Connection
Advancing supply chain equity A conversation with one of TALLY’s designer: Efrie Escott
Efrie Escott Escott Investigates materials, ecosystems, and digital technologies as an associate in the KieranTimberlake Research Group by translating data-driven research into building design. She was a core member of the development team for Tally, the founder of Philadelphia’s Dynamo User Group, and a member of the USGBC Materials and Resources Technical Advisory Group. She is also the co-chair of AIA Philadelphia’s Women in Architecture Committee.
With a mission to understand the potential of having an inhouse design lab in our firm and an eagerness to increase my knowledge about the life-cycle performance of buildings, I had a conversation with Efrie Escott, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, LFA, an expert on this topic and one of the creators of the Tally tool - Efrie helped me navigate through a clear vision for life-cycle design.
ones we share more broadly, like Tally. During the process of making an internal life cycle assessment tool, we realized that the workflow needed to go out to the industry to be shared with architects and designers so they can verify the environmental impact of their buildings without needing to get an additional environmental degree.
Tannia Chavez (TC): How did you become an architect and researcher?
TC: What is Tally?
Efrie Escott (EE): I started my architecture education with the intent to become an architect with a hobby in environmental activism. Over the course of my education and early years of practice, I became interested in how buildings participate as a part of the larger ecosystem. So I leveraged that interest along with my training as a licensed architect and my master’s in environmental management, with a focus on urban and industrial ecology, to look at ways that we can approach the building design process differently. That is a big commitment that KieranTimberlake Architects made possible by providing me the opportunity to focus on those questions full-time.
EE: Tally was designed as a plug-in compatible with Revit to calculate the embodied environmental impacts of a building. Implementing Tally in your workflow makes it possible to achieve dramatic reductions in the amount of embodied carbon emissions of a project. We were able to make an 82% reduction of embodied carbon in a series of prefabricated houses, OpenHome. They are already operationally carbon neutral, but we are trying to bring it to zero total carbon through Tally by conducting a life-cycle assessment. Every time we build another house, we’re looking for every single additional kilogram of embodied carbon we can pull out of it.
TC: Is this how you became part of the Tally team? EE: Yes, I joined KieranTimberlake specifically because of the opportunity to be a part of making Tally and with the idea that the tool would become one used by building designers everywhere to change the way we look at designing buildings. This past May, KieranTimberlake gifted the Tally software to Building Transparency, creators of the EC3 tool and a nonprofit with expertise on software for the AEC demographic that aligns with our vision. TC: Should every firm have a software lab? EE: Absolutely. At KieranTimberlake, we make a lot of tools to be used internally for our own buildings in addition to the
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Above: OpenHome, Image courtesy of KieranTimberlake. Detail view of entry door and custom vertical cedar cladding of one of the OpenHome projects. Starting with a system of pre-designed elements, owners work with architects to refine the layout, finishes, amenities, and enhancements.
