Design the Future

Architect Arathi Gowda leads ZGF's East Coast Sustainability Practice. She is an advocate for collective climate action and is the current co-chair of US Architects Declare and a member of the American Institute of Architects’ Committee on the Environment Leadership Group. Arathi was at SOM for 20 years in Chicago before moving recently to her new role, and her move to DC reflects her ambitions around climate and advocacy as part of architecture. Arathi is a keen observer of the architecture profession and the real estate and financial realms in which it functions. She notes that following the persistence of NIMBY-ism for years, “we are finally getting to a moment when there is no more Someone Else’s Backyard. Those of us who have some political power and institutional capacity need to do whatever we can to amplify that.” She  points out that designers, as the optimists in the house, need to be rendering a post apocalyptic future that is beautiful and beneficial. “We need to show how positive the solutions for the collective good can be,” she says. 

As VP of Sustainability Consulting at Stok, Devon advises clients on sustainability for their building portfolios, consulting with major organizations on carbon, ESG, and more. She recently authored Stok’s Sustainable Real Estate Program Handbook, a multi-year, collaborative effort focused on driving faster change. “This work can be heavy,” she says. “You have to stay hopeful and be curious.” She is encouraged by growing awareness about embodied carbon and increasing collaboration across the industry at this critical time. “We need more transparency and more advocacy and policy," she says. “Data collection is still a struggle. We are just beginning to recognize the impact of the supply chain.”Devon suggests that art and poetry nurture the introspection and creativity we need to tackle daunting challenges. Here’s the opening line from a David Whyte poem she shared with us: “Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be.”

When we think about conservation and historic preservation, we often think first of land and buildings. But Juli Polanco’s work is putting people, culture, and climate at the center of those topics. We talked to Juli about her work as State Historic Preservation Officer for California, her role founding and leading the Climate Heritage Network, and her involvement with the Urban Land Institute’s Sustainable Development Council. Her mission, she says, is to help build resilient communities. Part of that is making sure that people see themselves in history. “We can use history as a binding agent for communities,” she says. “Part of the work is asking people -- everyone -- ‘how do you value this site?’ We can learn so much from the answers to that question. That has to do with what we save, how we build, and how we give hope and context to the youth in our community.”

Gina Ciganik is CEO of the Healthy Building Network, which is known for research and guidance around products and green chemistry. Gina is recognized as a national leader in transforming human and environmental health through strategic partnerships, innovative business practices, capacity building, and novel approaches. Having jumped from one career (affordable housing development) to another (public health and toxicology), Gina has become a “chief translator” about chemicals and health -- it has become a passion for her. “As soon as I understood the depth of the health challenge around products and materials," she says, “I knew I had to get involved to address it.” She acknowledges that progress has been made on transparency and disclosures, but she sees the need for acceleration. Whether seeing her role as part of the green building movement, or the industry it has spawned, Gina thinks in very direct terms. “It seems to me that, given all that we know now, you are either proactively working on solutions to these big things -- climate, toxics, racism -- or you are harming. I like to think that I am working on design and healing on a large scale.”

“I have always seen sustainability and social concerns as part of design,” says architect Angie Brooks. This perspective is rooted, in part, in her undegrad architectural studies that emphasized regionalism. And since her early days in practice, Angie has felt that architects should shape the framework within which they work. Her career and practice, with partner Larry Scarpa, shows how architects can be proactive agents of change. Angie's passion for communities has led to advocacy and policy work and a commitment to tackling tough topics. This manifests in a number of ways, including the recent Density for Quality of Life and Social Capital exhibit and grant funding for affordable housing pilots and a toolkit for developers, community groups, and architects. “We have to continue to think beyond the building,” she says. “Our profession can do so much good if we reject traditional silos and respond to the community.” 

Lotte Schlegel is the Executive Director of the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT), a national nonprofit organization focused on equitably decarbonizing buildings through policies and programs that increase demand and action for high-performing buildings. She’s also a co-founder and board member of ecountabl, which helps people support causes they care about when they bank and shop.Lotte described how she came to the built environment space because it is where issues of energy and health intersect. She talked about IMT's work on building performance standards with cities and states and the important trend of putting frontline communities at the center of the policy process. “We need to renovate a lot of our buildings a lot faster than we do today if we’re going to address and adapt to climate change,” she says. “We need to focus on systemic change in how we invest in and regulate the built environment to focus on performance and long term benefits.” 

Susan Szenasy is one of the best known design critics and editors of the past four decades; she served as editor of Metropolis magazine from the mid 1980s until a few years ago. In 2017, she was the winner of a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award. During her tenure, Metropolis became one of the most expansive design publications in the American media landscape -- covering all disciplines and tackling sustainability as part of design early and deeply. We talked to her about ethics, Trombe walls, why the disciplines don’t talk to one another much, and how the “architects pollute” cover story in 2003 spotlighted built environment emissions. Susan’s view on design is all encompassing. She has the appreciation of a historian and the the gravity of a pragmatist (perhaps rooted in her childhood in Communist Hungary). She showed how a media platform could elevate voices and ideas -- about who design is for, how it relates to ecology and planet, how we teach design and ethics for designers, and how design is valued and funded. A collection of her writing and talks is available in Szenasy: Design Advocate (Metropolis Books, 2014).  

Julie Hiromoto is a Principal at HKS, where she serves as firmwide Director of Integration, leveraging business, design excellence, and technical expertise to advance socially and environmentally responsible design. Julie is a big believer in research and coalitions, and has always engaged with numerous organizations, including AIA, ULI, ILFI, and IWBI. She attended the UN’s COP26 (as part of the AIA delegation). Julie stresses the value of asking questions and being open to learning through different roles. Julie notes that the built environment community has finally gotten governments and the public to recognize that buildings are a part of climate action. The reasons are clear: the built environment is responsible for more than 40% of emissions, we spend 90 percent of time indoors, and two thirds of the buildings that will be standing in 2040 are already built -- we have to address existing buildings. “What are we going to do with the leadership platform?” Julie asks. “It’s time to start sprinting.” The urgency of the crisis, Julie notes, is really pressing us toward collaboration and invention. “We know that collectively we can do amazing things. Can we translate that to our carbon, resilience, wellbeing, and equity work?” 

Architect Ilana Judah recently completed her graduate studies in an interdisciplinary program with a focus on urban climate adaptation. This step in her career was designed to orient herself to where she could make the greatest possible impact addressing the climate crisis. She has been consulting to building industry stakeholders through her firm, ACORN Resilience & Sustainability. Before going back to school, Ilana was Principal/Director of Sustainability at FXCollaborative, known for pioneering work on sustainable high-rise buildings.Ilana is optimistic about our ability to address the climate crisis. “I think it’s going to come naturally over the next few years,” she says. “We will better weave resilience, equity, health and biodiversity considerations into our thinking, while still remaining focused on drawing down emissions. More frequent climate disasters, increasing inequity, and being on the brink of the sixth extinction gives us little choice.” She points out that architects can bring to the table a greater vision of what makes for happy and sustainable living. In terms of what’s ahead, Ilana calls the energy transition very exciting and suggests that “climate related financial disclosure has the potential to be extremely powerful and transformative, if we can avoid greenwash. I’m also encouraged by the still nascent efforts regarding equity, environmental justice and traditional indigenous ecological knowledge.”

Architect, researcher, consultant, and educator Lisa Heschong is also an author. Her latest book, Visual Delight in Architecture; Daylight, Vision and View (Routledge, 2021), explores findings on the physiological, cognitive, social and cultural importance of daylight and view in our everyday environments. Her book, Thermal Delight in Architecture is a cult classic, which grew out of her MIT master’s thesis. Lisa thinks of daylight and view as “nutrition” that we need on a continuous basis. “The circadian stimulus that is provided by daylight is really fundamental to our health on so many levels," she says. “For metabolic health, we need to synchronize with the daylight patterns of the planet. Looking out a window actually gives us the strongest signal that we can get from inside a building. Even more so than daylight illumination -- it’s brighter and more interesting.”