The ranks of green-minded architects appear to be growing. The growing number of LEED accreditations and certifications alike point to a larger knowledge base that can be pulled from at the start of every new building project. But, to the best of my knowledge, we are not seeing more projects designed and funded by architects. This one-stop-shop package, though an attractive vision to many architects, is rarity in the profession that ultimately remains a service business to development clients. Even if architects are pushing sustainability, developers are the ones that have to pull the trigger and they often have little reason to.
In our urban centers the process of building funding and construction has evolved into a model that makes striving for sustainable efforts like swimming against the current. Here in New York, developers are often building a product rather than an investment. If you thought that “flipping” property was reserved to smaller projects like single family homes, think again. The ever-rising price of Manhattan real-estate has made the cost of new construction privy only to those who require hefty profit margins for facilitating hundreds of millions of dollars in capital. As a result, buildings are built to be sold, sometimes before they are even finished.
Buying an apartment that has yet to reach material existence was commonplace for large enough checkbooks in a pre-recession economy. In lieu of an actual building, model apartments are constructed down to the last identical detail at a remote location for walk-throughs of potential buyers. Laying down a deposit can secure claim to a space until enough construction has ensued for the city to inspect the raw space and grant a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy (TCO) that allows the apartment to be sold. Completion in the fit out of the residence will precede a final inspection and a Certificate of Occupancy (CO) that renders the space legally habitable.
The system is undoubtedly efficient. Developers can start pulling in funds before all the checks to contractors (and architects) are even written. Money can already start flowing back to financiers which means less capital that they are paying interest on. In a good market, by the time the last doorknobs and window latches are being installed, the developer is practically gone from the project with profit in hand.
Sustainability is a concept that is inherently linked to the idea of lasting function; lifecycle operation in perpetuity. The dilemma in the seemingly “perfect” system is that the notion of “perpetuity” of a building could not be farther from the minds of some developers. There ends up being very little reason to integrate systems, materials and fixtures that will ensure a better functioning building for decades to come if the owners will be divested before the project is even finished.
Thirty years from the completion of the building the person that stood at the helm of all decisions in crafting the structure could have developed 20 more properties—all finding a similar fate—and be out of the business entirely, living on the Mediterranean coast. Even with an architect committed to greener designs, the final authority can be difficult to convince on systems that only yield long-term benefit, making it only more difficult to raise the percentage of sustainable construction.
Speculative Space
This quickly encounters the greater issue of designing and building speculative space vs. creating something specific for particular client that theoretically has an extended interest in the building beyond the immediate future. “Spec” space of any kind has to be built with a certain level of flexibility due to its being marketed to a broader audience of potential clients. I would say that making spec development sustainable is more challenging and less likely in today’s market than delivering a more environmentally conscious building to an entity that will own it.
Maybe this means that more development should be undertaken by those that want to own buildings rather than sell buildings. Looking at some of the newer towers in New York City, most of the ones that were designed for specific clients have has more success in pushing the envelope of sustainability. Renzo Piano’s New York Times building, Norman Foster’s Hearst Tower and of course Cook+Fox’s recently completed Bank of America’s One Bryant Park—all of these structures explore new spaces and systems that will pay dividends over a longer period of time.
These are clients that need to take pride in the image that their buildings present to the world—in addition to having buildings that stand as hallmarks of the built environment that save water, energy and waste while increasing worker productivity, all things that support the bottom line. It is worth noting that One Bryant Park is actually shared between Bank of America and the Durst Organization. This family business of development owns and retains buildings like Four Times Square and One Bryant Park, standing out as an exception to the norm.
Stemming the Issue
Though the recession has put the brakes on new, large scale development in American cities, this is far from the last time we will be encountering this issue—especially in cities like New York where density all but ensures a growth in demand and value for new square footage. There will always be profit available for taking and in lieu of walking around with a wand of good conscience we cannot expect all developers to simply decide to make less money. While we are in a lull we should look for new ways to help steer new construction into a better model.
One method is raising the standards of the building code to incorporate efficiency and sustainable components. To be fair, many local and national codes are already on their way to tightening up our energy use through mandatory efficiency, but there is no reason why we cannot take it a step further. Requiring rain-water capture, or light-colored urban roofs, or recycled content in concrete are all things that do not make a project more difficult but can make an important impact on a large scale. This is only a step away from states having individual Renewable Energy Standards for percentages of green power production.
Another possibility is to increase the incentives for owning buildings rather than selling them. Making mortgage payments and building maintenance costs more attractive in our tax system could compliment tax breaks for more systems beyond simply renewable power generation. A model could be created that allowed building owners to extract more of their profit tax-free in return for making a better building and holding it over a longer period of time. I continue to believe that having people make the right decisions for the wrong reasons is still productive and not something we can gripe about when having so far to go.
Photo Credit: scrapetv.com , daveforddoesearth.com
July 26, 2010 at 4:31 pm
On top of this, it will be interesting to see if the education system brings forward classes to teach entrepreneurs and architects how to go green for the future.
July 26, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Thanks for stopping by. I think education, as always, is key to moving forward and raising the standards in any venue, but I feel as though the real problem in this case is one of valuation and how it relates to our priorities as a culture.
For a number of reasons, the external costs on the environment never actually make it to the bottom line in the way we build, buy and live in spaces. As a result, they don’t show up on the list of necessities that building developers need in new projects. Is building a sustainability worth 5% less profit? Personally I would say yes, but we’re not all on the same page yet.
I do think education is important at this stage in buyers. The only way that developers will willingly make these changes is if the marketplace has a demand for it and they think that their absence will cause opportunities to be missed. The more people that demand greener homes, the more often we will see them.