As Americans we use a lot of water—per capita, more than any other country on the planet. A huge portion (49% as of 2005) of what we use goes to thermoelectric cooling, or removing heat from our fossil fuel burning power plants. That’s around 200 billion gallons a day, but we have a lot of power plants out there. How much does one of these plants actually use? The biggest culprits are the oldest plants that are the least efficient, built before the days of harnessing cogeneration. Taking the coal-fired power plant in Salem, Massachusetts (set to be decommissioned next year), the word is that the plant currently uses up to 359 million gallons a day when it is running at full capacity. How much is that?

For reference, let’s take the Empire State Building. With 102 floors, topping out at 1,454 feet, the tower encompasses an impressive 37 million cubic feet of volume. In comparison, 359 million gallons divided by 7.48 gallons per cubic foot equals 47.99 million cubic feet. That means that water used to cool the Salem plant at full capacity could fill the Empire State Building 1.3 times a day! This is one of the more seldom-referenced reasons why our old fossil fuel plants need to be retired in deference to cleaner energy production.

As it recently reached its 200th birthday, New York’s street grid provides a prime case study for weighing how we utilize a network of systems that we have come to simply accept as a constant (for any system that should be the first clue that a fresh look is warranted).

Manhattan’s grid covers roughly 25% of its ground plane making it one of the city’s largest infrastructural assets. Originally, the plan was the brainchild of Gouverneur Morris, Jon Rutherfurd and Simeon De Witt: a three member commission assigned by the New York State Legislature to create a plan for the island. The plan, by and large similar to the latticework of streets we know today (though missing Central Park), was proposed in 1807 and finally adopted in 1811. The “New York city block” was born.

Far before the days of fiber optic and coaxial cable, the grid also provided unfettered access to surface transportation throughout the island with roads that could reach the entire landscape in a straightforward way that was easy to navigate. Its wide streets allowed for a fluid transition to the advent of street cars and when the dawn of the automotive era demanded more real estate, elevated trains and subways followed. Throughout the past 200 years the grid has facilitated the movement of billions of people. However, the rational perfection of the street grid is largely to blame for its success in providing such universal access to transportation, though possibly at the expense of pedestrian mobility.

The Good Old Grid

A walk down the street today reveals that little has changed. Cobblestones, granite and gas lamps have given way to asphalt, metal curbs and street lights, but in essence the grid operates the same as always. The city that it defines, however, is bigger, denser and faster than it was when the grid was first deployed. At the time of its inception, the utility of the grid was a vision of a city beyond imagination that pulled its development through centuries of urban evolution. With all of its blocks now filled, the grid has reached the planar capacity of its designers, yet while the city has evolved the utility of the grid has stalled, locked in a preference of automobile infrastructure.

At one point in our history this made a lot of sense, embracing a new degree of mobility that connected us with intracity and intercity travel, but as the city has reached higher degrees of population density it becomes clearer that it is people, not cars, that constitute the lifeblood of the cityscape. While tall towers may facilitate the proximity of increasingly large numbers of residents and visitors, the urban experience of mixing and interface still occurs at grade. With parking a commodity in short supply it is pedestrians that provide patronage for stores, street vendors, restaurants, theatres, galleries and museums. The Bloomberg Administration’s PlaNYC notes that, “Most New Yorkers are pedestrians at some point in their day–whether walking to school, to the corner store or to the subway. A safe and accessible pedestrian realm is a building block of a sustainable transportation system.”

The residual 20th century distribution of ground plane into either/or pedestrian/car levies a social and environmental tax on the cityscape with minimal benefit. The hazards to pedestrian safety coupled with a system anchored in carbon emissions do not facilitate people walking up and down the streets. Inherently anti-urban in its programmatic and spatial preference of vehicular transit, the grid remains an outmoded form of infrastructure.

The Waning Reign of Cars

Right now, the streetscape is essentially an environment for cars with pedestrian access, rather than the other way around. If pedestrians and their ability to move around the city carries so much value, then why do cars get such a disproportionate amount of the ground plane for transportation? A recent proposal by designer Shelby Doyle and myself offers some preliminary thoughts on what options would be available for the square footage currently assumed by car travel.

As the city hosts a population of new societal and cultural norms it is faced with the bold realities of a digital interconnection, saturation of public space, a changing climate and the need for resiliency. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy is becoming clear that the grid must evolve to support new, resilient infrastructure to protect the value of Manhattan’s assets in the built environment. This could be in the form of stormwater mitigation like green or blue roofs, waterproof utility lines or coastal wetlands–all supporting more storm resilient buildings.

This design highlights a series of possible uses, each with different relationships between people, buildings and existing infrastructure. With an implementation starting on Broadway, the spatial spine of the city, these insertions could grow over time as the city transitioned into new utilization of its own space. This move could liberate the grid from the sectional constraints of auto travel, allowing a new, imaginative urban landscape of hills, pools, bicycle highways, advanced public transit, internet infrastructure, food lifecycle programs and uses which challenge the pavement / park dichotomy of the current city. The purpose of the proposal is not to prescribe what the grid should be, but spark some conversations around all that it could be instead of miles of asphalt.

The grid could evolve with new priorities that create a very different urban experience

The Opportunity Costs of Cars

The excessive amounts of square footage devoted to vehicular movement not only constricts the space we can devote to pedestrians, but is the source of recurring liabilities for the city at large. Pavement is expensive to maintain and faster to degrade in quality than sidewalks given their constant abuse. The city spends tens of millions of dollars a year on repairing its road network, still leaving a quarter of its road surface at less than “good” condition as of 2011 according to PlanNYC.

Additionally, Manhattan has over 103,000 licensed off-street parking spaces in lots and garages. An average space is designed to roughly 9’-0” x 23’-0”, or 207 square feet, resulting in at least 21,321,000 square feet devoted to parking (in a garage setting, the average is likely closer to 300 square feet per car, nearly 710 acres.)

Let’s not forget the carbon weight that vehicular travel levies on cities as well. Beyond the clearest cost of burning gasoline and its resulting effects on emissions and air quality, the roads that facilitate car travel are a prime contributor to the urban heat islands. Throughout the day rooftops and roadways absorb enough of the sun’s light that it can increase the local temperatures up to 10 degrees compared to locations outside of the city. The effect can actually be its worst not during the day, but at night when the thermal mass of the built environment radiates back into the air.

As ambient air temperatures rise, the work of our now-common air conditioning systems goes up in kind, further taxing the electrical grid behind them (both of which incidentally only add more heat to local environment). Aside from a decrease in efficiency and a rise in energy use, the sacrifices are felt by the urban microclimate where species of plants and animals alike fail to cope with excessive heat.

The dangers of congested streets dominated by motor vehicles carry other costs even more dire. Streetsblog reported that according to the NYPD over 15,000 pedestrians and cyclists were injured in New York City traffic in 2012, and 155 were killed. The year saw 198,361 auto crashes  reported citywide. In the currencies of both dollars and human health, these costs are extremely high for a service that does relatively little to increase activity on each side of the street.

Changing it Up

While cities may represent the most sustainable development pattern that we have due to their high population densities, the street grid itself has the opportunity to be a much more sustainable component to the greater system than its current likeness.  The priority that the grid grants to cars only encourages their continued participation into the urban realm. City-mandated parking minimums continue to add vehicular capacity to new buildings while the ease of moving around the city by car continue to make parking lots–a program type that functions as a hole in the urban fabric for pedestrians, adding virtually nothing to the streetscape–a financially attractive option for landowners instead of development.

The transition of the grid can serve as a catalyst for future evolution of systems intervention and how we use the city as residents, visitors and business owners. We can find new ways of moving goods in and out of the city. We can condense swifter transportation methods into smaller portions of a space largely commanded by pedestrian traffic. As cities grow to the point of self-sustenance due to population design, a large percentage of its acreage can be returned to its citizens in the form of systems that take infrastructure beyond the utilitarian status quo into a new social and environmental vision.

[The design proposal was created by Shelby Doyle & Tyler Caine. The designers retain rights to all imagery]

Image Credits: Intercon, theatlanticcities.com

This is a guest post by friend and former classmate, Charles Newman. Charlie has committed his architectural practice to helping communities in places around the world. He is currently working for International Rescue Committee in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo as the Community Driven Reconstruction Manager and he keeps a great blog on his architectural travels in Africa. Aside from being a LEED AP, his work consistently seeks to integrate sustainability.   

While in a small southern town of the Democratic Republic of Congo in mid 2012, a colleague of mine approached me for some guidance on a large health proposal he was putting together. A portion of the grant would be earmarked for the construction of hundreds of clinics across the DR Congo, and he mentioned that the donor would be very interested in “green” building standards. Knowing that I was a LEED Accredited Professional, he began asking how we might be able to incorporate such building standards into the designs for the pending projects. I rattled off some general guidelines such as using local materials – recycled ones if available, incorporating existing infrastructure, natural ventilation, etc. He jotted down a few notes, then began to pry a little deeper. “What about the LEED point system? Could we incorporate that into our strategy?”

My response was frank: “No, not really. LEED doesn’t work here in rural Africa.”

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and has become the most recognized standard for “green” building in over 30 countries worldwide. LEED is a point system that grades buildings throughout design, construction and performance. One hundred points are available: a score of 40 secures the “Certified” label; 50, Silver; 60, Gold; and 80, Platinum. The rating system is broken down into 7 categories, such as Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, and Indoor Environmental Quality. Most points carry with them quantified benchmarks; while others, such as the Innovation in Design credits, call for explanation and interpretation. A good reference guide that outlines each point and its requirements can be seen here. LEED has become widely used around the world for good reasons: creating a structure within LEED guidance ultimately lowers a building’s carbon footprint, creates a product that can be financially (and responsibly) profitable, and provides inspiration for others to follow suit.

Many of these points can be applied to work in rural development in Africa.

Materials and Resources credits 1.1 and 1.2 for example, recognize the reuse of existing building components. While in rural areas there may not be many existing structures available to reuse, such a standard can easily be incorporated into building practices in Africa. The Indoor Environmental Quality credit 6.2, control of systems for thermal comfort, can also be achieved by providing operable windows and calculating radiant temperatures and air flows. Sustainable Sites credit 7.1, Non Roof Heat Island Effect credit, can also apply by specifying light colors on building surfaces and by strategically locating trees and other vegetation.

These credits and a handful of others can be achieved in most any project in the developing world.

Where LEED Falls Short

Learning center incorporating thousands of bottle caps in into community designed decorative siding.

Many more of the points however (as many as 45 of the 100), are simply irrelevant or financially irresponsible. In some cases, adherence to these credits can actually be detrimental to project success and community prosperity.

The most obvious of these irrelevant credits is the Sustainable Sites Credit 4.3, Low-Emitting and Fuel-Efficient vehicles. This point is gained by providing preferred parking for fuel-efficient vehicles. Where parking is not part of the project scope, a fuel efficient car lending program must be provided for a minimum of 3% of the building occupants. Hopefully, an explanation of this credit’s irrelevance is not necessary. It shows that some of the LEED credits are geared towards urban “first world” problems.

Commissioning of Systems EA Credit 3, Enhanced Commissioning of Systems, specifies that a third party must be contracted to oversee the design, commissioning, and monitoring of all mechanical systems for a ten month period. Such a “handoff” of building maintenance can be very useful when working in rural developing communities. However, this credit simply implies that mechanical systems must be incorporated into the design of the building. Generally, specifying systems that require substantial technical knowledge is ill-advised. Even if such knowledge can be effectively transferred, the financial resources available to maintain such a system are often extremely limited. Further, hiring a third party to oversee the design process, installation and monitoring can add substantial expense to a project – expenses that could be better applied to other initiatives within the community.

Energy and Atmosphere Credit 6, Green Power, is one of the easiest ways for a project to “buy” a LEED credit. Essentially, the building owners engage in a minimum 2-year contract with their energy provider that ensures that at least 35% of the building’s purchased energy will be from renewable sources. First of all, as with the previous credit reviewed, this credit stipulates that electricity must be used and incorporated into the design of the project. For many projects in rural Africa, electricity simply isn’t a priority. Such projects are therefore eliminated from achieving this credit and many others in the Energy and Atmosphere category. To further complicate the issue, such renewable energy service providers in Africa are often not recognized by the American Center for Resource Solutions Green-e Energy product certification or its equivalents. Moreover, requiring a rural community to purchase more expensive electricity can endanger the financial sustainability of the programs housed in the building.

Existing kitchen renovated with new roof and fuel efficient wood burning stove.

Renewable energy is good, of course. Efficient light bulbs, Low-flow faucets, recycled materials and innovations in design are also good – though the vision of the LEED rating system is severely limited. The point system only applies to architectural building standards; stopping short of financial relevance, client relations or, simply, development. When considering rural development in Africa, the needs and standards of construction must shift not simply to a new geographical and cultural context, but to one of development needs and capabilities. Energy standards must first recognize the importance of electricity itself a major step forward; and, for example, points for electric cars could be replaced by points for mosquito nets. This may sound like a simplification or a lowering of the LEED standard system. I am suggesting nothing of the sort; as building sustainably in Africa spans far beyond a simple system of design and construction standards. One size does not fit all.

Plenty of Room for Sustainability

If we want to have a truly productive conversation on building sustainability in Africa, we must consider social and economic factors as well. A school with a gold LEED rating that does not have books, teachers, or even students would receive recognition that is irrelevant and undeserved. An NGO that imports building materials and introduces a “green” building system squanders an opportunity to help stimulate the local economy by buying locally. Moreover, if that NGO brings volunteers to help in construction, local laborers miss out on much needed salaries that could be used to send their children to school.

Since the conversation with my colleague in that small town in Congo, I have come across a pair of other systems that better categorize rural development needs and seek to quantify the effects of quality design and development.

One team of thinkers looking to help guide building and development standards in places such as rural Africa is the SEED Network. SEED stands for Social Economic Environmental Design, and is structured over 5 clear principals:

• Principle 1: Advocate with those who have a limited voice in public life.
• Principle 2: Build structures for inclusion that engage stakeholders and allow communities to make decisions.
• Principle 3: Promote social equality through discourse that reflects a range of values and social identities.
• Principle 4: Generate ideas that grow from place and build local capacity.
• Principle 5: Design to help conserve resources and minimize waste.

Submitted projects are reviewed individually by the SEED Awards Jury according to these principals – with no need for specific points or totals. You can learn more about the application process here.

Jeremy Gibberd, an architect in South Africa, proposes Social Economic and Environmental building standards (further elaborated into a point system here) as a measuring tool for the success of a rural development project. He divides his development standards into Environmental, Economic and Social standards – simplifying the language surrounding technical building, and expanding the conversation to that of Use, Cost, Participation and Contracts. His work is still in progress, but I think he’s on the right track.

These standards from Gibberd and SEED seem to touch at the heart of what I am talking about: that sustainable building in disadvantaged, rural communities cannot be limited to architecture. Project success must be considered at a larger scale to include community involvement, building techniques, financial relationships, and development. Perhaps a further expansion of these systems could include local governance engagement – bringing those responsible for their community’s development into a position to sustain the projects programs and goals.

Site Plan for Columbia Station

For those who whip out a cross and garlic at the thought of moving into the big city, I think we can agree that this proposal is not urban. To start, each home still seems to have a place to put a car. All of them sit comfortably below four stories and the range of programmatic uses in the development are still restricted just to homes.

That being said, this isn’t suburbia either. The notable differences are the shared driveway and courtyard spaces that displace the need for extraneous pavement. When the cars are parked, they’re not not the street which means that the image of living has severed itself from the car and/or garage door that defined so many homes in the second half of the 20th century.

Though the homes are still detached from one another, they collectively sit on relatively small plots of land. Rather than the space, money and chemicals devoted to cultivating a front and back lawn, these houses target smaller gardens and roof terraces. The spaces created are more a function of the group of buildings together rather than the separation of structures–all design decisions that challenge the assumptions of most speculative, residential developments in America.

Building ‘Em Green

As part of their design mission, the company says that “we build green because it is the right thing to do.” One of the latest Dwell homes recently made some headlines after its exterior envelope achieved the air infiltration integrity necessary to meet Passive House requirements. Even if the project had nothing else to speak of, this is a commendable feat. Originating in Europe, Passive House (or PassivHaus) is arguably one of the most difficult rating systems for sustainable buildings–notably more difficult to achieve than LEED when it comes to energy efficiency. Given that these homes are being built on spec, some kudos needs to go to the developer for reaching a standard that most clients wouldn’t know enough about to request. Nothing conveys the benefits of a design mentality like a built example that people can walk through.

Aside from reusing existing homes, building smaller homes is perhaps one of the most significant attributes of a truly “green” house, and it is refreshing to see compact floor plans of Columbia Station. We still spend a large amount of resources to build, temper, and maintain antiquated spaces that we rarely use, like formal living rooms and dining rooms. Does a modern home really need these outmoded room types?

Microcommunities?

The terminology strikes me as a little strange, leaving me not quite sure what it is meant to convey. If Columbia Station serves an example, then I assume a microcommunity is a collection of homes that are smaller than the national average; built closer together and hopefully within walking distance of transit. But there doesn’t seem much “micro” about the relationship that these homes have to their community, and there are not enough homes (or other program for that matter) to make it a self-sustaining community on its own.

Even then, the houses are smaller than a typical Toll Brother’s house, clearly veering away from the low, sprawling masses of millennial McMansions (thank goodness), but there isn’t anything “micro” about them. The micro apartment proposal by Mayor Bloomberg that pushed designers to fit a studio apartment into 350 square feet–now that is micro. To me, these homes just seem appropriately sized compared to the status quo. Perhaps a standard residential development is actually more of a “Mondocommunity”.

Are We There Yet?

Designers can (and perhaps always will) debate about some of the finer points in the design. The material choices and construction methods could probably be sharpened up a bit. The imagery used to sell the idea of the designs is doing them a disservice–especially in trying to convey the goals to clients that are not designers.

One of the biggest drawbacks for me is the singular use group. For these places to really become communities there should be localized retail mixed into developments (corner stores, groceries, coffee shops, dry cleaners). Having these regular needs within walking distance is paramount. Not only does it help turn vacant streets into active ones, but only then can we cut a meaningful chunk of unnecessary car trips out of the daily routine. The density of the community then needs to be back-checked to make secure enough patrons for these local businesses.

As New Yorker writer, David Owen, notes, “Intelligently increasing population density–shortening the distance between people and between people and their destinations–is the key to reducing a long list of negative environmental impacts in mobile, affluent populations.”

Nonetheless, this is progress. If we built all new homes that sat outside of urban areas like Columbia Station, then we would be in a different place. Developments like this provide some answers and raise a series of new, important questions–enough to encourage the process of evolution in our building patterns.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Dwell Development

The truth is that there are countless opportunities for sustainable improvement that are very simple and the fact that they remain underutilized is not because the solutions or difficult, let alone impossible, but because no one has spoken up yet. Sometimes all we have to do is ask.

In walking around the office of COOKFOX Architects it is hard not to be impressed with the thought and effort that has been devoted to achieving a sustainable work place. The creative studio flooded with natural light was the answer of the firm’s partners to the goal of creating a healthy environment to promote environmentally responsible creativity. Rapidly renewable materials? Absolutely. Low-VOC finishes? Sure. Low-flow bathroom fixtures and waterless urinals? Of course. These were questions that did not even needed to be asked when the firm was working to design their new space. Beyond being the first LEED Platinum project in the state of New York, the office gives money to each employee for the purchase of a plant for their desk to complement the 10,000 square foot green roof that they planted. Clearly, the office has demonstrated its commitment to sustainability.

When I was walking to pick up a document from the printer I glanced at the reams of unopened printer paper and saw “30% Recycled Content” on all of them. The fact that our paper had recycled content wasn’t as surprising as why it was only 30%. There was a time not long ago where 30% recycled content was at the upper end of the threshold that one could buy while still maintaining color clarity and quality, but the industry has evolved to the point where getting 100% recycled content paper (especially copy paper) is easily done. I had to wonder how an office with so much positive momentum hadn’t taken advantage of another superior product. Perhaps there was a reason.

I set off to ask the head of the communications team if there was something keeping us from 100% R.C. copy paper. The inquiry earned a shrug and a shake of his head. I continued on to the head of the firm’s finances and repeated the question, thinking maybe the topic had come up before and been nixed for some reason. The response was similar to the first, but he pointed me in the direction of the office manager who was in charge of ordering supplies. With my curiosity having only grown more by this point, I went to the manager’s desk and asked, “I was wondering if there was a specific reason that we do not use 100% recycled content copy paper.”

With a pause the manager shook her head and replied, “Not that I know of.” After another pause and a smile she continued, “Would you like us to start?”

It struck me as a peculiar question, or maybe just peculiar that no one else had asked up to now, but I nodded with a smile in return saying, “Yes… Yes I would. Thank you.” *As it turns out the same process was surprisingly similar at the last office I worked at as well.

When the office needs more paper we will be replacing it with stock containing 100% recycled content. Done. While I may not buy a great deal of paper for home use, an office of 65 people buys a considerable amount. As it turned out, there was no complicated, harrowing, demoralizing reason that we hadn’t seized an opportunity. The only thing between 70% more recycled content was a some persistence and a few honest questions. Collectively, we have many of these same chances to make easy changes with benefits that extend from ourselves, beyond ourselves and then eventually back to ourselves. Don’t forget to ask the simple questions because often the only thing between us as the answer we’re looking for is the act of asking.

Image Credit: Forbes.com

UPDATE: Just to dispel the possibility that this effort died in the realm of unfinished good intentions, the first shipment of the office’s new copy paper was recently delivered. FSC certified and 100% recycled content! 

Terrapin’s design team held an “ecocharrette” for possible parameters of a suitable replacement building for these troubled towers, gathering seasoned professionals from across the building industry to put their heads together for a highly efficient building. In order to make monetary sense, the building also had to reach the level of “Class A” office space, defining the zenith of market demand. For those hoping for a zippy rendering for what this new age building may look like, there isn’t one. This research exercise was more about trying to establish construction criteria that could be modeled rather than doing a theoretical architecture project for a specific site.

I’ll Take a Green One, Please

Starting from the exterior, the team needed to balance goals of sustainability with attributes of market demand–a common dilemma of the design profession, especially in places like New York City. Realtors will consistently push for floor to ceiling glass, marking the view as preferable to potential tenants, but the thermal value of a solid wall is much higher (this is yet another example of sustainability not yet commanding economic value). More glass may be good for sales, but less good for energy efficiency.  The team chose a triple-glazed envelope with configurations of an 18″ or 30″ solid sill beneath. The southern side of the building would incorporate external sun shades to mitigate solar heat gain.

As the organs of a building, the mechanical systems have an important role to play on the overall efficiency of a building. After testing four different system configurations for the distribution of heating and cooling throughout the building the design team settled on the underfloor air system with an 18″ sill as the most cost-effective solution for a high efficiency system. The test case also incorporated biophilic elements like sky gardens in order to distribute access to green space vertically throughout the building. Terrapin employed a relatively young metric for their greenspace known as a Green Area Ratio, which measures the total amount of horizontal green surfaces as a ratio to the footprint of the site. In countries like Indonesia where forests are scarce, projects can be required to achieve Green Area Ratios of over 2.0–effectively doubling the amount of natural surface from a virgin site. In this case, through the use of green roofs and sky gardens the design team reached a ratio of 1.05 (or 105%).

When all was specified and modeled, the final tally had the new building using 48% less per person than the existing case, but its still a building that is holding 44% more people. As we covered in Part I, the big question isn’t just efficiency but whether or not we are using less energy over all. The answer turned out to be an astounding “yes” with the whole tower still using 5% less energy than the one before it. On top of that it would also collect every drop of rainwater that fell on the site (an estimated 549,000 gallons) and use it for flushing toilets, irrigation and cooling tower make-up. Overall the design case used half of the water of the building it was replacing.

What About the Embodied Energy?

Another piece of criteria that had to be tested was the energy that had already been used to make the building that is currently there. In many cases, this bolsters the argument for building reuse. In this case, however, it wasn’t enough. Terrapin notes that “over it’s 46-year operating life, the amount of energy consumed is already equivalent to having rebuilt it 5.8 times.”  Put another way, the inefficiency of the building left it paying for it’s own embodied energy every 8 years. As a result the new structure would repay the debt of demolition and former construction in approximately 16 – 28 years (well below the life of the building).

It is important to remember that despite the fact that the design standard of the building was termed as “LEED Platinum, then a little bit more” it did not empty the entire arsenal of existing, let alone conceptual, tactics for a more efficient building. Things like on-site power generation or ice storage tanks found at One Bryant Park would be icing on the cake, pushing the efficiency of the building even higher.

The Future of Existing Cities

Data like that found in this study can help us assess our existing city stock with more than just sweeping generalities, especially in mature cities where increasing amounts of capital and energy are at stake. The testing and modeling of our existing buildings to the levels utilized in Midcentury (un)Modern is still in its infancy, but as more buildings (and infrastructure) get older we need to become better at weighing the options for improving them. When the topic of an increasing population (sometimes even eclipsing the problems normally associated with the environment) the proposal becomes even more alluring. With forecasts pointing towards an increasing population, studies like this can help reveal what sites are best suited to make way for more space required by more citizens.

At the same time, there are some things that the study admittedly does not look at. Increasing the capacity of any site by 44% brings ramifications to the neighborhood at the city at large in the form of infrastructural demand. Further study would be required to determine whether or not the grid could handle increases in pedestrian traffic, street congestion and subway ridership. The study also did not look at the redevelopment of residential buildings instead of new office space given that the two are much more difficult to compare. Variables like the depth of apartments, types of occupancy, operable windows, egress and ceiling height all make living and working unique animals in the eyes of the building and zoning codes, but in an increasingly digital age one has to wonder whether or not square footage devoted to living will be in greater demand than the corporate workplace.

Image Credits: Courtesy of Terrapin Bright Green

The shift begs the question of what can be done with these towers, mostly built between 1958 and 1973, given that not only do they pale in comparison to other new office spaces (like the World Trade Center or the upcoming Hudson Yards) but are also energy hogs with their dated envelopes and mechanical systems constantly bleeding resources. Green consulting firm Terrapin Bright Green has just published their “Midcentury (un)Modern” report that levels a full environmental analysis of this particular breed of office tower as well as what is the best option for their future use.

The increasing focus on existing buildings is as timely as it is important. One of my favorite urban statistics is found in PlaNYC stating that 85% of the buildings that will be in New York City in 2030 are already here. Our goals cannot simply center around new, greener construction if we want to make a meaningful difference in energy use. At the same time, it is important to realize that not all existing buildings are created equal, varying in both their degree of inefficiency as well as opportunities for improvement.

The group of office towers highlighted in MidCentury (un)Modern distinguishes itself in a number of ways. Due to the height limits of the zoning at the time, building owners often made floor-to-floor heights as small as possible in order to take advantage of as much salable square footage as possible. The result is that it is not uncommon for these buildings to have ceiling heights of 7′-6″ which cements them in the realm of what is known as “Class C” office space (Class “A” office space is the most desirable, fetching the highest rents). These first-generation curtain wall buildings are glazed with a single pane of glass, have nearly no insulation and leak air like a sieve. Their inefficiencies make them some of the biggest energy hogs in the city, especially given that their undesirable ceiling heights often leave them at occupancy levels less than 100%, only compounding the inefficiency of building performance. Terrapin found 107 buildings in Manhattan that fall into this profile.

675 Third Avenue in New York

The design task was to figure out what could be done with these buildings and they took a case study building that met all of the criteria: 675 Third Avenue. The office tower was built in 1966 and designed by Emory Roth & Associates and has roughly 280,000 square feet of space, built to an Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of 15. The team oversaw the creation of an energy model for the entire building to understand how and why it currently works.

How About an Upgrade?

When talking about sustainability and existing built environment there is something to said for reuse. Many would say (as I have said before) that the most sustainable option can be to retain existing building stocks and apply upgrades to increase its efficiency, thereby capitalizing on all of the latent or “embodied” energy embedded in the building. Terrapin diligently started here and looked at what could be done to make 675 more sustainable building. There is a standard bag of tricks that can be deployed on existing towers to improve their efficiency. They include re-glazing the building with a more efficient skin, insulate the column covers and spandrel panels, install a raised floor for heating and cooling (as was done in parts of the Empire State Building) and upgrade the mechanical systems.

Inside 675 Third Avenue on a unoccupied floor

Interestingly, the team found out that these buildings (along with 675 Third Avenue) do not lend themselves to the usual tactics. A double-glazed wall would make a big difference on the insulating value of this building, but as it turns out, the structural frame of the building could not carry the weight of two layers of glass. Further complicating the issue is the fact that the existing, single-glazed wall is only designed to a hurricane wind load of 30 pounds per square foot despite the fact that today we can see wind loads up to 70 pounds per square foot, raising a potential safety issue for a coastal environment where storms are growing in frequency and intensity. The raised floor system was out because ceiling heights were too low and the building skin was so leaky that you could never pressurize the floor to regulate temperature in the space above.

Not to be deterred, the team looked at the building’s heating systems that operated on a Constant Volume Reheat system. When describing the technology Bill Browning said, “Think of trying to drive on the highway with the accelerator pushed to the floor and regulating your speed by applying the brake.” Meanwhile the cooling load of the building is handled by chillers, driven by steam turbines–once very economical when steam was produced in excess in the city, but now extremely inefficient and very expensive.

New replacement technology could certainly lower the building’s energy use, but the team found that the equipment is actually “entombed” in the basement of the building. The only way to get it out would be to demolish the two lower floors, cut up the equipment, remove it, bring in new equipment and then rebuild the floors. As cumbersome as it sounds it is possible to do, but the expense of the project would still leave you with Class C office space, making the payback in the realm of 43 years according to the team’s estimates. Browning spoke of how “the real tragedy of these buildings is that they are not adaptable.”

Replacing the Building?

Without question, a newer building built on the same site with today’s technologies and best practices could outperform these antiquated sentinels of commerce. But knocking down what is already there to build a new building of the same size is a tough financial case to make to building owners. In some cases, the proposal is even more unattractive given that a number of the buildings sit in locations that have be down-zoned since their construction meaning they are “over built” and a new building would actually have to be smaller than what is already there.

For assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars, there needs to be a financial incentive to replace this genus of structure, but in New York there are a number of urban goals that are incentivized in order to help the built environment evolve. Examples would be square footage bonuses for things like Quality Housing (residential space that meets certain design criteria) or offsets for building affordable housing units targeting certain income brackets. Terrapin proposed a potential development bonus to owners of these buildings that would demolish them and rebuild as long as the new building met sustainability benchmarks (effectively the equivalent of achieving LEED Platinum and then some).

After some study, the team settled on an increase from the existing FAR of 15 to am FAR of 21.6–an increase of 44%. Sources were confident that a potential gain of square footage of that magnitude could entice owners to replace the building stock, but even then it still left the question of whether or not the process would leave a net-positive impact. As I recently wrote about, the difference between efficiency and using less is important. It is not enough for us to simply make a greater number of more efficient things that result in a net increase of energy use. As a culture we need to be using less. So now the team had arrived at the real challenge: Is it possible to make a building 44% bigger that still uses less energy than its historic predecessor?

Part II to follow.

Image Credits: Courtesy of Terrapin Bright Green 

The optimist in me would venture to say that the goals of environmentalists and architects (a healthy natural environment and a better built environment) are appreciated by Americans. We like clean air. We like beautiful buildings. We appreciate clean water. We revere majestic spaces. Some us of may go as far as to read the environment section of the newspaper or buy an issue of Architectural Digest.

But according to both professions, America doesn’t present a model of progress for their respective fields. Our environments, both natural and constructed, are arguably still degrading faster than they are improving–most likely because both worthy pursuits are considered just that: admirable goals, but not daily essentials. While the developer special, American “dream homes” are probably based on designs once drawn by an architect, few Americans end up hiring one for our own houses. An architect remains a luxury of the wealthy in the eyes of most of the country. Though the majority of Americans believe in climate change and most of that majority believe it is caused by the actions of humanity, few are prepared to alter their lifestyle enough to induce change. Environmental policy is still a luxury of wealthy nations, or rather when wealthy nations have extra wealth lying around.

A friend of mine (also both an architect and a proponent of sustainability) recently said succinctly that “the fact remains that design is not economically valued.” The core problem is that both architecture and the environment are not economically valued despite the fact that the quality of both relate directly to our quality of life. Quality of space and efficient construction methods play much less of a role in buying a home than the number of square feet or garage bays. The societal and environmental “costs” of cheap, coal power never make it onto our power bill despite the fact we end up paying for them eventually anyway (maybe we need a warning label?). With these complex systems deployed over vast areas, it is easier to notice when they are operating poorly rather than investing to make sure they continue to operate well.

Then again, the common irony of both architects and environmentalists is that their respective cultural disconnects could be largely self-inflicted. For decades the practice of architecture has veered away from engaging the American public, drifting further into isolating, esoteric terminology and critique. Meanwhile, environmentalists have latched on to the single facet of global warming rather than the multi-faceted idea of sustainability. The frustration of our collective lethargy in ecological progress only pushes their message towards the goal of making others afraid rather than educated.

I’m interested in some outside comments and thoughts, but for me any hope of changing the perception of cultural relevance of these pursuits is less about making the economics work and more about conveying the value proposition in a way people can understand and why it is important. Part of redefining the practice of architectural and environmental advocacy has to focus on helping people engage with them.

Image Credit: ntsketptics.org , capitalismmagazine.com

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by FOX News on the topic of paper and digital, and its relationship to e-waste. What was aired was a bit of an abridged version that helped prime a much larger conversation.

The Rise of the Digital World

Electronics have grown beyond the role of an expected home appliance to become ingrained in our daily cultural norms. In 2012 manufacturers sold hundreds of millions of consumer electronic devices to retailers, representing a $204 billion industry. We have reached a point where the absence of daily, if not hourly, access to electronics could cause rippling effects through American society where the average citizen will keep a computer for less than three years and a cell phone for less than twenty four months. Though the use of electronics bears a series of environmental costs on its own (see the Material Side of Digital) the part of the lifecycle we currently are the least proficient handling is the obsolescence caused by the speed of industry evolution, ultimately turning these “essential” devices into waste.

At around 2.5 million tons a year, e-waste is relatively small for a country that produces over 250 tons of municipal waste. Though it is the smallest waste stream, it is also the fastest growing and we have little evidence that it’s a trend that is going to change anytime soon. It’s also not a waste stream that we deal with ourselves. The EPA estimates that 80% of e-waste is exported outside of this country with most of it going to either China, India or Pakistan. Exporting these kinds of risks represents not only environmental impacts, but cultural impacts on societies where regulations on work environments, compensation and disposal can be lax or nonexistent. The process begs the question of what happens to what is left over after harvesting precious metals from our e-trash (electronics can contain gold, silver, tin, nickel and palladium). Sometimes it is put in the ground (which we outlaw in places in this country), sometimes it is left in big piles and worse yet, sometimes it is burned–probably the worst environmental option. In all cases, as users and producers we need to become more cognisant of how our cultural norms affect the planet and the rest of its occupants.

It is also important to remember that most of the electronics entering the waste stream are not the iPhones and flat screen TVs, but the technology we began retiring years ago–particularly cathode ray tubes, or CRTs. It is estimated that CRTs comprise 47% of all electronics currently ready for end-of-life management. These glass components were the key to televisions and computer monitors before the birth of LCD flat screens. The problem is that they contain (among other things) notable amounts of lead, which means they cannot be burned or discarded into regular landfills.

Recycling

This underscores why e-waste presents such a challenge for management towards recycling and repurposing. Compared to paper, e-waste comes off as the delinquent of the recycling industry. When it comes to paper, America has gotten pretty good at recycling. Over 60% of the paper waste that we create gets recycled but that has taken time. We have had decades to practice and as late as 2000 we only recycled around 43% of our paper. The things we recycle well (paper, copper, structural steel, aluminum) are also essentially commodity streams. Separating an aluminum can from the trash has done a good portion of the work.

Electronics, on the other hand, are combinations of very different materials that are highly integrated including heavy metals, plastic and glass. Pulling a cell phone out of the trash is only the beginning of trying to break it down into separate resource components. At present, electronics reclaiming efforts is all too often focused on precious metals with value enough to promote their extraction, but the truth is that we have the technological capacity to recycle virtually all of our electronic waste.

At a certain point in the not-too-distant future, our reliance on electronics could lead us beyond financial return as incentives for recycling and into issues of security. Despite the fact that Americans purchase the most electronics the components necessary for producing them are often not found locally. Key materials have a growing tendency to come from Asia, Africa and South America–a fact that electric cars are becoming acutely aware of given the foreign material needs for lithium-ion batteries. Who is to say what are trade relations will be with these countries ten years from now? Twenty years from now? By reclaiming and internalizing materials streams we are promoting not only national security, but economic security as well. The EPA estimates that for every million cell phones we recycle, 35,000 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold, and 33 pounds of palladium can be recovered. Add that all up at today’s prices and it’s about $2.9 million.

Striving for Solutions

One of the questions I was asked by the interviewer was: “Who should ultimately be responsible for taking care of e-waste? The government? Manufacturers? Consumers?”

As the video showed, my first response was that “I think the easy answer is ‘everybody’,” but what did not make the clip was, “and each of those three groups can be doing things that makes it easier for the other two to participate.” No one group can shoulder the entire burden in order for the system to work. The government is well placed to manage oversight and enforcement while facilitating the coordination of collection efforts. Aside from proactively separating their trash, consumers play a key role in their ability to leverage their buying power by purchasing products with recycled content. While legislation may cause the marketplace to shift slowly, nothing moves it faster than consumer demand.

At this point, I think that manufacturers actually have the most important role which is designing for recycling–designing products to come apart. Right now most of our zippy gadgets are designed to look sleek and attractive, but not necessarily be easy to dismantle, which can make it difficult to try and recycle their parts. Resource reuse has to be a priority that begins where the product begins: at the design and engineering process. By designing for an economy of reuse manufacturers can build success into the products we use.

Image Credit: Inhabitat.com

A Call for Saving Energy

There are many environmental voices that champion opportunities for our culture to use increased efficiency as a way to reduce the amount of energy and resources that we sacrifice. Amory Lovins famously claimed that Americans have the opportunity to cut their energy use by 30% merely through efficiency measures alone. In 2009, the McKinsey & Company issued a report claiming that not only that “the US economy has the potential to reduce annual non-transportation energy consumption by roughly 23 percent by 2020,” but that it was financially in our best interest to do so by “eliminating more than $1.2 trillion in waste—well beyond the $520 billion upfront investment (not including program costs) that would be required.”

This is why the idea of efficiency is so attractive. It is presented as a solution that is not only currently good for the environment, but also is cash flow positive for us in the long run. Even better yet, if efficiency can be baked into things like products, infrastructure or the built environment then perhaps we don’t really have to change much at all. What’s not to like? Onward with efficiency!

But there’s a danger to these kinds of mindsets and the misconceptions that they promote for sustainability. As I have lectured about in the past, the most important aspect of sustainability that I try to impart on others is that sustainability is not a technological fix to supplement a wasteful lifestyle. This is incredibly important. This doesn’t mean that using compact fluorescents, plug-in hybrids, rechargeable battees or EnergyStar appliances is unsustainable, but it means that these things do not embody sustainability. Sustainability is the lifestyle. It is the mindset of using what we need–which for most of us is less than what we use now–in order to help maintain a level of resource balance.

This reality ends up presenting itself in how our culture has responded to cases of increased efficiency in the past. Take some of the large energy-consuming items in the American home for example. The Department of Energy has regulated the efficiency requirements for certain household items since oil embargo in 1973 (perhaps one of the first times that American energy use was called into question on the national level). Since then, things like furnaces, hot water heaters, air conditioning units and heat pumps need to achieve certain levels of energy efficiency in order to be code compliant. The thought would be that it would help make homes more efficient over time, helping us to use less energy as a country… but such is not the case. Despite these efficiency increases, the energy consumption of Americans has remained flat ever since.

Courtesy of Terrapin Bright Green

Butter’s in the Fridge

Another great example is a look at refrigerators in America. If we start with a fridge from 1947, the data suggests that the size of refrigerators has increased over 250% over half a century. However, after peaking around 1974, the energy used by the appliance has decreased to the point of nearly reaching parity with its ancestry of the late 40′s. Despite an increase in size, the energy load of our fridges can be nearly the same 50 years later due to an 25-fold increase in efficiency. Good stuff, no? Proponents like Lovins would call this a win-win, saying we can use efficiency to lower our energy footprint even as we increase capacity.

But according to New Yorker writer David Owens, not so fast. In his book, The Conundrum (I highly recommend it), Owens outlines some of the indirect repercussions of increased efficiency in refrigeration. I’ve taken some of his assertions into an Intercon diagram below.

The first caveat to this efficiency story is it’s important to remember that while fridges have gotten more efficient it is not uncommon for houses to have increased their cooling load beyond a single fridge. A separate chest freezer, back-up fridge or even wine coolers are all increasingly normal. Also, just because a household replaces their kitchen fridge with a newer model doesn’t mean the old fridge is retired. These older counterparts often find homes as back-up cold storage in basements or garages to keep spare beverages ready for things like football games or beer pong. While perhaps a net increase in enjoyment, it also constitutes a net increase in energy.

As refrigeration has gotten cheaper and easier, it has spread across our commercial landscape as well. Owens asserts that gas stations of today have the same amount of cold storage that grocery stores had in the 50′s and 60′s.

Let’s not forget the contents of these evolving appliances as well. The potential kicker in this equation is that as food capacity and reliability has grown, so has our assumption that food will last longer inside the fridge. As a result, our culture ends up throwing away more food that ultimately goes bad despite staying cold. Since 1975 our food waste has increased by 50% to the point that we now throw away 40-50% of the food that we grow. How does that factor into energy? Our food is incredibly energy intensive. Wasted food represents resources required for fertilizer and pesticides (both petroleum based), harvesting, packaging, transportation and the cooling in both the stores and in our homes. Not to mention that rotting food is the primary source of methane in landfills, a potent greenhouse gas. So in the end, has our increased efficiency actually saved us energy in the long run? It’s certainly debatable.

Just Using Less

The simple change to the equation that makes it much more environmentally viable is pairing efficiency with a sustainable use of resources of materials–or rather a lack of use. If we each had only one efficient fridge that only stored food that we were actually going to eat then the gains would be more measurable. Efficiency only gives us the gains we choose to preserve and build from, but it also gives us an opportunity to consume more. The same can be said for most of our “green” options today (low-flow fixtures, CFLs, geothermal heating and cooling, hybrid cars). Replacing a product with one that uses half as much energy that one in turn uses three times as much is a step back, not a step forward.

As disappointing as it may be, the solution to our environmental problems will most likely not be a technological fix. It will not be a product that makes it cheaper to consume. The prospect of efficiency should be taken as a supplement, a beginning to a more sustainable lifestyle, not a replacement for sustainability. At this stage in our cultural and technological evolution, lifestyle changes will gain us far more ground than trading one consumption path for another.