As a large firm, we have a big responsibility. Henderson Companies is trusted with large, complex projects with large energy and emissions footprints, and we have an enormous opportunity to design solutions to reduce environmental impacts.

We often design and engineer projects, campuses, cities, and developments that contribute to the 35 giga-ton per year carbon emissions problem faced by the world today (giga-ton = 1 billion metric tons). While we don’t usually sway project owners and developers to make a huge operational change, like moving to sustainable aviation fuel or buying a fleet of electric buses, we can create a clear vision and craft a thoughtful approach for responsible design on our giga-scale projects.

Creating a vision and approach for a project can be difficult, especially a creative climate approach, which requires full buy-in among a field of many other project priorities. So, start small, with an easy to grasp beacon to guide the conversation, like a native plant, animal, or bird; even look at a national park or landmark in the immediate area of your project. Figuring out how that beacon “exists” in the area’s climate can help loosen your creativity block, when you consider your project in that context. If the beacon you chose easily fits in the climate, it probably has fundamental characteristics to help it survive with little outside help. There are examples of national parks that are nestled into a mountain-side valley that preserve indigenous-dwellings built hundreds of years ago, and other national parks that effectively shed flood waters without manmade obstructions – keeping campers safe from washouts.

Considering your project in its context might be just as easy, but if it isn’t, and you’re familiar with the climate, consider thinking about how your project could be designed to survive with little outside help (e.g., self-powered, water autonomous, passively heated, shaped with topographical flow). These attributes categorize a beacon (or project) as having passive survivability.

Giving a project passive survivability does a myriad of good for building systems, occupants, and the site in question. A couple of examples of this include:

• Using passive conditioning to reduce the magnitude of seasonal energy loads, which may dominate a project’s annual energy use profile, and associated energy cost. This also effectually prolongs equipment life due to reduced runtime.
• Preparing for partial or continued operations during climate disasters due to impassable snow, unsurmountable heat-indexes, or flooding rains that may cause sewer systems to be overwhelmed, water supplies to become contaminated, and mass impromptu gatherings of area residents when residential A/C (or lack thereof) does not provide safe conditions.

When viewed through these lenses, passive survivability also addresses climate adaptation, where climate responsive buildings allow for stakeholder adaptability. Creating a haven for the building’s occupants and a subset of the community may reduce strain on local utilities and first responders, allowing community resources to focus elsewhere.

To give a project passive survivability, we use Climate Responsive Design (CRD), which begins a lot like the beacon exercise, with an acknowledgement of context, not confined simply to the obvious site conditions. Successful CRD approaches also begin by acknowledging that no two projects are the same, they cannot afford a cookie-cutter approach, and need to include both the celebration and respect of:

1. The natural environment
2. Project constraints
3. The makeup of the project team

1. The Natural Environment

In coastal communities, it is a celebration and respect for the power within water. In the desert southwest, it is the sun and its increasingly impactful drought-causing heat. In the Midwest, it is the wind and its potentially punishing effects. And while northern climates have a deep respect for the cold depths of snow, northerners are now thinking about floods and suffocating heatwaves.

These natural environment factors present clear examples of how to prepare a building for its climate, but they also reveal a need to acknowledge the unsaid… what shouldn’t be done when designing a building in these regions. While many nations around the globe have the 21^st century luxury of solving problems with technology and the brute force of money (e.g., seawater desalination plants), no longer can we continue with a brute-force mindset. Admittedly, there are circumstances where we’ve bit off more than we can chew in dense urban environments and need to swallow the cost and complexity of desalination, brackish water treatment, or seawalls. But what if we entered project kick-off meetings differently – such as those in arid climates – committing to not using water in HVAC systems, recycling graywater, and not allowing direct sunlight to fall on non-north building facades?

In coastal climates, what if a project kick-off meeting began with addressing the impending catastrophe of sea-level rise, creating solutions to absorb drenching rainfall where coastal outflows are slowing, and considering the ocean tides as an opportunity to generate electricity? In the Midwest, where damaging wind and hail can present long-term detriments to windows, doors, roofs, solar-panels, and landscapes, what if we hardened our building skins with natural-materials, really considered earthen berms, and turned only to green concrete when additional hardening is required?

In cold northern climates, consider what the natural environment provides for animals that are active during the entire year (e.g., foxes, squirrels, wolves, etc.). These animals rely on sunken burrows and dens with insulation from loosely packed airy-snow, and surface-air-breaks or barriers using berms and entries on a leeward side of a berm. Architecture can mimic these attributes, as well as use passive solar strategies and solar thermal pre-heating.

Where humidity is driving heat-indexes beyond the bounds of human safety, we can create heat island “moats” around projects (see below), lean into artificial canopies, and create climate appropriate tree beds.

In climates where water is abundant, consider using site-harvested water to create small ponds or water features for pre-cooling, in relation to prevailing winds for natural ventilation. While the map below doesn’t specifically address areas where humidity levels may be too high for water driven pre-cooling, half of the country receives an abundance of rain (over 30” per year).

US Precipitation Map – GIS Geography

In mild climates where natural ventilation is a suitable means for cooling during some or part of the cooling season, orienting openings based on seasonal and time-of-day wind patterns can shave off significant hours when the building is otherwise reliant upon HVAC. The NIST Climate Suitability tool is a great resource for understanding a climate’s ability to create cooling effects (Climate Suitability Tool | NIST). This high-level web app also evaluates whether a climate can reasonably provide night pre-cooling where exposed thermal mass is a part of the architecture.

So, instead of kicking off a project by opening a checklist and hoping our project budget can accommodate enough elements to earn a green-building certification, what would happen to a project’s passive survivability and environmental footprint if we first addressed CRD measures? Instead of using brute-force tenacity to squash a problem, that same tenacity and desire to problem solve can be applied to finding and evolving highly creative CRD solutions.

Sometimes critical problem solving can unearth accidental scientific discoveries, offering a chance to evolve products and applications in concert with the natural environment. However, the exacerbation of climate change suggests we can’t wait for accidental discoveries and hoping someone else will “figure it out.” We must be intentional.

With new technology paired with just-in-time delivery, A.I., and additive manufacturing, this is an exciting time for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry professional teams to solve immensely difficult problems much faster than ever before. I’m encouraged that we are riding the beginnings of an exponential curve for science-based AEC problem solving, as evidenced by commercially accessible Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), 100-hour energy storage, green-hydrogen electrolysis and fuel-cells, low temperature heat-pumps, power over ethernet, and the like. But without CRD and considering the natural environment, simply continuing to apply these new brute-force solutions won’t break the cycle that’s needed to ultimately help prolong our way of life.

2. Project Constraints

When practicing CRD, the obvious project constraints are budget, risk tolerance for new technologies, project schedule, energy costs, labor acumen, lead-times, and operations and maintenance for new or proprietary systems.

To effectively implement CRD, the process needs objectivity, especially when we address these constraints. What if we started with the optimism of “we have a chance to build something lasting, a chance to move the world forward, so let’s use CRD to inform all major systems and materials.” Sounds easier said than done, right? Sometimes the project schedule is so tight we feel our brow furrow, our stomachs churn, and immediately flash to images of all-nighters – but that’s ok, we’re human. While I’m not a project manager who has to assemble a plan of attack to unfurrow brows and put stomachs at ease, this analogy fits the challenge of CRD in today’s economy, with today’s schedules, and the ever-present demand for excellence.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t address the de facto constraint of project cost, especially as we continue to make the noble pushes for electrification and regenerative design. Fortunately, as with most complex industries, there’s almost always a cost trade-off. And when it’s all said and done, it can feel like taking my family of five out to dinner – most everyone leaves happy… enough. When entering the minefield of cost conversations in CRD project work, I try to keep three things in mind:

• The opportunity-cost curve of AEC projects, where making decisions early is less expensive.
• The energy pyramid, which tells us to reduce loads before efficiency measures and renewables.
• Planting a (figurative) flag at the top of the hill, which reminds the team of the overall goal.

In design charrettes, making team-decisions early in a project with owners’ representatives and contractors at the table, our actions can plant the flag at the top of the hill we’re collectively about to climb (during construction). The energy pyramid looks like this:

If we start CRD in the energy conservation base (first step) of the pyramid, we tend to spend less project dollars on efficient systems because they are smaller. And if our systems are smaller, they can use less energy, and we consequently spend less on renewable energy systems to offset their consumption.

In a perfect world, these compounding savings are put aside for more CRD and regenerative measures, but with competing programmatic and technological interests, the savings are often absorbed by other project needs. Though if there are savings, it’s a win in my book, giving money back to the project for a betterment that may not have otherwise been funded.

But the energy pyramid teaches us much of the same lesson taught by the AEC opportunity cost curve: put your efforts into the systems decisions, during the times that will have the biggest impact.

3. The Makeup of the Project Team –>Solutions

Making lasting and impactful design moves is not for the faint of heart. CRD at the giga-scale means big moves that may not have been done before, especially if the triple bottom line is used as a measuring stick. With CRD, we are asking ourselves how to build a project with low embodied carbon materials, avoid straining potable water or sewer systems, and provide both exceptional energy infrastructure and indoor environmental quality. Obvious constraints aside, the project team can be its own stumbling block. At the giga-scale, a greater degree of consideration is a must. Gone are the days of flippant dismissals of solar photovoltaics (PV) and using code-minimum approaches.

Contrary to the brute-force approach to solving climate problems, in some of the world’s most blisteringly arid communities, planners are weighing the possibility of retreating to a nighttime or quasi-subterranean economy. This climate fight-or-flight dichotomy is compounded by rapid population growth, with some cities scrambling to build enough housing and infrastructure for new residents. This is a CRD conundrum that needs a giga-scale solution… not left up to hoping someone else will figure it out.

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26^th American President, was famous for many things, including a strong stance on conservation, but his “Man in the Arena” speech defines the essence of what AEC teams need to acknowledge in this new climate era:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

—Theodore Roosevelt (Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910)

Though this speech and its abundance of metaphors were not intended for CRD, or the AEC industry, it is the category of mindset for anyone set to innovate or positively impact a difficult problem – the daring who is ok with vulnerability.

And that is the final point I’ll make regarding CRD and big/bold project moves, acknowledging when we pose a solution to a climate problem, we may be ridiculed or shot down. And that’s ok! Vulnerability is not a weakness. We need to allow our historically methodical and conservative industry to put its shield down and be ready to accept criticism, but we also need to do it FAST! With our increasingly fast-tracked project timelines, the decision-making window for evaluating, presenting, and gaining consensus buy-in for CRD strategies is early and brief. We want to be “fast to fail” and in pursuit of “getting a quick no” so we have time to gather constructive criticisms and iterate again. But we also need to be concise and methodical enough in our first attempt at a big/bold move, so it doesn’t come out half-baked and elementary.

Specifics

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) provides online geothermal, solar, and wind maps which should be used to guide design decisions before our teams jump into detailed analysis. Using NOAA and NASA weather web-apps, FEMA flood maps, and USGS subsurface geology and water maps alongside a quick climate analysis using UCLA’s Climate-Consultant, our teams can go/no-go a decision on CRD measures before valuable time is wasted on misaligned measures.

With the right information, we can dig into a paradigm shifting measure. And as building systems engineering and design consultants, our people-first problem solvers can provide direction as proactive team members. No longer are the days of siloed design. As innovators and thought leaders, we want to work with our AEC partners, not as reactive team members of old. Here are some giga-scale CRD concepts that I’m floating around and performing high-level research for:

• Sub-surface temperatures as insulation for sunken structures and “earth-tube” ventilation.
• Wastewater heat recovery and building integrated solar in dense urban environments.
• Turning to biomimicry for water collection and treatment, natural ventilation, and passive heating.
• Leaning into adaptive comfort (mixed-mode ventilation) and biophilia for air and water filtration.
• Use of brine/wastewater biproducts and aquifer recharge injection to help future water supplies.
• Direct air carbon capture for hard to decarbonize industries or in dense urban environments.
• Geographical long-duration energy storage (LDES) like pumped-hydro and hydrogen integration.
• Community Resilience Centers (CRCs) for floods, heatwaves, polar-vortex, and the like.
• Biological carbon sequestration through enhanced soil weathering and afforestation.

Culminating Thoughts

Cost-benefit ratio, pros and cons, payback, return on investment (ROI), and other financial performance metrics sometimes need to be overcome by the courage to address the other two triple bottom lines of people/equity and planet. This is especially true for our largest of projects, which sometimes pay the least amount per unit of electricity and water.

We can’t expect unique outcomes without practicing and collaborating uniquely, with refined processes and new knowledge. This means we aren’t even close to being done learning.

The AEC industry has a responsibility to the world to be considerate and deliberate with design choices, with an appetite for taking risks to push emissions down. With the right clients, it sometimes means we can do this with new and evolving technologies.

If this article leaves you with anything, I hope it leaves you with one of my favorite mantras: keep creating, learning, and iterating until “pencils down,”; then create and iterate again on what you’ve just learned. This mindset helps me maintain the drive to create CRD approaches that are both unique and appropriate, borrowing from what has held up over time (against a project’s climate) and leaning into strategies that will leave a smaller environmental footprint in the years to come.