7 minute read
Advancing supply chain equity
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.
Tannia Chavez (TC): How did you become an architect and researcher?
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.
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 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.
TC: What is Tally?
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.
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.
TC: Can you please explain how Tally is addressing equity and justice concerns in our designs?
EE: With our expertise on supply chains gained through Tally, we noticed that it is possible to increase transparency into supply chain equity. We have started tracking the relationships between environmental justice and the design supply chain.
TC: Can you explain this?
EE: There are all kinds of things happening before our building materials get to the construction sites, like extraction and manufacturing. The environmental impact has direct implications for the communities in which these processes occur, and to the workers that are involved in the process. That is why we are focusing on supply chain equity that includes things like emissions and toxicity for the workers in the manufacturing plant or for the communities that are around the manufacturing sites. Also, it looks into things like modern slavery and the fact that there are a lot of places that aren’t as transparent in terms of their supply chain, more specifically where and how their materials are made and extracted.
There are a lot of things within our supply chain that, as architects, we usually don’t have a lot of control over, and we don’t have a lot of knowledge of. The Tally team has been doing so much work on the supply chain to understand it from an environmental perspective; we’re also pretty concerned about what it means from an equity and environmental justice perspective. So, we’re starting to dig more deeply into that topic area and trying to provide some transparency to it. We are currently in the beginning phases of this work, but we hope to be able to share more soon.
TC: Can you give three reasons why young architects should advocate for the use of sustainable platforms in their firms?
EE: Number one, it is an emerging area, and you can become an expert on it at your firm, as very few people know much about most of these tools. Number two, there is a moral and ethical imperative—which will impact our generation directly. Number three, as architects, we must reduce embodied carbon, which frequently aligns with making the right budgetary decision in a building. TC: Can you provide any recommendations to have an efficient collaborative workflow?
EE: The biggest one is having a good relationship with your structural engineer; they are our allies with the topic of embodied carbon (SE2050). Acknowledging the structure as a primary area of reduction in embodied carbon as early as possible in the design process is crucial.
TC: Are we ever going to achieve net zero in our constructed designs?
EE: Yes, because we have to find a way! Everyone needs to have a place to live and work, and as architects, we need to figure out ways to supply those environments without compromising the rest of the world that we live in.
TC: Can you share the books that inspire you through your professional life?
EE: I mostly read a lot of fiction and listen to a lot of podcasts for professional reasons, but for nonfiction inspiration, one of my favorite authors is Bill McKibben. He is a phenomenal author on environmental issues. Another is Naomi Klein; she was really influential in forming some of my opinions regarding our economy and the relationship of the environment to our profession. And the third is Kate Simonen, the founder of the Carbon Leadership Forum. Her “Life Cycle Assessment” is written specifically from the perspective of architects. It lives on my desk, and I assign chapters to my students every single year that I teach.
TC: How long have you been teaching life cycle assessment, environmental simulation methods, and building performance topics?
EE: I started assistant teaching about sustainability to architecture students while in graduate school at the University of Michigan in 2012. I enjoyed the process, both in terms of interacting with students and in seeing how introducing topics of environmental performance early in the architecture education sequence changed the way young students approached the design of buildings. I became a lead instructor teaching LCA/ environmental methods in 2015 at Temple University while working at KieranTimberlake Architects.
Above: Tally Overview, Image courtesy of KieranTimberlake. The versatile Tally app allows users to include comprehensive information about the materials and products their buildings will contain within their Autodesk Revit models to quantify a building’s embodied environmental impacts to land, air, and water systems.
Right: Tally design option comparison, Image courtesy of KieranTimberlake. Tally enables users to compare the environmental impacts of whole buildings, manufactured building products and materials, and material assemblies.
TC: Why is this topic so important to pass along, especially to the new generations?
EE: Increasingly, building performance is a required deliverable for architectural projects. When we do not think about performance topics in an integrated, intelligent way, with an understanding of how design decisions have direct ramifications for building performance, we wind up with ugly buildings that people want to replace. When we teach and learn about sustainability in a holistic way, with an understanding of how design can improve performance and how performance can improve design, the result is buildings that inspire people. Tannia Chavez, International Assoc. AIA
Chavez is a project manager at OMFPE Consulting in New York City and is serving as New York Regional Associate Director to the AIA National Associates Committee.
