 Well thanks everyone for joining us tonight for the lecture and thanks as always to Trent Coe who you may or may not know is our partner in sponsoring lectures focused on sustainable practice for a number of years now here at Rutherlam's. Five years. Five? I said a number so that's right. We've had a range of exciting lectures on the topic over the years and tonight's promises to be no exception. Our guest is Carl Elefante. Carl is a principal and director of sustainability at Quinn Evans Architects in Washington DC. Quinn Evans is a leading practice in the arena of preservation and sustainable stewardship. The office began as a two-person studio in 1984 and has since grown to have offices in DC, Baltimore, Ann Arbor, Richmond and Madison. Simply put their work focuses on architecture that's informed by history and place. Carl's perspective in particular emphasizes sustainability as the key lens through which to view architecture today and highlights the importance of designing spaces which recognize good things like that people thrive in nature they need daylight movement fresh air clean water but also that their social beings seeking engagement and fulfillment. In coupling that deep interest in sustainability with the preservation work of Quinn Evans it's perhaps no surprise that it was Carl who coined the phrase often cited phrase the greenest building is one that's already built. If I recall correctly Jean Carune may have spoken those very words at this podium a couple of semesters ago Carl is Jean. In addition to his role making buildings in his office Carl is also actively and passionately engaged as an advocate for the profession of architecture. He's a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and last year served as the AIA's 94th president. Through his work at the AIA as president and in other roles prior to that he has emerged as a true optimist I would say in the potential of architecture and its architects. Describing them as quote highly skilled and educated disciplined energetic hopeful inspiring empathetic and caring there's a humanist. Coupled with that optimism he's also clearly pointed to the continuing need and responsibility for architects to imagine and shape cities where over half of the world's current population lives. Carl sees our present moment the dawn of the urban era as he calls it as a tremendous opportunity to work together to create cities where humans can thrive a moment which we must dare to be great in. So with that please join me in welcoming Carl Elefante. Well thank you for that amazingly thoughtful introduction I really appreciate it and very much thanks to us Steven for the invitation to be here really delighted and thank you very much for Tremco for making this all possible. So I now have to live up to that introduction and I hope to because I really am here as a practicing architect but also somebody that's gotten involved in the leadership of the field and kind of the importance of the world that I had the opportunity to get to see and I do think that we're at this enormously important transitional moment in not just the field of architecture but really in the urban world where the future of the world has been officially announced that it's going to be an urban future and I'll get into the details of that a little bit more but what does that mean for us as the shapers of the built environment that we're not just shaping the built environment we're shaping the conditions in which humanity will exist from here on in. So our charge is enormous that we have to shape the world that we want people to be living in. What kind of world do we want them to be in and who is it that is charged by our society and our culture and our economy to imagine that future? It's architects it's us it's our job and you know I was talking with Nate before I know that I didn't go to architecture school because I wanted to shape human destiny I just wanted to design some cool buildings but part of the accumulated effect of shaping cool buildings is actually shaping the destiny of mankind and we just have to be aware of that it just you know up until literally just this decade we were kind of you know at the edge because the recognition of how important shaping the built environment was to the future of humanity just simply hadn't been recognized it wasn't understood but now that's been understood it's been officially announced by the world that this is the future we're going to shape the built environment that's where we're going to live as a species and that's our job now as architects so you know kind of roll up your sleeves we got a lot of work to do and it's really important work so okay I've said everything I needed to say now I'm just going to get into the details so as Nate mentioned to me I like to think of this as the dawning of the urban era and just to give you an idea of the pressure how much energy is behind this there will be another China's worth of population in the next 11 years added to the world population by 2050 to 2060 we're gonna get to the 10 billion people threshold in that period of time when I was a child we were pushing three okay so we're going from three billion people to ten billion people in well maybe a little more than my lifetime depends if I hit a hundred we'll be there and look at the modern city let's let's let's look back for a minute and just say what happened in the 20th century well in the 20th century the modern city the modern world was created a wonderful anecdote that comes out of a former New York Times columnist guy named Russell Baker who was kind of one of the wise men of the of the 20th century and from his perspective he talked about his childhood and looking back at his grandmother's life and seeing that the world that his grandmother grew up in was kind of the world that had existed for 10,000 years she never saw a doctor she never went to a hospital she never saw a liar she never got in a car you know that that world that she grew up in was sort of the stasis of human existence for 10,000 years and that in his lifetime he literally went from horse and buggy to getting an airplane and going to conferences across the world and that world that modern world got created since essentially 1945 the end of Second World War and to just give you an idea of like well how much creation really was that well in the United States the urban environment the building stock of this country and by the way the population of this country doubled between 1945 and 1970 and then from 1970 to now it's doubled again and between now and 2060 it's projected it will double again so literally again potentially if I get to be a really really old guy in my lifetime this country will be eight times bigger than it was when I was born so that's how much pressure that we're talking about here but look at look at what's been accomplished what do you think any of these cities looked like at 1945 almost none of those tall buildings were there so this is what happened in the 20th century we created the modern world well we're stuck with it now we've got to work with it you know it's we're gonna throw that out no we've got to work with that everywhere it's all over the world every country has a city that looks like this the modern world got created in the last generation now we have to work with it the other thing I just want to say about cities and our sort of orientation is particularly in this country and frankly we're the we're kind of the outliers of this we have this conversation more than anybody else in the world we talk about the difference between rural America and urban America and then somewhere in between is suburban America let's stop counting the angels on the head of a pen we all live in the in an urban transect we're all part of an urban environment even if you're way out in the country you know where do you go have your babies you get in a car and you go to a hospital you know and you're part of that urban transect where do you get your gasoline from to drive your pickup truck that has a gun rack in the back you get it from a company that's producing oil down in Texas and shipping it on interstate highways for you to be able to pump it into your truck we're all part of the same urban system let's stop arguing about stuff that doesn't matter whether you live in a place where there's trees that are in your yard or whether there's trees in a sidewalk tree box out in front of your apartment building we're all part of the same system and guess what it's the system that created human culture it created human progress cities created the condition where people were able to specialize according to the skills that they cared about and were able to create human progress so let's embrace cities there are future let's stop arguing about false paradigms within that urban transect we're all part of this cities are our future so I said that this urban era has been officially declared well how has it been officially declared well kind of at the highest level it can be and that is 195 nations got together in Keto Ecuador 2016 and signed the the Habitat 3 Neurban agenda and I welcome you to read the Neurban agenda in about 10 pages your eyes will be completely glazed over but it is a formula for basically realizing Pope Paul the 6th 1964 encyclical in which he said if you want peace work for justice so the new urban agenda says we're all going to be together on on Tom Friedman's hot flat and crowded planet that's our future hot and crowded how do we get along how is that going to work well equity and justice need to be there otherwise we have conflict and and and just where we're too close we can't have this crowded a world and without dealing with those basic justice and equity issues so that's what the new urban agenda is about so number one we're going to live in cities and number two they're going to be awesome and why are they going to be fantastic because you the architects of the next generation are going to imagine these cool fantastic buildings that's you know when I was in architecture school my very first week we had Philip Johnson anybody who knows the name of Philip Johnson it's like from historic preservation you were you know so his Philip Johnson who was the most prominent architect in New York when I was there in school in New York came to my school and said to the effect of well you know how many of you are here because you just want to create awesome fantastic architecture of the future and like two kids in the back of the room had enough nerve to sort of raise their hand and he said well what the hell are the rest of you doing here you know so if you're not ready to shape human destiny by creating amazing cities what the hell are you doing here that's what that's our job let's get busy we got a lot of work to do and in fact the world community appointed us officially designated us that this is our job the thing that I'd really like you to look at are the UN sustainable development goals these are a little more tangible the new urban agenda that's talking about you know the kind of more human social principles might be a little hard to access but if you look at the sustainable development goals you'll see things that you as an architect can say oh they need me to do that I know how to do that you know and you know I'll try to reference that you know again as we go through some things here going forward but I want to kind of end this chapter by saying this is another aspect of really what what defines this time that we're in so Arnold J. Toynbee who is sometimes considered to be the number one historian of the 20th century made this statement and let's just take a minute on this statement so the 20th century will be chiefly remembered by future generations not as an era of political conflicts were there any memorable political conflicts in the 20th century anybody remember the first world war and the second world war there were some pretty memorable conflicts okay in fact kind of history making conflicts right and we're not going to remember it by technical inventions the 20th century literally buggy whips to landing on the moon in 63 years of aviation 63 years of aviation went from two guys a kitty hawk trying to make a kite have a motor on it to landing on the moon and what is Toynbee saying that's not the important stuff the important thing is that for the first time in human society we actually thought about the well-being of everyone of something that we could and actually might be able to achieve that's incredible and now here we are it as the 21st century really gets its legs under it you know 2019 if we're not if we're not comfortable yet with the 21st century it's about time and what is what is the world telling us now it's an urban future we're going to we literally it's it's hot flat and crowded we have to live together we have to find a way to realize where Toynbee was going with this a century ago so how in the heck do we do that we're just a bunch of architects we just want to design cool buildings and make sure the steel and the glass and the concrete come together just right okay well what it really is the design impact opportunity that we have and I'll basically spend the rest of my time talking about this because I'm an architect that I want to practice architecture to be able to do any of the stuff that's what we have to do is practice architecture so the first thing to recognize is that what we do as architects affects the health and well-being of oh everyone everywhere okay that's all we just impact everyone everywhere not a big charge or anything okay well how how deep does this go you know is this like a nice to have or is this really in deeply in the DNA of what we do the answer is that it's absolutely unavoidably deeply in the DNA of what we do as architects and this is the most important thing that I've ever read that anybody ever said about architecture first we shape our buildings there after they shape us and you can't avoid this whatever decisions you make to shape the built environment that is going to create the conditions for the future this is the responsibility this is our accountability as architects and there's no way around it we can't opt out and so how deep does this go how important is this and I just want to give you one anecdote to give you a sense about the kind of life and death aspect of this so New York City 1870 it's after people shooting each other over the Civil War it's kind of now out of the demographic you know it's just regular old city life and at this point in time New York is the biggest engine of commerce and industry in the world people are looking at New York and going wow look at what's going on in New York well one of the things that was going on in New York is nearly two out of three deaths were caused by preventable infectious disease New York was fatal to live in not what people wanted to have to go with that incredible engine of commerce so by 1940 and I picked 1940 because 1940s when penicillin becomes available to the general public so in other words it's 70 years and in that period of time now we have a medical solution to infectious disease penicillin get a shot of penicillin your infectious disease is gone okay but that number went from 64% to 11% how did it do that by changes in the built environment okay so the built environment solved the public health issues of the day cholera dysentery and tuberculosis were the top three killers okay how did they do that they they they put water systems in and sewer systems in and they adopted building codes that required light and air you know it just they made a healthier environment for people to live we are faced with a very similar paradigm today where the the main public health issues that we're faced with today have these enormous environmental factors behind them so heart disease diabetes obesity inactivity is number one cause of almost of every one of those okay what what do we do when the built environment to either accommodate or actually even encourage fiscal activity and people being able to make good choices and I would even go so far with this to say that the most important influence that has come to the architectural profession from the outside world in the last 20 years is the Centers for Disease Control you know what any anybody see that one coming you know it so the Centers for Disease Control have said we have these public health issues that we're trying to deal with they don't just have medical solutions environmental solutions are integral to us being able to solve this our public health problems of today of the 21st century architects design fit and healthy cities design cities and design buildings that allow people to make healthy choices and it goes really deep too so it's broad it's everybody's public health but it's also your mind your personality literally your self and I recommend Sarah William Goldhagen's book and just the proposition that the way your mind works makes it so that what happens in your environment shapes your brain it just does so there's that whole nurture nature thing that people talk about and what what Sarah's work does is really helps you understand that how deep in in your cognitive world this really goes so just very anecdotally the hippocampus we've heard a lot about the hippocampus in the last year the hippocampus is does two things the first thing it does is it literally records your environment so you've got your autonomous vehicle scanners try scanning the world around you to make sure that the saber-tooth tiger doesn't jump on you and eat you well that part of your brain that's doing that all the time making sure that you're safe is your hippocampus what is the other thing the hippocampus does it records and it retrieves memories so the thing that observes your environment is the thing that shapes your memories what shapes you and your personality and your outlook on the world your memories so you're all this is hardwired into your brain that the way that you interact with your environment is literally shaping you as a person so it's really deep too so second thing I'm going to talk about is the other you know that was real personal about how deep deeply human the impact of the built environment is and now let's talk about it in terms of its global impact of literally the earth are you all familiar with the term anthropocene that a term you guys heard around here yeah I'm glad to see a couple of nods so anthropocene you know geologic time place to scene all those scenes okay well geologists say that we are today in the anthropocene geological era now they use geological time big time millions of years even billions of years okay well what does it mean to be in the anthropocene the human era is that what shaping the geology of the world is people and look at a satellite photo at night what do you see the world is covered with people there's light everywhere and you know we're we're having more impact on species extinction we're in the sixth sixth grade extinction as it's called you know and what's causing this one people we're in the middle of global climate change I'm going to talk about that in a little more detail in a minute but what's causing that people so literally people are shaping the world we're pulling minerals out of the ground we're moving earth around we're creating earth where there where there's water etc we're changing the chemistry of the atmosphere we're changing the chemistry of the water what what's causing that people are causing that so we're in this period of us having the biggest impact on the world and the biggest impact that we're having the one that we just have to talk about we got to get our arms around is climate disruption it is life and death so again well what does that have to do with us as architects the world community who's got together in Paris in December 2015 and the Paris Accord on climate change said okay built environment you're 40% of the problem you have to be 40% of the solution you have to decarbonize the built environment and the Paris Accord set the rules set the targets we know exactly what our job is zero carbon by 2050 let's get on it and it's probably too late let's get to zero carbon by 2030 you know I mean the people that are seriously working on this how do we make it 2020 we are out of time we have to do this there's nothing more urgent for us to do now then respond to climate change and I just want to say one more thing about both the urgency of this and then also about the discourse on climate change today so I'm not going to talk about the weather I'm not going to talk about storms I'm not going to talk about climate I'm going to talk about things that we can't argue about because all of those things are so complicated ask your weatherman what the weather is going to be like tomorrow okay this is complicated stuff but let's talk about physics and chemistry okay they're not that complicated you pretty much got this you know two plus two equals four in physics and chemistry okay it's pretty pretty direct there's not a lot of argument about it so we have changed the atmosphere the chemistry of the atmosphere more than it has changed in at least 15 million years okay that's how big of an impact that we've had on it we've gone from 185 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere to now we're over 400 parts per million oh that's okay 185 400 what's the difference okay well this is the difference so if we're good if we get this right and we take care of this now if we're lucky we'll stop at 500 parts per million okay and then we got this whole question of can we take carbon out of the air and why is that a question because the last time the world had 500 parts per million of climate of carbon in the atmosphere this was what was going on in the world it was at least 10 degrees warmer than it is now everywhere okay so you know a summers around here might get up into the 90s about summers around here getting up into the hundreds all the time okay that's that's what we're talking about oh it snows here a couple times in the winter I've got it never snows again okay but the other part is even more amazing there's hardly any ice the only ice is on the South Pole what happened to the rest of that ice it becomes ocean and the ocean is 130 feet higher do you realize that Providence doesn't exist not like oh we're going to build a wall and we're going to put some rip wrap up Providence doesn't exist the coast Boston doesn't exist the coast is somewhere near Springfield okay Washington DC becomes a coastal city that's what we're talking about and it's not if it will happen when the atmosphere has 500 parts per million in it that is what happens that's physics so the question is when does it happen does it happen when you're practicing architecture you know the worst models say it's going to happen in 50 years and that we have this catastrophic calamity that's right around the corner every one of the ice shelves is showing catastrophic changes to it that the scientists are going my god what's happening we don't know we can't predict every one of the ice shelves okay if you just take Greenland away you've got 40 feet more water that's just Greenland okay 40 feet more water you think that might be a problem every coastal city in the world is is is either gone or in serious condition so maybe it's 5,000 years maybe you're great great great grandchildren don't even have to worry about this but we don't know when it will get to that what we do know is that 500 parts per million it will get to that so let's stop talking about whether climate change is real this is something that we have the power to solve today and it's our job it's not for the next generation and it's not for somebody else besides architects it's for architects too this is our number one job that we have to do and I want you all to know my generation apologizes to your generation we gave this to you we thought we were making the world a better place we were creating that modern world that you guys were gonna like get to go to parties on rooftops and stuff not to go to rooftops to get out of the ocean okay but this is it this is you this is your challenge guys this is this is what your career will be about it is absolute compulsory worldwide cooperation I'm sort of waiting for the world to wake up and say okay you asked we're not going to let you get away with this BS anymore you got to do something about your card you can't deny it so okay architects what can we do what a horrible depressing thing to be thinking about on the other hand sure does make us relevant but what can we do what you know what's what's our role is there hope in this and I just want to say if I communicate nothing else here tonight I want to communicate that this isn't just hopeful this is awesome that this is what we get to do this is our charge I mean I it I just said something about everyone everywhere well this says everything because we have to change everything that we're doing so our proposition is to reinvent a world that all people are going to live in we're going to figure out a way for them to be in a in an equitable and just world together and it's going to be done by tweaking everything and getting the carbon out of it so we have to reinvent absolutely everything we do so our charge is over the next generation everyone everywhere everything wow what a challenge what an opportunity no one has ever been faced with this opportunity before your generation the you know the whole thing of the greatest generation a world war two that was child's play compared to this you guys have truly the greatest generation challenge in front of you so let's get busy so Paris what was the what was the biggest story in Paris the biggest story in Paris was the American architectural profession and what did the American architectural profession do they did this this chart so the red thing that's going up there at 45 degrees back in 2006 when we started to make the original predictions on this that's what was going to be happening the energy in the building sector in the United States of America over the next decade leading up to Paris okay you see the green line kind of in the middle the EAAAEO 2014 that's the actual energy consumption that happened in that decade period now wouldn't we all love to get down to that lower one but that's what that's our challenge but so the American architectural profession by creating energy conscious buildings added 20 billion square feet to the American building stock and kept the energy consumption level flat nationwide that's like a miracle right because we're magicians but no we're not magicians we're just architects paying attention to energy after generations of not paying any attention to you know the AIA headquarters opened in 1973 just before the Arab oil embargo it was the first time that people started to think about energy the building was built without light switches because you didn't want you to turn off the lights because that make that that shortens the life of the bulbs so it's just a building that's going to burn its lights all the time because what's energy who cares well if we actually pay attention to it we can actually do it and the American architectural world stunned them in Paris by this amazing story of 20 billion square feet of new buildings no no more energy so what specifically do we have to do four things and I I know that every one of you can not just count to four but you can remember four things that you need to do and one is increase renewable energy we have to get to a hundred percent renewables to zero net carbon buildings let's just design the carbon out of the buildings we don't have to burn fossil fuels to operate buildings we for thousands of years buildings were operated without fossil fuels transform the existing buildings and I'm going to come back and talk about that a lot that's our big challenge now is to transform that modern world that we're faced with and then reduce embodied carbon which we're going to work with our friends from Tremco and we're going to get all the carbon and body carbon out of the building materials that we use so that's it those are the four things we need to do and we know how to do each and every one of them so here it is here is our challenge what do we do with these cities and I'll just say one more thing about them you see each one of these and actually I hope you recognize some of these cities I mean they're pretty common cities so anybody care to guess which sit what we got what we got up here yeah so Chicago top rate New York below it LA bottom rate and then downtown Houston top left and so the kind of amazing thing about that is you got these clusters of tall buildings well pretty much true with all of them that that tall building cluster is about 50% of their carbon footprint the rest of the city is the other 50% so we actually have these two challenges of the concentrated greenhouse gas emission challenge and the distributed greenhouse gas emission challenge and those those two worlds exist in almost every one of these modern cities we need two different solutions to address them so how are we going to address them we're going to address them by looking at the existing building stock and and really doing what we need to do with the existing building stock and everything else I'm going to talk about tonight is about that how do we meet the existing building stock challenge and you know Nate quoted me from the Greenest Building statement and the folks at the National Trust about 10 years ago or so decided to challenge me like well what do you really know about that what what does that mean anyhow so they're like we're going to do a study and we're going to prove you wrong and so they did this greenest building study guess what they proved me right you know and you know so this whole notion of we talk about operating energy and then we talk about embodied energy we talk about operating carbon we talk about embodied carbon well our challenge is that embodied carbon is actually a huge part of this challenge that we face and so addressing the existing buildings you know it involves embracing that I I'll talk about avoiding carbon as part of this but right now our carbon footprint is produced by what is produced by the buildings that are here so if we're going to get to zero we have to make the current footprint go to zero not just the new buildings that we're designing so that's our challenge so first how do we wrestle this into place we need to come up with a plan we need to have a way that we're going to do this and just give us a measurable methodical thing that we can do together so the first thing we need to do is we need to wrestle this question of what cultural value really represents and I'm saying this as a person who is a preservation professional that embraces you know the stewardship of historic preservation but also recognizes how it can create its own set of challenges so we do need to think about buildings as contributing to human culture and helping to define us as a society you know I live in Washington DC we have these icons of the Capitol building and the Lincoln Memorial and the White House that you know Americans go to those sites every day and they literally break into tears because it means something to us as Americans those things that physical environment it symbolizes things that are absolutely fundamental to us so it isn't like oh this cultural stuff doesn't matter it does matter and but we have to sort it out we don't have it sorted out very well right now and the next thing I'll just say about it is that our historic preservation sensibilities were developed basically by the colonial dames who preserved Mount Vernon that that that's where it comes from the first president the founding father of the country we're going to we're going to preserve his house forever okay that was that was their charge to themselves in the world and the architects that are engaged with this building so the cultural value here is couldn't be more extreme you know and the notion that there's absolute sort of icon of history needs to be preserved but we're now trying to apply that sensibility to all these other buildings in city after city after city after city all around the world and it just isn't working in a lot of places it's not working in as many places as it is working we've got to figure out how to deal with the notion of cultural value and what we what we really want to keep of these existing buildings and I'm going to come back and talk about that a little bit more the second is just really understanding the statistics of what we're faced with so those historic buildings that bring a tear to our eye because they're the traditions of America and so on it's 11% of our building stock at most and just give you an idea I've been I've been paying attention to this for 30 years that number has dropped from 15% to fit to 11% in those 30 years just because we built so much more stuff so that sort of traditional historic preservation George Washington slept here just because we keep building and building and building that keeps shrinking and shrinking and shrinking in terms of its percentage of what we're dealing with so it's becoming this tangential issue so we can't let our thinking about something that's actually a little tiny piece of our world tell us what to do about the entire building stock we've got to be more nuanced than that and then here's the other one that's a number that really kind of keeps me awake at night is so that the modern era buildings the things that were built after the Second World War there and before by the way we had any energy conscious design and we're really trying to do green buildings and high-performance buildings that's two thirds of the existing building stock so that modern era building stock of big glass buildings or lots of suburban houses and so on that's two thirds of what we're facing that's our challenge what do we do with this two thirds of the building stock and it is very different from what we had with that first group so now let's face the challenge and and how do we actually have a plan where we can deal with the existing building stock and address the Paris Agreement on climate change and address the new urban agenda and shape this awesome fantastic future that you guys are going to imagine as architects so how do we do it well the first thing we have to do is stop being wasteful and the and the number one way we have to stop being wasteful is to use all the buildings we have anybody have any idea about the number of abandoned buildings in the city of Detroit but you want to hazard a guess you are eight times too low there are 40,000 empty buildings in Detroit now Detroit's the record holder in this country number two anybody want to guess number two empty building city you know what Baltimore Maryland okay so Baltimore about 16,000 abandoned buildings okay which is why the wire was in Baltimore by the way so another kind of tip more typical city might have more in the neighborhood of about 5,000 empty buildings so like a good city only has 5,000 empty building so so that's ridiculous that we're not using all this infrastructure investment all this material investment all these neighborhoods that were built and we're just literally just sitting there the pigeons are living there there is a whole world out there of particularly fire marshals going to conferences and talking about what do we do about these abandoned buildings and you know what their solution is tear them down tear them down go to your city council go to your county council go to your mayor get them to adopt the program to tear down buildings literally there are hundreds of people that go to conferences every year to talk about how can we how can we get the mayor to tear down our buildings and our challenge is that the scale of the solution and the scale of the problem don't match okay so I'll give you Washington DC the typical building before 1945 in Washington DC was 25 feet wide okay that's a little tiny building put two code compliant emergency stairs and an elevator to make that building handicapped accessible in a 25 25 foot wide building you can't do it you can't afford to do that the only people that can afford to do that are the rich associations that are buying townhouses in Georgetown right it's hard okay so these are examples of a couple of different projects that actually use a Quinn Evans work of trying to take multiple buildings and link them together and the on the top right there is an image from saline michigan where we've got this like catwalk system that joins I think it's four buildings together so there's one elevator there's two sets of stairs that link four buildings together so that you're only buying a fourth of an elevator instead of four elevators for the four buildings so we've got to scale up these solutions so that they work with the building stock that's there actually one of the most interesting places to see examples of how to cluster buildings together is actually a new building design place which is celebration Florida look at the housing design and celebration and you will see about six different models of how to approach housing design and to make some of these efficiencies of scale work and that's that's all new design and that's because Robert Amstern who made the pattern book is a historian and he studied this stuff and he wanted his pattern book to reflect this growth strategy so we have to keep the buildings that we have let's occupy the buildings we have we also have to grow the buildings we have it densification is a reality it's happening in every city around around the country and that's a reasonable thing to expect of our buildings well here are some examples of current growth strategies and I know in in historic preservation crowds when I show this slide there's gasping as you know audible gasping in the audience oh my god look at that building it's so much taller than the than the neighboring townhouses and you know what does that got to do with glass thing got to do with the stone base and so on I think that there are some people that would defend some of these I actually would defend several of them but you know it just let's have this dialogue let's have this discourse we've got to densify buildings we have to densify existing neighborhoods existing neighborhoods that we want to continue to contribute to our culture and society but we can't just freeze them in time it when we freeze them in time only rich people can afford to live there only rich people can put those two fire stairs in that one elevator in that 25 foot wide building so if we're going to make it affordable and equitable we've got to deal with some of these problems and our discourse is not getting there today so conclude this by you know so how big is this challenge you know like okay your architecture students how much attention should you be paying attention to this well this is the this is the most important slide for you to pay attention to tonight you can see that gray stuff those are projected new buildings that are going to be added during your career okay the orange stuff are the buildings that need to be renovated during your career is there kind of a lot of both you know I mean that there's a whole bunch of orange up there I would go so far as to say you ought to be thinking that you're going to half of you are going to spend your careers doing nothing but renovation work are half of you learning on that track are half of you thinking about you being building adapters and expanders because half of you that's how you're going to make your living is doing those orange buildings that you know you that's it man it's coming coming your way get get ready be prepared this is your future and by the way who's going to make those amazing transformations that are going to save us by getting rid of the incredibly awful greenhouse gas footprint we have now you guys that devote yourself to the orange buildings you're the savers you get extra credit so I you know I talked about the 20th century and this incredible two-thirds of the building stock is a modern era buildings we've got to deal with them and again how close are we how good are we doing I like to show this slide because remember that bad preservation exists and it's practiced a lot and again in a preservation audience when I show this slide every single person in the room will say yep though both those are both examples of bad preservation and I just want to get anybody whose head is there I want to challenge you and say I actually think one of them is bad and the other one's good okay and why why do I say that that 19th century building that's being preserved by just preserving the facade it's a really stupid way to preserve a building I mean my goodness you know it's this incredible effort to paint a face on a building okay there are places that it's done I'm not going to tell you to stop never do it again but it's a huge amount of effort for sort of like very little result okay on the other hand you've got the 20th century building where what you've done is you have completely stripped the skin off the building you've taken all the mechanical systems out you've basically taken everything that's tired and worn out and you've replaced it with stuff that's new now there's only one thing wrong with this example and this is a building right around the corner from my office this is not one that I made up this is photographs that were taken over the course of about a year the bad thing about this is that they threw away a lot of stuff that had plenty of life left to it so you see that precast concrete panels that are on this building those things could last a thousand years and they threw them in the landfill because they didn't look cool because they wanted to create that building that you know is the current version of what looking cool is and that is a glass box I just want a little editorial comment there's no such thing as a sustainable glass box building it's a lie it is a bad wall system that somebody decided look cool and okay we're going to put a cool mechanical system in and we're going to call it sustainable that really awesome really great glass curtain wall system has a thermal rating about the equivalent of a single white the brick with no insulation line that is not a good wall system that is not and that none of that you're getting more daylight than you can use it's just a not a good good building design so the idea though that you have to replace whatever is worn out and put in new stuff to renew a building every 50 years or so that's that's true you got to do that stuff you got to reinvest in buildings and the modern era building stock presents a real challenge because many of them are lousy curtain wall systems that were designed with inoperable windows and are addicted to fossil fuels and lousy mechanical systems that are ridiculously inefficient and yeah let's replace that stuff with things that are actually good and really work there's actually some really interesting work that's being done and these are just three pretty well known towers that are just three examples of well how do you try to do something better and you know so the the green Wyatt which is in Portland they literally put this you're seeing the West facade there this almost like with your sunscreens that are on the side of the building here they put this this screen to just simply put vegetation mostly to to to protect that side of the building from solar game okay historic preservationist did it change the character of the building you bet it did okay is that okay it's okay in my book this is a celibra easy building which is in Cleveland they literally took that building with the concrete panels in the previous that the celibra easy building looked like this and they clad it in glass and they did a double curtain wall so literally the precast panels and the old the old glazing is under this so they just created a double facade by literally adding the outer facade did it change the character of the building you bet it did but of all these examples it's the one that kept the most it's the one that respected the embodied carbon and the embodied material of that existing building more because it didn't take it out it added to it okay and then the third example is lever house which was renovated by the same architects that built it and what did they do nothing that you see is original all of its new but they put it back to look exactly the way that it looked before so in this whole conversation about cultural value and so on that we've had what matters here is that the building that kept the embodied materials and that previous investment in the middle is that the building that added stuff to to make it so that the performance would just simply be better because you're really putting stuff there that was missing or is it the one that replete that replaced everything completely but actually kept a cultural icon and I would argue all three of these are important examples all three of these were done and should have been done it's not one size fits all so the modern year building stock is just a big challenge you know this is actually images from about maybe eight or nine years ago with the Boston City Hall when Mayor Mineo came in and said oh this is the worst building in the world we've got to tear it down when I was in architecture school I'm gonna give you an idea what an official old guy was this was the brand new building in town that everybody like went to Boston to go pray in front of this building this was it the Boston City Hall oh my god brutalist concrete yes we prayed to you you know wow that buildings upside down I mean it literally this was the most important building from about 1970 does it meet the historic preservation criteria you bet it does it's an important landmark building but well can you do these things to it to make it usable for another generation I would say let's talk about it let's let's make it happen let's make that building be usable for another generation and you know in in 50 years if you think that stuff's ugly take it off you know do something else buildings do that so this challenge is big you know this is Terrapin great but bright green who is you know one of the founders of Rocky Mountain Institute Bill Browning you know they did a study of the New York skyscrapers and are basically like oh my god what the hell are we gonna do with all these skyscrapers in New York it's a big challenge whoever figures this one out you've got a really great career ahead of you you're gonna be busy you're gonna make a fortune just remember that modern building the stock these cities we created city after city after city after city you will never run out of work doing this ever ever you will be whatever kind of car you want to drive actually won't be driving cars anymore they'll be driving you but you know whatever you want you know it's gonna be yours just solve this problem you got a whole career of incredible prosperity ahead of you if you do it so we have to get into this new mode and and the way we we need to start is by accelerating what's going on it's just we're scratching the surface of this and so part of you as advocates and as and as spokespeople for doing this what you're going to be doing your career you know in a lot of ways the most important thing that you're going to be doing in your career is being convincing and to have and have clear messages that you can articulate to people that don't understand that what you understand most of the people you deal with will not understand what you're talking about you have to be able to draw pictures and with whatever you know intelligence you using you you have to convince people because they can't picture it you're the futurists you're coming and getting this training so that you can see the future most of the people that you deal with can't and will never be able to so you've got to be able to make this argument you've got to be able to be the that convincing person and you know this goes all the way back to Jane Jacobs you know I would say in a lot of ways really understanding what the modern world needs to be like really does go back to Jane Jacobs articulating it and she recognized the importance of old buildings that there are things that you can do their economies that work in existing buildings that don't work when you have to build a new building you know where the startups Brooklyn Navy are where an old building got converted you know because because you can afford it you know very very direct stuff but what make yourself do some homework on real estate economy and building reuse economy you just this is the world that you're going to exist in somebody's going to make a decision based on these economic rules and it's not just whether your design is the coolest thing that they've ever seen not that that's not important it's super important but it's also you know the these economics and you know so reuse economics is sustainable green economics is the message here and you know read Donovan Rupama's work you know when you expand this out to the global scale this is like oh my god can I be part of a hundred trillion dollar undertaking you know to sound like there might be a few bucks at it for you if there's a hundred trillion dollars of work being done here and let me just say this another way with so decarbonization okay decarbonization has also been estimated to be a hundred trillion dollar undertaking okay that's that's a stunning amount of money the air goes out of the room when you say a number like a hundred trillion dollars if the numbers are real to you but that's about 10% of the world economy between now and 2060 okay so if I instead of scaring you with the hundred trillion dollars if I just came to you and said hey you're the board of directors of planet earth are you willing to redirect 10% of your economy to solve climate change and to decarbonize the built environment don't you think you you'd like sign right on and you know if you were corporate board you were like our our corporate existence is dependent upon us redirecting 10% of our corporate resources they wouldn't even have to like go into corners and discuss it with each other they would just approve it right then and there so this is a doable proposition and okay if 40 percent of the greenhouse gas footprint is architecture and we just like get simple math here in your career you want to be part of a 40 trillion dollar undertaking your prosperity is all tied up with this stuff this is the biggest job offer that anybody's ever been given in the history of the earth there's no reason to turn away from this this is your future and it's just calling to you and it's going to make you rich so I'm sorry to be appealing to your lower motives here but but frankly it's it's motivated me in my career as well so look monetizing carbon you know so so what what's another thing you really have to understand about this economic formula you have to understand about how to monetize carbon the world is trying to figure out how to monetize carbon it's come to the US California monetize carbon in 2006 anybody in this room even know that a carbon economy was officially adopted by a state that the eighth largest economy in the world more than 10 years ago I mean what are we talking about we're talking about what Trump tweeted let's talk about the stuff that's important let's get informed about this stuff so the carbon economy exists in California how much of it is really understood in terms of the built environment and the answer to that is actually it's child's play that they're just beginning to try to understand the built environment the good news about that is there's still plenty of time for us to shape it the bad news is we better get busy because in another five years the programs will be in place so now's the time for us to get involved with really shaping what are the things that you know AB 32 and all the copycats in state after state so eight other states doing a copycat of this today you know so the carbon economy is coming we have to be part of it so now I just want to end with spending a few minutes and talking about you know okay well what the heck does an architect do how do you as an architect do this how do you address this in your practice and I just want to show you some things from my practice and talk about it in those terms and all of it basically falls under this category of optimizing intervention we're you know the roof's going to leak after 30 years or maybe 50 years depending on whether you use the trunk or trunk or roof or not okay you know so so we're going to have to reinvest in our buildings on a pretty regular basis well what are you doing when you intervene with those buildings how are you optimizing those buildings so I want to throw a shout out to Gene Karoon who I know has been here so do we know how to intervene with existing buildings and basically do it in a sustainable way do we there's even a book written by a you know New England architect who's awesome book fantastic book get that book it's your new Bible start to intervene with buildings using that Bible because we've got it you don't have to go reinvent this stuff so I'd like to start with a really classic preservation project okay the National Academy of Sciences building Bertram Goodhew you walk into a building like this is a preservation architect and you throw yourself at the feet of the client you say thank you for hiring me to do this job oh my god what did I ever do to deserve this what an amazing building and this building is gorgeous absolutely gorgeous the inside is the most beautiful art meets architecture of literally any building I've ever worked with it's just fantastic and actually Goodhew worked with a whole stable of artists to do bronze work and iron work and wood work and mosaics and actually that what looks like it might be a mosaic in the in the main hall there that's actually water color that is painted on with a water-based paint what would a sprinkler system do to this room destroy it so okay I'm an architect what I'm gonna do well the first thing I do is sprinkler the building not in that space you're not so at any rate it's amazing awesome opportunity for us to work with the building grew over time buildings do this building actually got about three times bigger in the 60s where Harrison and Abramowitz and there's another name from the modernist past did three additions to this building and when they did so they created these courtyards that you can see on the left which are let's see there's a technical term for these spaces awful I think awful these they created these awful courtyards and if you were bad and you got into a big argument with the head of the National Academy of Sciences they would assign you to an office looking into one of these courtyards to punish you okay so this is our project what are we going to do and we very quickly realized that we had this amazing preservation project to do but our transformation opportunity was to work with those courtyards so we changed those courtyards and we kept them and turn them into atria and finish them as finished spaces and you know literally created additional rooms and most of these are pre-function rooms for the meeting rooms that surround them so we improved the floor plan 100% by doing this and the other thing that you'll notice is the kind of weird skylights that are up there well the south-facing skylights are building integrated photovoltaics so that number one we reduce the amount of daylight to be actually workable amount of daylight most atrium's most all glass buildings have too much daylight that they create glare conditions you know we also clustered spaces like computer lab type spaces around the skylighted areas because the lighting was better for that sort of low lower light work so at any rate the intervention can be transformative so adapting buildings you know we have to really sometimes make them so they're different well we actually have really great examples of adapted buildings New York Soho is you know my favorite example of this of buildings that were built for industrial purposes and now they're being used for everything from artist studios to to residential lofts to office lofts to retail spaces I mean what makes these buildings adaptable and I would argue what makes them adaptable is that they were so generic they had good high ceilings most of them 15 feet or more they had windows within a reasonable distance to the interior of the building they had free plants you know that that there were structural columns whether we're wood or steel or cast iron so you could clear the whole plan out and you could adjust it and make it for whatever else you wanted to and so these were these are highly highly adapted buildings well the modern era buildings a lot of them actually have similar bones of these structural grids that are steel or concrete frames slabs and column grids and have that same free plant and have that ability to be adaptable the Washington example that I showed you before it's on the top left here the problem in Washington is that all those buildings have eight foot ceilings and it's really really hard to get daylight in back into them because of the height limit short sightedness thinking that that short stories are a good idea but you might recognize from from North Dartmouth the Carney library by Bob Nicholas and Design Lab you know talk about a problem building to work with how about a Paul Rudolph campus but crazy concrete buildings that you know if you want to put a new door in you got somebody with a jackhammer for two days to try to get through the wall very unadaptable building and yet design lab solution totally transformative so even these difficult buildings there's ways to work with them there's ways to transform them so don't be afraid to adapt and and the last thing I want to say about the adaptability is design for adaptability and I'll just give you an example of what do I mean by that so the building code the building code requires you know just going back to that you know eight-story building in Washington that's got to be a 1a construction everybody know what 1a construction is very robust fireproof okay and by the way it's all made out of concrete or steel that's something that's going to last a thousand years no problem it's even going to resist a pretty spanky earthquake okay so you're going to design a building that the code says for fire purposes must be built to last forever where is the one word in the code that gives you one piece of advice that if you're going to build a building that has a structural frame and other elements that last a thousand years this is how to design a building that can still be valuable for a thousand years that can be adaptable for a thousand years and the answer to that question is there's not a word in the code that advises you on that who has to bring that agenda to the table you do you're the architects you're the ones that understand what long-term value is and how to make buildings adaptable and valuable over time you're the one that understands that you're investing this enormous amount of material and energy and carbon resource into creating a building and you can create a building that's adaptable just use some simple common-sense ideas and and build design buildings that are adaptable you know Bill McDonough likes to say every project that I look at I want to know if I can adapt it to housing because every you know if you look at the adaptability history whether it's the Teatro Marchello in in Rome that is now housing you know or whether it's building like these office buildings you know the the current trend the big trend in suburban office buildings right now is converting them to senior housing that's the number one trend in suburban office buildings because what the hell are you going to do with all these suburban office buildings are half of more empty oh we need a whole lot of you know senior housing and guess what it's all the people that used to work in that building now they're all and they're right here in the neighborhood oh we'll convert that we'll convert the office building so think about designing buildings that are adaptable buildings so I talked about this long-term value and kind of end with this notion you know okay these are the buildings that are official AIA greenest buildings in the world these are the coat top 10 buildings and actually I apologize these are last year's coat top 10 buildings I need to get to work and do a new slide but but I would argue that we need to be thinking about these buildings as being the greenest buildings in the world and this is a project in Detroit that we did a few years ago so 71 Garfield it's actually a fascinating story about this of being part of the black renaissance in Detroit when Detroit was a was a big African American city was it was really kind of like right at the top of the list of that sort of you know Harlem renaissance not quite the Harlem but pretty darn close and you know so guys like Duke Ellington are out you know making the rounds and so on so this is part of the neighborhood where that was happening and it was actually kind of the arts and and and music district in Detroit well look what happened abandoned building this building had trees growing up through it okay is there any valuable out any value to this building find the value that's your challenge find the value so the first thing we did was fix it so that kept the rain out you know and just all that very simple preservation and maintenance work to make it to be a whole building again buildings require reinvestment on a regular cycle we also did that the the developer for this is a nonprofit faith-based developer said that she wanted this project to be green plus art equals cool that was her that was her thing of how she was going to sell this building and so we put solar panels over the whole roof including both these are cylindra solar tubes that's a whole other topic and and thermal thermal solar as well and then also a ground source heat pump for the building if you do that on a building like this that's a three-story building you can do is you're in that building it's right there it's cooked in to those systems do it just cover your buildings with solar panels put in ground source heat pumps so a couple of years ago this headline making building the edge in Amsterdam the greenest building in the world literally that you know that world's greenest office building that was a headline and what does this building do it uses all this amazing art you know artificial intelligence everybody gets a little badge you know they're like worker badge with their name on it and it's also got a little chip that tells the building where they are at all times but that's not too creepy isn't but as a result of that if you go into a room it knows that the room is filled with more people that like it cool than people that like it warm so the building adjusts because there's more more men in the room than women basically is how that formula works out so so the building is doing all this stuff automatically and it's keeping track of everything that you do every time you go in a conference room or whatever okay so that's the super cool 21st century future okay everybody who wants that future please raise your hand I get it but it creeps me out really does does something else have to do all my thinking for me do I get to do some of my own thinking and open a window or something well to me this is the greatest building circa 1887 which is the pension building in Washington DC which is this enormous example of both thermal mass to just make a stasis if you go to New Mexico and you look at Adobe construction or whatever you had to see this whole architectural tradition of stasis just create buildings that modify whatever's going on outside because what's going on outside is it's getting up to 95 degrees day and then it's going down to 30 degrees at night so you want you want this building that just moderates it and smooths everything out and this is an example of that with this amazing air system that comes in from every window goes up through the roof it just it's an it's a it's a you know a passive designed building on a grand scale that just works like a charm well what do we do with buildings like this today how good are we at working with buildings like this today I'm going to show you my last example which is a building from a similar period of time in Washington this is by Adolf Kluss who is a contemporary of Montgomery Meigs Adolf Kluss built 96 buildings in Washington or six left this is one of them and this actually was almost destroyed by catastrophic fire well what did Kluss do got this long narrow building that's a market building he designed this so if you the basement is this big ice storage room where they keep all the meats and vegetables it's where they refrigerate and the way that they refrigerated back then was they cut ice from the winter made by winter and cut it up into blocks and they put it in this space and they put some straw on it to kind of insulate it a little bit and they stored the ice in here and the ice stayed all summer long and it kept the meat and the produce fresh okay how much how many fossil fuels did it take to create the ice none how much fossil fuels did it take to keep the ice fresh all summer long none they just got blocks of ice and they put it in the basement how good is that okay but look what else they did they also created these little vent spaces that went down there and then actually floor vents that they could open and close let's see the artificial intelligence would give them a little signal a little light would flash when it's time to open the vent right no they would get hot and sweaty and they would open the vent and the vent would take air coming across the ice in the basement and up into the room and how many fossil fuels will consume than doing that none okay and then the air the hot air would go out the vent up at the top okay and how many fossil fuels were consumed to create that ventilation system none you can be smart you don't have to be wasteful you know architects can do smart things at work and that don't need artificial intelligence to make them operate we've got to get back to this because because look what we did to this building and we being architects so in the 70s they renovated this building they got rid of the skylight they got rid of the vent they put fans in to essentially do the same thing that the vent had always been doing by itself okay and then of course they got rid of the ice and they put heat producing refrigerators in the basement so now instead of having something that you can open the vent cool yourself with now you've got like a hundred little machines down there cooking your feet making it worse making it so you have to have more cooling to keep the space cool so this was our idea of modernizing and improving a building okay and and this is this is what was done in its own version to that wonderful pension building close up all those windows because the engineer is going to quit if I don't if I don't seal the windows okay and then put a big mechanical system in there that uses fossil fuel to keep it cool the way that the windows used to do so we're still doing this every day to building after building after building let's get to the next mode shall we please can we please get to the next state on this because we're this is done we need to be done with this we need to be on to better models so I'm just going to end by again telling you about how important you are and what a magic moment this is and also how empowered you are now you're just architects okay you're going to always be dealing with all these other people there's going to be financiers and there's going to be building code officials and there's going to be developers and there's going to be clients that don't like the color you picked or whatever you know you're going to be part of this enormous community to create the buildings that you're creating don't get beat up by it accept that that's the dynamic world that you're part of as an architect it's a wonderful challenge that you're that you're faced with you are a member of this merry band of people called architects and planners who are shaping the built environment shaping the city you are the market need group of committed people you know the AA is 94,000 members that's a lot of people right well we've got a country of 320 million it's a tiny little band of people but that's how you change things in the world and you guys each of you will have in your career an opportunity to be your own little representative of being part of that merry band to band together and make a huge difference in what you do and there's kind of a like it or not you're faced with the challenges your generation got handed this my generation got handed with other things your generation has been handed this it's a hot crowded flat world that's the reality that you're dealing with the future of humankind is going to be in the buildings and the cities you shape it's amazing opportunity and you've got it what it takes to do it so okay you've heard me enough get to work but he's got any brand space left I'd be happy to take what they're actually working on it's a follow-up to be established the principles for wrecking and incentivizing the $5 cash that seems really unfair absolutely you know so you know that if a big site it rains believe it or not it rains all the time so that's the deal with all of this that the whole notion of sort of sustainability there is no such thing there's no way so at some point or another the more sort of free riding guide good for you a steel industry totally destroyed the health of every one of space you know etc they get on essentially I brought a charge just charge it made natural gas cost 60 times more and hey why is that okay why do we just say oh yeah that's okay for natural gas right now the idea that you have carbon targets and literally took 10 years to say yes we'll find a way to how to do it and sort of it's up to your state the mayor of the district of Columbia it's our commitment you're going to be zero net energy we're going to be 100% it's good to have a goal you know that now that's a good place to start now let's follow it up and you know there are folks really doing it so let me give you a whole point because this is real serious so so they decided that they really mostly out the ocean you know because they're right there on the water and that now 41% of the power which is the largest power source of the portfolio and to go back to the to the notion of we just have to decide to do but not necessarily get these done there's something like a maximum of 40,000 coal jobs that could be created for 2 million let's find something for the coal miners to do in West Virginia so they can have jobs I mean this isn't like no you don't get jobs but really we want to send them down those we have to do that kind of where we are now and like we'll be able to get to a place where we can't actually talk about it but we could give you three simple and the first one actually comes out of Parkland organize okay I would say join the students join the AAS okay because actually that's a great forum for you to kind of get together and do things and in the context of that then it's you become an activist okay and so to support you last year the code of ethics thanks by the way to the architects of New England made this happen the code of ethics has changed to include a new ethical rule that says you must talk to your client about sustainability it's a it's a not like maybe you do what you want to or whatever it's a rule you must talk to your client about sustainability and climate change every a member is actually compelled to do that now how many architects do that I mean we got to get the word out but it just don't say you have to put solar panels on the roof of every project just kind of it's part of your architectural service to talk about this to your clients so practice that and then the third thing is really get to this equation really understand how to talk value and so there's a lot of owners today that if you can talk about long-term payback long-term benefit versus first-cost you can also talk about associated benefits like and not only save money you know like so that 71 Garfield Street that the woman who's the developer of that who's awesome just amazing person I mean somebody to vote in her life to making other people's lives better but still like okay green what does that got to do with her she's affordable housing okay well she sparked to this she totally woke up to this as an equity thing you know it's like oh God not only am I going to do affordable housing I'm going to do this awesome cool green building that poor people are going to live then it isn't like the poor people get the shit and the rich people get the cool stuff I can actually do this affordable housing project that's cool it's green it's art and it's cool so that she was so excited about that so that we were able to get her interest in this because she wasn't going to have utility for an affordable housing project how cool is that you're getting your energy for free every single apartment unit in that building that's a couple hundred bucks a month that they're not writing checks for okay so she was blown away by that and we didn't quite get to zero we got to about 20 percent you know we got about 80 percent of that cost you know so instead of having a $200 a month until the bill they had a $40 a month utility bill for them for those apartments that that talks that talks loud and clear and you also get green and art is cool and these people who are you are affordable housing people you know that need rent subsidies things like that they're not just getting something they're getting something cool and they're all excited about it again all that is so see so do that do that