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Bisnow/Max Stein
Tournesol Siteworks’ Christopher Lyon, Blitz’s Melissa Hanley, Related California’s Phoebe Yee, Architype’s Joe Fitzpatrick and DCI Engineers’ Jeff Brink.
Sustainability has become a priority for many architects, but professionals in the field struggle with a lack of consensus on how to achieve the goal, panellists Bisnow’s The San Francisco Bay Area Architecture and Design Summit said Tuesday.
While architects agree that the industry needs to consider sustainability in terms of reuse, carbon footprint reduction and building durability, the “how” of this concept varies from project to project.
“There is no single rating, ranking or metric to guide commercial interior projects,” said Melissa Hanley, principal at Blitz.
Without that, “we would have a hard time coordinating our efforts,” Hanley added.
Christopher Lyon, president of Tournesol Siteworks, noted that contractors can obtain dozens of certifications in the area of sustainability. Each of them is slightly different, and developers are often unsure of what they should ask for.
These certifications are expensive, and Lyon noted that his company has had to hire someone to manage their capabilities in order to pursue the 23 certifications its materials can obtain.
Outside of industries that require a gold standard, there is little alignment between the policies builders must adhere to and the sustainability goals California encourages designers and developers to follow.
“The state sets goals for us. The problem is there’s no consistency between public policy and those goals,” said Phoebe Yee, executive vice president of Related California Design.
Cooperation at the public-private level would actually help, she said, pointing to other cities such as Copenhagen in Denmark as examples.
Panelists emphasized the importance of using buildings and materials already on site as a way to design more sustainably.
Hanley says this can be accomplished by looking at the “good bones” of a space, rather than knocking everything down and starting over.
“Don’t design for your future tenants in a corner,” she said, noting that her firm is working on a new project in San Francisco that keeps future tenants in mind and prioritizes things like configurable lighting that can be reused for future tenants. s things.
Bisnow/Max Stein
Members of the hotel include David Hart of Steinberg Hart, Marvin Wheat of WE O’Neil, John Marx of Form4 Architecture, founder of the eponymous firm Mark Cavagnero, Hao Ko of Gensler and Susan Orlandi of DLR Group.
Urban areas offer good reuse opportunities, panellists said.
“The first question we should ask ourselves is, ‘Can we reuse what we already have before starting from scratch?’” said Hao Ko, managing director and principal at Gensler.
The post-pandemic work landscape has changed how designers and developers think about work, especially for companies that require or encourage employees to return to work.
David Hart, president and CEO of Steinberg Hart Architecture, said architects are being asked in many ways to reinvent the office environment.
Office spaces have come a long way from clinical overhead lighting and cubicles, and architects describe their process of designing spaces that people want, whether at home or in the office.
Mark Cavaniero, founder of Mark Cavaniero Associates Architects, said they are considering factors such as daylight, acoustics and the human element of the workspace.
Hybrid work environments have impacted multifamily design and office design, with designers acknowledging that working from home is the norm to consider in future designs.
“We have to really focus on what it means to be in a space, any space, whether it’s a home or a downtown office building,” Cavanero said.
Panelists largely dismissed questions about California’s problems and negative national press, citing their love for San Francisco, belief the market will improve and a desire to see the city’s built environment succeed.
Some architects point out that the industry should do a better job of courting funding from venture capitalists right in their backyard.
“We have to figure out how to get venture capital into our industry so that over the next 10 to 20 years we can actually transform,” Hart said.
He mentioned the financiers of Solano County’s California Forever project and argued that these people need to be involved in the development and revitalization of the urban core.
Artificial intelligence poses both a threat and a potential help to the design industry, and while panelists joked about the potential for AI to take away their jobs, they agreed that it could make mundane parts of their jobs more easy.
John Marx, chief art officer of Form4 Architecture, said artificial intelligence tools help improve design collaboration and use language-based design concepts to generate more ideas. Furthermore, AI can curate and thereby improve designers’ ideas if it is tuned to curate from specific sources.
Marx warned that these developments could “come at a cost” if not applied thoughtfully.
Panelists expressed concern that artificial intelligence could return the industry to a focus on so-called objecthood, rather than allowing the human touch and personal touch of each project and a larger portrait of a community or city to contribute to design.
“For me, the problem with artificial intelligence is not letting every project speak in its own voice,” Cavanero said. “There has to be this overlay of how it comes together, neighborhood by neighborhood, neighborhood by neighborhood, region by region, for better or worse, and that’s how we have distinctive cities.”
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