carbon & resilience planning
We view the need to reduce carbon emissions from our built environment as an exciting challenge that has the power to unite people across a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences. Buildings are responsible for nearly half of all carbon emissions in the United States, and this also means that as architects we have a large role to play in solutions to our climate crisis.
Resilience is the ability of a system (building, community, person) to bounce back and thrive in the face of a changing and uncertain future. While we'd like to believe that the buildings we construct will live on forever, we know that the only constant changes. We focus on flexible design that can respond to future events, rather than static structures that embody planned obsolescence.
We find that talking about resilience engages more stakeholders than sustainable design conversations ever did because the discussion is more holistic than 'saving the environment and encourages conversations about equity, economics, and values. We can be honest about our fears for the future while working to do everything in our power to reduce the impact of those events on the things we care about most dearly. We consider what we are saving and whom we are saving it for.
We work with our clients to identify internal risks and access research on external risks. We engage in scenario planning to determine strategies and also rely on national standards and research like the RELi Action List + Credit Catalog to incorporate best practices into our work.
Focusing on resilience doesn't mean we've given up on sustainability, it just allows us to take a broader view. While we provide net-positive energy and carbon neutrality planning to help mitigate climate change, we also design buildings and communities that can adapt to the unpredictable and extreme weather of our future climate.