Design the Future

Architect and educator Wanda Dalla Costa is a member of the Saddle Lake First Nation, the Principal of Tawaw Architecture Collective, and a Professor at Arizona State University, where she is also Director/Founder of the Indigenous Design Collaborative. Her approach to architecture is rooted in her perspective on how communities support people and their cultural lifeways. “We integrate a full indigenous research paradigm in our work. We explore place and purpose through epistemology, or ways of knowing; ontology, or ways of being; methodology, or ways of doing; and axiology, which is about value systems.” Wanda notes that architecture -- practice and education -- may be on the cusp of significant changes. “We need to build multiple knowledges into our work … to create create an Earth-centered architecture.” 

Jennifer Leitsch is VP of Corporate Responsibility at CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm. Jennifer has an engineering degree and became captivated by the notion of business as a force for good. Under her leadership, CBRE recently announced a new set of emissions reduction goals with science based targets. “As the largest commercial real estate firm, we are committed to leading on this front,” Jennifer says. CBRE is also thinking about risk, including transition risks that will be significant to companies in the coming years. “The industry is in the midst of major mindset shift,” she says. 

Architect Michelle Amt is Director of Sustainability at VMDO Architects and previously worked at William McDonough + Partners. She is serving on the jury for the AIA COTE Top Ten Awards in 2021, and cites that program with merging design with high performance in a way that no other does. Michelle says she feels like she’s part of a movement within an industry. The industry is baseline, championing things that we should all be doing whereas the movement is trying to make a much bigger change. “Let’s not lose the sense that the world can be reinvented,” she says. “When COVID-19 hit, it made us all think about what we really needed, what was meaningful, and how things could change. There has been suffering, too, but we did shift quickly. The planet mobilized for a solution. That could work for climate, too.” 

Dr. Whitney Austin Gray is Senior VP of Research at the International Well Building Institute and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown School of Urban and Regional Planning and the School of Nursing and Health Studies. Whitney was captivated early on in her studies by the notion that buildings can promote health, productivity, and wellness, which inspired her to create a career path that combines public health and design. This cross pollination is more important than ever right now, when we can see so clearly how buildings and climate change are impacting health. 

Lynn Simon is head of Real Estate and Workplace Services Sustainability at Google, a role that includes health, wellness, food, transportation, placemaking, amenities, and more. The built environment is central to her work, but it also includes all the systems that connect people to place. Recently, Lynn convened the Regen Lab to address what they called “radical resilience beyond the perimeter.” Lynn points out that “think global, act local” is still true, and for Google, which is in 54 countries and 648 buildings, that means considering equity in many places and in many ways. There is so much to learn, she says, by engaging the disenfranchised and indigenous communities.”I think we have to be intentional about all aspects of our lives and our work to bring in diverse voices.”

Adrienne Johnson is a mechanical engineer with Point Energy Innovations, where she focuses on helping clients realize high performance buildings, including net zero projects. Her interest in sustainability is broad; she has researched water and energy issues and won the USGBC’s Malcom Lewis IMPACT! award in 2017 for her work on a school in Parkwood, outside of Capetown. That experience has informed how she brings social justice to her work today, including working on what the industry looks like and also who is benefitting from sustainable infrastructure. She hopes to see net zero energy buildings gain momentum and buildings become part of an overall just energy transition. 

Architect Anica Landreneau leads HOK’s global sustainable design practice and serves on the firm’s board of directors and design board. Anica has been involved at the local and Federal level with policy and advocacy, including providing Congressional testimony. As Anica says, “We need those who are doing the work to come to these hearings and bring our experience and expertise to the table. Code changes, and other changes, are needed. Who do we think will do this?” In those words, Anica articulates a question that is, perhaps, lurking for many active in this realm. “If not us, then who?” 

Heather Rosenberg has an ecology background and has made a career of systems thinking applied to climate change; she currently leads Arup’s resilience discipline in the Americas. “To me, the most fascinating aspects of this work is the fitting together of the economic, social, and environmental systems.” We talked about how she got into the green buildings industry and started exploring questions (with Joel Todd and others) about how buildings and communities can help people thrive. If we are serious about the triple bottom line, she says, we have a lot to do on the equity front: “It’s not just bringing people to our table, it’s also showing up at their tables, too.” 

Vivian Loftness is a professor in the architecture school at Carnegie Mellon University who also serves on the board of the AIA and ILFI, among others. We talked about the value of standards, as goals and metrics, and the critical pull they provide for industry. We talked about improvements to architecture education, including making sure that all studios address environmental and equity issues, inherent as they are to design, and involve metrics. She also talked about using the Triple Bottom Line to cost justify better buildings (and encourage owners to think about net present value). And if she’s in charge for a day, one of her edicts would be that all buildings be designed for “environmental surfing.”

Architect, affordable housing expert, and leadership cultivator Katie Swenson joined MASS Design Group early this year, after years at Enterprise Community Partners, where she expanded the Rose Fellowship, bringing design expertise into collaboration with communities. While Katie was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard GSD, she asked: “What role do love and kindness play in urban design?” Love is also at the core of Katie’s two new books (Schiffer Publishing, 2020). In Bohemia: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Kindness, which Katie wrote following the death of her partner, is also about architecture, history, and home. Design with Love: At Home in America, chronicles the work of the Rose Fellowship, uplifting these collaborations.