The Four Truths

About a year ago, an architect with whom we regularly work asked if I would give a presentation at their office in New York as part of their Evening Lecture series on current industry topics. I was given carte blanche on picking the topic and told “we trust you, just speak on something current that interests you that will be informative and relevant to our staff.” This was an excellent proposition - I could focus on what I was seeing in the industry, and why I felt we have the ability to continuously realign ourselves to help our clients find innovative solutions for all types of questions and projects.

As I began to outline my presentation, four major themes emerged; concepts that have consistently been exposed to me by my colleagues, peers, collaborators and clients. And I found that these themes are consistently perpetuated in the industry as, well, mistruths.

I decided to frame this talk as “The Four Truths.” The ideas are focused around the energy sector, but pertain to larger sustainability drivers as well. The gist:

1. Design is not reality
   ASHRAE 90.1 is not intended to measure real performance of a building in operation.  There is a new industry norm of establishing a Predicted Energy Use Intensity (PEUI) and celebrating the achievement of energy (and carbon) goals in design. Design is one very important piece of the puzzle, but real (operational) energy savings comes from the occupants behaviour and a commitment to operational and maintenance. Ed Mazria says that designers hold the key to carbon change. Is this reality?
2. Boundaries are fictional
   Designers take project boundaries so literally, regardless of the scale (tenant fit out, building site, campus), and frequently don’t take time to understand what flows in and out of these boundaries before making decisions. In order to solve the problems of our changing world, we must be able to think across these fictional boundaries.
3. Efficiency does not equal intensity
   An owner can design to 20% below a standard like ASHRAE 90.1 and hire the best operational staff on the planet and still have the an extremely high EUI. We need to understand the differences in efficient buildings and high intensity buildings, and align a design process that gets the project to the right EUI in operations, not just reduced EUI.
4. You can’t justify sustainability as a Return on Investment (ROI)
   Yes, you can justify energy costs savings with a metric like ROI, but designers and clients can’t justify social and human value with ROI. True, “this facade will never pay back” if you are just talking about energy costs and energy savings. But, it may “pay back” when you include the value that facade will bring (views, brand, connections to nature, employee satisfaction, student performance, health of well-being...)

I am fortunate to talk to a variety of groups through teaching and ASHRAE New York connections.  Although I did not anticipate that this framework would exist past its original showing, I’ve kept returning to these four themes.   I’ve really enjoyed using them as a regular part of dialogue with my peers and clients. I’ve taken this talk on the road and have presented nearly 15 versions of it to various colleges, agencies and design firms. In short, these four truths still hold in my everyday run of play.

If you would like to hear more, and join the conversation, let me know.

To hear more ‘truths’, follow me @SBaumgartnerNY