Vol. 19, Issue 01 2021
Climate action: A multifaceted road to impactful change Kira Gould, Allied AIA, LEED AP, is a writer, strategist, and convener dedicated to advancing design leadership, climate action, and climate justice. Through Kira Gould CONNECT, she provides strategic communications for leaders designing, developing, and building a sustainable future. Gould is a senior fellow with Architecture 2030 and serves on the AIA Committee on the Environment national advisory group, for which she chaired in 2007. Prior to starting her consulting work in 2016, Gould directed communications for William McDonough + Partners and Gould Evans and served as managing editor at Metropolis magazine. Gould co-authored “Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design” (2007) with Lance Hosey and is today the co-host of the Design the Future podcast with Lindsay Baker , which features women and feminine leadership. She grew up in Lawrence, Kan., and has spent her adult life in New York, Boston, and the Bay Area; she’s lived in Oakland for the past decade.
BP: Hi, Kira! Thank you for taking the opportunity to have this conversation. You have a unique perspective on design and the built environment as it relates to sustainability. How did you find yourself in the field of sustainable design? KG: My father is an architect, and my mother was an interior designer and artist, so I was always interested in design and placemaking, and I always wanted to write. My undergraduate degree was in journalism, and I moved to New York to work in magazines.
the in-house role to work as a consultant. Through Kira Gould CONNECT, my consultancy, I advise firms and leaders on strategy, communications, and knowledge leadership. I write whenever I can, and I find myself in the role of connector and convener often, through firms, with AIA and COTE, and in other industry and climate groups. Increasingly, that has a policy/advocacy aspect to it; to design a healthy, equitable, regenerative future, we’re going to need to rewrite some rules. BP: What do the two phrases “climate action” and “climate justice” mean to you and your work?
I found a graduate program that bridged architecture and writing, at Parsons School of Design (now part of the New School); it was a master of arts degree in architectural criticism. In the course of my studies there, professor Jean Gardner introduced me to an understanding of humans as a part of nature, which remapped my understanding of what architecture and human settlement could be. These understandings are part of the framework that I believe is finally becoming more broadly understood as designers and society begin to turn from delayed, uncomfortable awareness and blame about climate change to collective, productive action and regeneration.
KG: I see climate action as the basic human responsibility to address global warming and the threat it poses to our species on Earth. I see climate justice as the understanding that all people and communities should be equally protected from harm from environmental and climate threats. The goal is a healthy, equitable, regenerative future for all. The challenge for architects and the AEC industry, as well as for all people, is to lead climate action in a way that is inclusive of climate justice.
I found a work family at Metropolis magazine; they were beginning to explore sustainability in a meaningful way. Metropolis was one of the first design magazines to cover the topic deeply and regularly. I migrated my work to working within architecture firms in a communications capacity (first Gould Evans, a firm co-founded by my father, and then William McDonough + Partners). After that, I stepped out of
KG: I got involved in COTE at the local level first, when the chapter was forming in New York City, where I spent the first decade of my career. That translated to connecting with people active at the national level. I was very passionate about the sustainable-buildings movement and the potential for architects to take the lead. I joined the national COTE leadership group (the advisory group) in the mid-2000s and
BP: You have quite a deep history of working on these challenging issues in AIA’s Committee on the Environment (COTE). What is your current role and mission? And how did you get involved?
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