Design the Future

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. 

Rachel Gutter is CEO/President of the International Well Building Institute. Her journey is full of persistence and passion, but she points to the benefits of “wandering until you find what makes your heart sing.” We talked about IWBI’s Health Safety Rating for buildings and the opportunity that exists to demonstrate the ROI related to wellbeing in ESG ratings. And we talked about the public’s role in market transformation. A public newly attuned to health is ready to demand verifiably healthy spaces, which can drive change (even in sectors previously agnostic on sustainability). 

Building a climate responsive and just future is happening, many would argue, most meaningfully at the local level, due in part to the vision and persistent hard work of people like Lucia Athens. Lucia, trained in landscape architecture, talks about the need for design- and systems-minded people in government roles; writing green building policy, which she has done in both Seattle and Austin; and about some of the public buildings that resulted. We also talked about how equity informs Austin’s climate plan and the Austin Civilian Conservation Corps,  turning climate action into jobs.

Alyssa Lyon is the Sustainable Communities Director at Pittsburgh's Green Building Alliance and Mandy Lee is the manager of the NAACP’s Centering Equity in the Sustainable Building Sector initiative. We talked to Lee and Lyon about promises the green building industry has made about social equity, and the CESBS’s efforts to make good on those in a broad, collective way. This is thanks to Jacqui Patterson, who founded the NAACP’s Environmental Justice program. The work is local, regional, and national, and it focuses on how the industry can bring, as Lyon puts it, “light and resources” to the movement and to people and communities.