lead architectural design for the project, with Houser Walker Architecture’s Greg Walker leading interior architecture and also serving as the Architect of Record.

“It is a great honor to have been selected for the ASHRAE headquarters project,” said McLennan. “Not only will the renovation serve as an important example of what’s possible in retrofitting for deep energy efficiency, it will also provide a healthy, biophilic, and productive work environment for ASHRAE’s employees and the wonderful volunteer committees that serve the industry.”

ASHRAE, founded in 1894, is a non-profit global society advancing human well-being through sustainable technology for the built environment. ASHRAE funds research projects, provides continuing education programs, and develops technical standards for the advancement of HVAC&R systems design and construction with over 56,000 members worldwide.

40

“Our Society is displaying industry leadership through our world headquarters renovation project by transforming existing building stock to the highest levels of efficiency and lowest levels of environmental impact,” said 2018-2019 ASHRAE President Sheila J. Hayter, P.E. “We’re thrilled to work with McLennan Design and Houser Walker Architecture as we take on this unique challenge, while helping others learn from our experience.”

SILVER ROCK REACHES CONSTRUCTION MILESTONE

photo: Joshua Fisher

Family to Move in by Year’s End

Silver Rock, the second Living Building Challenge residence designed by McLennan Design on Bainbridge Island, has reached another construction milestone; late in February, the home was finally weathered in with the installation of windows.

CLICK HERE TO SEE SILVERROCK’S WEBSITE, DOCUMENTING THE BUILDING AND LBC CERTIFICATION PROCESS

The home’s website, which serves as a chronicle and educational tool for the public on the LBC process, states the owners’ mission for their construction project: “to create one of the world’s most ecologically healthy homes and leave our place on the planet healthier than when we found it.” On comparing various standards to target for the construction of their home, the family noted on their website: While these [unselected] frameworks offered “green” strategies, they did not present an integrative approach that addressed appropriate site selection, water sustainability, positive energy, human wellness, uncompromising material standards, and social equity in one framework. We began to wonder if our goals were a bit too lofty. Then we met Jason McLennan and discovered the Living Building Challenge (LBC). The LBC resonated so deeply with our vision that we embarked with McLennan Design on a journey to transform our audacious goals into reality...into a home.

The next major construction milestone will come in the summer with the completion of exterior materials. The family plans to occupy Silver Rock by the end of the year.

McLennan Design is now in the early stages of designing a third LBC residence, located in Sacramento, California, and has designed more LBC residences than any other architecture firm.

41

SPRING 2019

EDIFY

MCLENNAN SPEAKING TOUR CONTINUES

photo: Joe Jack

New Haven, Victoria and Austin on the Winter + Spring Circuit

CLICK HERE TO READ YALE DAILY NEWS’ ACCOUNT OF JASON’S TALK ABOVE: JASON ON STAGE IN VICTORIA ON MARCH 20TH

A firm equally passionate about championing a living future and practicing architecture as a means of building that future, McLennan Design looks for opportunities to present the vision of regeneration to as broad an audience as possible. To this end, Jason F. McLennan is often engaged to speak on the power of the built environment for societal and environmental change to groups of students, communities, design professionals, and companies across the states and throughout the world.

In January, McLennan addressed a group of Yale University architecture students on the subject of “The Evolution and Future of the Green Movement.”

Deborah Burke, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture who introduced McLennan’s talk, reported to the Yale Daily News, “Jason McLennan is a true leader in the area of green design ideas and methodologies. His Living Building Challenge has contributed to new ways of thinking for architects and their clients, showing how we can best and most responsibly design and build.”

In March, McLennan delivered a public lecture in Victoria, British Columbia on the subject “Victoria 2030: A Generous Living City.” The lecture focused on the state of urban planning, architecture, the environment and community design in the face of intersecting trends ranging from technological innovation, climate change, and population growth.

In April, McLennan travels to Austin, Texas to speak to a gathering of WakaNINE sales representatives, presenting Heron Hall, his LBC petal certified residence, as a case study of a net-zero residence. He will also participate in a panel discussion on the subject of social responsibility in design.

42

MCLENNAN LEADS DESIGN OF DEEP GREEN RESORT Monarch, a living resort, pioneers sustainability in the Midwest

Jason F. McLennan is leading architectural design of Monarch, a living resort.

Developer Wendy Kertesz conceived of the project—a luxury deep green development in northeastern Ohio which aspires to be the greenest resort in the world—in 2009. In 2018 she purchased 47 acres of farmland and the project transitioned from concept to reality.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT MONARCH’S WEBSITE

The Monarch project will regenerate degraded farmland into gardens, orchards, lakes, meadows and woods. Additionally, an existing farmhouse will be restored, and four new guest chalets, The Well Building—a wellness and fitness space for guests, and a resort with twenty guest rooms, a commercial kitchen, and conferences rooms will be built. Kertesz seeks eight different building certifications including the Living Building Challenge and views her project as a pioneer of the sustainability movement in the Midwest; Monarch will serve as an educational tool to the public and the resort’s guests, as well as the design and build team under the guidance of McLennan. “The name Monarch is a true symbol for the transformation we want to influence in the sustainability movement,” says Kertesz.

Kertesz, who read McLennan’s Philosophy of Sustainable Design in 2009, connected with him in 2010 at a Seattle Living Building Challenge training and has factored him into her plans for developing Monarch since. In McLennan’s “Why Statement,”—a written vision statement Kertesz requested from her selected design team members—he writes: I believe that Monarch, a living resort has the potential to be…a powerful new model in the US Midwest that brings people from all walks of life together to rethink how they live in a setting that is inspiring, peaceful, and hopeful…

Monarch will start out as an oasis of hope—best practices demonstrated in built form—that will begin to reshape design and construction in the communities around it.

43

VISUALIZE

SPRING 2019

The Battle Within

> Our belief is that every place is unique and special and worthy of restoration and regeneration, just as each person is worthy of love, redemption, and healing.

The Battle Within is a Kansas City based non-profit that facilitates a program, The Revenant Journey, that utilizes brain science, movement, food, meditation, and ritual woven together to create an immersive and holistic five-day healing experience for US military and first responders struggling with post-traumatic stress.

The program operates in cohorts of 12 – 15 participants for as many weeks out of the year as it can secure a rented church camp facility; in 2019, The Battle Within will launch nine journeys. With a dedicated campus, The Battle Within could quadruple the number of warriors it serves each year. This goal motivated McLennan Design to donate its services to design a facility specifically honed to the program’s unique curriculum and objectives.

This video further explores The Battle Within and our design for its campus.

44

THE LEADING EVENT IN REGENERATIVE DESIGN

UNCONFERENCE.LIVING-FUTURE.ORG

LIVING FUTURE ® 19 COLLABORATION + ABUNDANCE

APRIL 30 - MAY 3, 2019 SEATTLE, WA

Believe in Handprints Over Footprints Designed to leave a handprint rather than footprint by giving more resources to the environment than they use during their life cycle, Mohawk Group proudly offers six Living Product Challenge Petal Certified collections: Nutopia and Nutopia Matrix Carpet Plank Systems, Sunweave Broadloom, Sunweave Area Rugs, Pivot Point Enhanced Resilient Tile and Lichen.

MOHAWKGROUP.COM

45

SPRING 2019

DESIGN

When Buildings Learn from our Bodies: OUR HIGH PERFORMANCE FUTURE WILL BE “AUTONOMIC” AND “SOMATIC”

BY KEVIN HYDES

Many of humanity’s greatest technological advances and unexpected innovations have happened when engineers drew inspiration from related fields or from the natural world.

The late Owen Finlay Maclaren helped design the Spitfire’s landing gear - and later invented the folding pram by applying his knowledge of lightweight, collapsible structures.

Eiji Nakatsu was head of technical development for the 500-series Shinkansen, or bullet train. Faced with the problem of “tunnel boom” that afflicted fast-moving trains entering narrow tunnels, he took inspiration from the Kingfisher, whose elongated beak allows the bird to transition from air to water with precision and efficiency.

The bullet train’s nose-cone design is an example of biomimicry, a concept brought into the mainstream

by Janine Benyus in her 1997 46

book. Janine awoke our curiosity, encouraging designers to look to the genius of nature’s patterns to provide the inspiration for new technologies that could create a healthier and more sustainable planet. Biomimicry draws upon the catalogue gifted to us by the entire natural world, but my own fascination rests with the increasingly close alignment between the design of our own bodies and that of the latest high performance buildings - anthromimicry I suppose.

There are some easy comparisons to be made between buildings, their component parts and systems, and how you and I function day in, day out. The air handling plant is like our lungs, the facade is analogous to our

skin, the building structure to our skeletons, and so on. But dig deeper and the similarities can be far more complex and fascinating. To better understand how this way of thinking has the potential to positively impact our experience of these buildings, we need to explore the difference between ‘autonomic’ and ‘somatic’ systems - terms you might dimly recall from high school biology.

the basic engineering by exploring every opportunity to harness natural systems to do that work for us. Much or our work is purposely hidden from view - systems that we expect to just, do their job - much like the autonomic nervous system and the organs that it controls.

AUTONOMIC AND SOMATIC: AS IN BODIES, SO IN BUILDINGS

Take ‘demand controlled ventilation’ as an example; DCV systems regulate how much air we put into an occupied space based on feedback on the level of CO2 in the breathing zone, just as the autonomic respiratory system regulates the body’s levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide by adjusting how often and deeply you breathe. Or systems of air filtration and heat recovery in modern air handling units, a service provided without any effort on your part by the intricate design of your nose.

The human body is a truly remarkable system, managed through a combination of unconscious and conscious functions. The ‘autonomic’ nervous system, regulated by the brain’s hypothalamus, is responsible for involuntary body functions such as breathing, keeping your heart beating and our fight- or-flight response. On the other hand, the ‘somatic’ nervous system is responsible for the voluntary body functions such as when you choose to move your hand to scratch that itch on your nose. In simple terms, autonomic functions happen in the background without conscious effort while somatic functions are driven by our decisions.

Now, a little context will go a long way at this point. I founded Integral Group ten years ago, a building services engineering and sustainability firm with over 400 incredibly smart individuals. In simple terms, we look after the pipes, wires, lights and ducts that make buildings come alive. We spend a lot of time working with our clients and design collaborators trying to eliminate the need for these systems in the first place - going far beyond

Many of today’s building technologies operate in the same manner as our autonomic body functions.

AUTONOMIC PROBLEMS AND SOMATIC RESPONSES Regrettably, most existing building stock isn’t working cohesively in the background leading to performance issues. Ineffective and outmoded building controls are often coupled to outdated assumptions of what conditions make people happier and more comfortable. The thermostat that is probably ruling the roost when it comes to thermal comfort in the room you are in right now is most likely programmed based on studies of male-dominated offices of the 1960s. It’s not then surprising that conditioning a building to keep a ‘typical’ 40-year-old, 70

Faced with the problem of “tunnel boom” that afflicted fast-moving trains entering narrow tunnels, designer Eiji Nakatsu took inspiration from the Kingfisher, whose elongated beak allows the bird to transition from air to water with precision and efficiency.

47

DESIGN

SPRING 2019

kilogram male, leaves a lot of room for complaints from today’s diverse workforce.

And what does this unyielding, traditional style of autonomic control lead to? A negative somatic response from building occupants - frustration, a building management complaint, met with a step-change system reconfiguration response from the facilities manager. A response to extremes leads to extreme responses.

Conditions swing wildly from too hot to too cold. Sound familiar?

TAKING INSPIRATION FROM THE BODY So how can autonomic systems provide the inspiration to design better buildings?

In the past few years the industry has made significant progress with the emergence of a whole raft of technologies that are bringing autonomic intelligence to our buildings, allowing them to continuously sense their environment, respond dynamically and automatically, without human intervention. We are moving towards an age where analogues of the selfregulating mechanisms that maintain our body’s health and comfort will become ubiquitous technologies in the built environment.

Consider the benefits of dynamic glazing, which last year was ranked in the top 100 solutions for mitigating global warming in Paul Hawken’s bestseller “Drawdown”. Dynamic glass is able to tune the quantity of incoming natural light, and with it to control the heat of the sun, by changing the tint of the glass.

This is the same reflex employed by your eye - constricting and

48

dilating the pupil in response to the intensity of light reaching the retina. Understanding how these two responses interact - formed an intriguing part of a recent white paper on Merck’s liquid crystal window published by our analysis team in London.

Another building technology that is gaining momentum is circadian lighting, which utilises advances in LED technology to automatically tune the colour of artificial light throughout the day in alignment with our body clock, or circadian rhythm.

Our body relies on the autonomic secretion of melatonin, in part driven by our access to natural light, to regulate sleep patterns and blood pressure, among other processes.

Our increasingly indoor lifestyles can wreak havoc with this process - in the same way that jetlag hits us all.

Circadian lighting holds the prospect of positively supporting our body’s natural functions, promoting an increase in our health and wellbeing.

The Therma-Fuser by Accutherm is a building technology that provides an autonomic response that mimics the human body’s thermoregulatory systems, particularly arterial dilation whereby blood flow is increased in response to overheating. Each Therma-Fuser diffuser contains a built-in thermostat and actuator that controls the flow of air based on the thermal requirements of the zone served by each diffuser. This solution provides significant energy and comfort improvements over a more traditional variable air volume approach, and was used in our LEED Platinum rated Oakland office.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is maturing within the building industry and will lay a foundation

for smart building innovations to come. Technologies such as the Nest Learning Thermostat, which still feels novel but remarkably made its first splash way back in 2011, utilise these networks of sensors and actuators with an added layer of machine learning. Nest technology is able to algorithmically tune a building’s operation in response to the behaviour of its occupants. The mesh networking principles of IoT will continue to support the development of adaptive and resilient building systems. In yet another parallel to the human body, these selfconnecting networks operate in a similar way to synapses in our brains.

They first formed in our baby brain as the most useful connections

became hardwired, and remarkably can sometimes be rerouted and reconfigured following trauma.

SATISFACTION IS SOMATIC Although our human responses are a combination of autonomic and somatic functions, we get the most pleasure from our somatic interactions. Imagine: on a hot summer day your eyes begin to squint from the sun, you perspire to keep cool and you instinctively seek shade. All autonomic responses that make things feel better. But to really feel good, I’d much prefer to choose to sit in the sunshine, shades on, at the beach, cool waves lapping over my feet, with a refreshing cold beer

We are moving towards an age where analogs of the self-regulating mechanisms that maintain our body’s health and comfort will become ubiquitous technologies in the built environment.

49

DESIGN

SPRING 2019

We are moving towards an age where analogs of the self-regulating mechanisms that maintain our body’s health and comfort will become ubiquitous technologies in the built environment.

in hand. That’s somatic.

Perhaps unsurprisingly there is good evidence to suggest that occupant satisfaction in buildings is higher when we have access to options to exert adaptive control, or somatic regulation, of our environment.

The Comfy app platform is a great example of a building technology that works with this evidence base to harness existing autonomic infrastructure while providing a level of somatic input for occupants.

Users of a Comfy-enabled building can register and update their preferences for temperature within a space, in real time, via the Comfy app. This data is then used by the autonomous HVAC system to tune the performance of the building in real-time, while collecting valuable data on occupant preferences and satisfaction.

That’s just the beginning. The next generation of building occupants will demand data and performance visibility at their fingertips and expect building systems to prevent or at least actively address any shortfalls. Consider the availability 50

of low-cost air quality monitoring devices such as the Foobot and Awair that are raising our awareness of indoor environmental quality to levels unimaginable only 5 years ago. Devices like these can be setup to automatically communicate with the wider world. IFTTT - If This Then That - is a free platform that enables anyone to add autonomic intelligence to these technologies. No wiring, no expensive or complicated building management interface, no facilities manager or training needed - just a $99 smart plug that can merrily tweet its grievances with your building to the planet.

WHAT NEXT? I foresee innovation in building systems and autonomic response keeping pace with our thirst for feedback on the quality of our environments. Autonomic innovations will provide the essential infrastructure taking care of fundamental building operations - providing fresh air, clean water, circadian light and shelter from the climate - and meeting our zero

carbon goals - without our active intervention or conscious input.

Inspired by the genius of our own bodies building technologies may eventually match the simplicity, reliability and hidden wonder of our own autonomic systems. Leaving us all free to devote our attention to what matters - scratching that itch with one hand, maybe with a cool beer in the other.  Article first published in Intelligent Glass Solutions, Spring 2018.

KEVIN HYDES PE, PEng., CEng, RAIC(hon), FCIBSE, LEED Fellow, CEO & President, Integral Group A pioneer of sustainable building systems’ design, Kevin’s commitment to advancing its cause began over 20 years ago. He has served as an Industry Expert, and Technical Advisor for several organizations, including: Clinton Climate Initiative, Climate Carbon Positive Community, EcoDistricts, Building Health Initiative, One Planet Communities, City of Vancouver Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, GSA National Peer Professional, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Flex Lab, and Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability.

TOP ZERO NET ENERGY MEP ENGINEERS BASED ON NEW BUILDING INSTITUTE’S 2018 GETTING TO ZERO REPORT

MECHANICAL | ELECTRICAL | PLUMBING

Photo: Bruce Damonte Photography

PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING | ENERGY MODELING COMMUNITY + DISTRICT PLANNING LIGHTING + DAYLIGHTING DESIGN SUSTAINABILITY CONSULTING HEALTH + WELLNESS

WWW.INTEGRALGROUP.COM 51

ELEVATE

SPRING 2019

Tales of the Los Angeles Parks EXCERPT + ILLUSTRATIONS FROM LEO POLITI’S 1966 BOOK One day as I was painting in Elysian Park I saw a boy, a lone boy. I watched him wandering among the bushes and huge trees on the side of the hill. At times he stopped; he would disappear, then appear again.

Very likely he was experiencing an exciting adventure. He made me think of the lovely song “Nature Boy”

by Eben Ahbez.

Then I thought of Leonardo da Vinci’s own writings of his boyhood in the rugged Umbrian Hills of Italy, and of his adventures in the forests and grottos of the area. In his lone walks, through Nature untouched by man, he sought and found the glorious laws on which he based all his life’s work. The rolling hills, towering trees, the shrubbery, wild flowers, birds, the animals and insects lived in a perfect symphony.

Facing page: Leo Politi’s painting of Fern Dell, a natural area within Griffith Park.

52

Unfortunately, scarce or almost nonexistent are settings such as these—close to our city—which are accessible to the child where his fancy can play and his creative and esthetic instincts find fresh inspiration.

Therefore, it is imperative that what

few patches of “wilderness” we have left must be preserved. [...]

Around 1914 there was much controversy in the area about improving and beautifying the Los Angeles River bed. Mr. Frank Shearer who was then the superintendent of the city’s parks conceived the idea of Fern Dell to demonstrate in miniature the beautification that could be done along the Los Angeles River. To accomplish his ends he employed the Montgomery brothers, famous rock garden artists from New Zealand.

Many large rocks were brought to the dell and these, along with concrete, were used to create terraced pools along the stream. Walls of rocks and tree stumps were built. Then many new varieties of ferns and shrubs were planted, resulting in a place of planned beauty.

Half a century later Fern Dell is still beautiful. On week ends and summer days children catch fish – crabs along the banks of the brook. They compete to see who catches the most. Then they throw them back in the water. 

53

EMULATE

SPRING 2019

Leave it to Beaver?

In the face of climate change and increasing associated water scarcity, one promising restoration and resilience focus has emerged: beaver. Pre-colonial North American populations of Castor canadensis are estimated in a range up to 400 million individuals but were decimated to a mere estimated 100,000 individuals by the end of the beaver fashion epoch—a period from the sixteenth to the nineteenth

Beavers keep our waterways hydrated in the face of climatechange fueled drought. Their wetlands dissipate floods and slow the onslaught of wildfires.

They filter pollution. They store carbon. They reverse erosion.

And, whereas our infrastructure is generally inimical to life, they terraform watery cradles for creatures from salmon to sawflies to salamanders. They heal the wounds we inflict.

54

centuries in which beaver hats and other garments using beaver pelt were in high fashion and extremely desirable. Thanks to the whims of fashion trends, the Castor genus—the last genus of what at one time was a 32 genera field—was saved from extinction. Two species remain within this genus: Castor canadensis, the North American beaver, and Castor fiber, the Eurasian beaver.

Today, scientists estimate there are between 6 and 12 million beaver across North America and hypothesize that they have an increasingly important role to play in conservation. Researchers in the state of Washington are applying beaver conservation assumptions to plans for salmon habitat restoration.

These researchers are trapping “nuisance” beaver from urban environments and repopulating them in the uplands of a number of river systems and carefully measuring the impacts they have on the relocation grounds’ functionality. What these researchers are discovering is that the presence of beaver spell good things for otherwise plunging salmon populations; one study by Dr. Michael Pollock on the Stillaguamish River Basin estimated that at some point, the river basin provided crucial habitat to some 7.1 million juvenile coho annually, but in recent years that number had plummeted to 1 million. Lack of deep pools rich with associated riparian vegetation—

which together provided juvenile coho with predatory protection and rich food supply—or, in other words, habitat destruction, is responsible for this decline. While these experiments are still being conducted, early outcomes are encouraging.

In a paper entitled “Reintegrating the North American beaver (Castor canadensis) in the urban landscape,” researchers from the University of Washington David Bailey, Ben Dittbrenner, and Ken Yocom share a compelling list of ecosystem services and benefits of beaver presence, which include: increasing groundwater levels, decreasing and retaining storm-water run-off, creating habitat for many species, most notably salmon, decreasing erosion and incision of streambeds, and increase in riparian vegetation.

Ben Goldfarb, environmental journalist and author of Eager: The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, who has covered Bailey and Dittbrenner’s research extensively writes, “Beavers, by capturing surface water and elevating groundwater tables, keep our waterways hydrated in the face of climate-change fueled drought.

Their wetlands dissipate floods and slow the onslaught of wildfires. They filter pollution. They store carbon.

They reverse erosion. And, whereas our infrastructure is generally inimical to life, they terraform watery cradles for creatures from salmon to sawflies to salamanders. They heal the wounds we inflict.”

One study by Dittbrenner found that for every cubic meter of surface water that beaver trap in the deep pools that form behind their dams, another 2.5 cubic meters infiltrates, recharging groundwater. This process keeps streams running fuller and 55

EMULATE

SPRING 2019

longer into the season. Further, as this water moves through the hyporheic zone beneath a stream bed, it cools. This cold water, which eventually reemerges downstream as surface flow, is crucial for salmon fry and other aquatic invertebrates that rely on oxygen rich water for their survival. As the snowpack in the Cascades decreases with climate change in the coming years, scientists like Dittbrenner hope the ecosystem services provided by beaver and their dam building might “make up an appreciable storage component of that lost snowpack.”

These researchers are now teaming up with Washington’s Tulalip Tribe to conduct their research and conservation work, and this collaboration is already having a ripple effect on other tribes’ approaches to salmon conservation.

Similar research initiatives and relocation efforts are now underway to determine what effect beaver might have on bull trout populations on the Lewis River, in an initiative led by the Cowlitz Tribe.

Biohabitats’ Spring 2018 issue of Leaf Litter, focused on beaver, noted in its introduction that, “In building dams, beaver naturally achieve many of the goals those of us in conservation and restoration strive to achieve…In fact, the beaver’s impact on other animals and plants is so profound it is now considered a keystone species.”

So how can we set up conditions in which beaver can thrive and provide these crucial ecosystem services? In addition to reintroducing beaver to specific ecosystems and chronicling their impacts, scientists are also experimenting with beaver dam analogs in stream restoration work.

These manmade structures mimic the

56

effects of their “real” counterparts and can be used either to lure beaver to a site or to mimic their activities in places where they are not present.

To aid the fledgling initiatives, in the latest edition of the Beaver Restoration Guidebook, Dr. Michael Pollock, a principal author, and his colleagues outline specific protocols for the location and installation of beaver dam analogs.

In his article “They Will Build It,” Ben Goldfarb documents a handful of current conservation measures relying on beaver for success ranging from encouraging the formation of beaver built wetlands to filter agricultural pollutants from areas that drain into Chesapeake Bay to mitigating flood damage by encouraging Castor fiber to engineer water systems that include deep ponds for the retention and infiltration of storm water in England.

While beaver aren’t a panacea for all environmental woes, they do provide an excellent example of and resource for environmental regeneration.

Beaver researchers are wary of being as eager as their subject matter, but are more than cautiously optimistic that the comeback of this rodent that once dominated the North American watery landscape will play a major role in adjusting to pressing environmental stressors going forward.  This article references the research presented in the following sources: The writing of Ben Goldfarb, Beaver Believer, especially Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018.

David R. Bailey, Dittbrenner, B. and Yocom, K. “Reintigrating the North American Beaver (Castor canadensis) in the urban landscape.” University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, 2017.

Biohabitats’ Leaf Litter, Spring Equinox 2018, Volume XVI, Edition 1, “Beaver.”

57

SPRING 2019

ABOUT MCLENNAN DESIGN McLennan Design, one of the world’s leading multi-disciplinary regenerative design practices, focuses on deep green outcomes in the fields of architecture, planning, consulting, and product design.

The firm uses an ecological perspective to drive design creativity and innovation, reimagining and redesigning for positive environmental and social impact.

Founded in 2013 by global sustainability leader and green design pioneer Jason F. McLennan and joined by partner Dale Duncan, the firm dedicates its practice to the creation of living buildings, net-zero, and regenerative projects all over the world. As the founder and creator of many of the building industry’s leading programs including the Living Building Challenge and its related programs, McLennan and his design team bring substantial knowledge and unmatched expertise to the A/E industry. The firm’s diverse and interdisciplinary set of services makes for a culture of holistic solutions and big picture thinking.

58

ABOUT JASON F. MCLENNAN Considered one of the world’s most influential individuals in the field of architecture and green building movement today, Jason is a highly sought out designer, consultant and thought leader.

The recipient of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize, the planet’s top prize for socially responsible design, he has been called the Steve Jobs of the green building industry, a World Changer by GreenBiz magazine. In 2016, Jason was selected as the Award of Excellence winner for Engineering News Record- one of the only individuals in the architecture profession to have won the award in its 52-year history.

McLennan is the creator of the Living Building Challenge – the most stringent and progressive green building program in existence, as well as a primary author of the WELL Building Standard.

He is the author of six books on Sustainability and Design used by thousands of practitioners each year, including The Philosophy of Sustainable Design. McLennan is both an Ashoka Fellow and Senior Fellow of the Design Future’s Council. He has been selected by Yes! Magazine as one of 15 People Shaping the World and works closely with world leaders, Fortune 500 companies, leading NGOs, major universities, celebrities and development companies –all in the pursuit of a world that is socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative. He serves as the Chairman of the International Living Future Institute and is the CEO of McLennan Design – his architectural and planning practice designing some of the world’s most advanced green buildings. McLennan’s work has been published in dozens of journals, magazines and newspapers around the world.

59

www.mclennan-design.com