Anica Landreneau Archiculture Extras Interview
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Archiculture Interviews9 / 30
00:00
Green buildingComputer animation
00:14
BuildingNursing homeGreen buildingCity blockBox (theatre)Classical orderWasteMeeting/Interview
01:33
BuildingBuilding materialEmbankmentConcreteWassernutzungDrinking waterLand lotCity (band)RauchgasComputer animationMeeting/Interview
03:21
HailConstructionLandfillDemolitionSpace debrisBuildingSpirit levelArchitectBuilding information modelingAbwrackungComputer animationMeeting/Interview
04:44
Building materialGeschosswohnungsbauWärmespeicherungConflagrationBuildingTowerLand lotEarthworks (engineering)Computer animationMeeting/Interview
05:58
Land lotWassernutzungSpirit levelBuildingGreen roofFortificationEarthworks (engineering)Box (theatre)ArchitectComputer animationMeeting/Interview
07:24
UmweltverschmutzungBuildingLandscape planningBuilding materialTypology (theology)ArchitectureNursing homeIssue (legal)Air conditioningComputer animationMeeting/Interview
09:20
ArchitectArchitectureLand lotSpirit levelHallComputer animationMeeting/Interview
10:14
Computer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:10
Green building was like this, you know, niche market for a while. It was this special, happy, fun, warm, fuzzy thing that certain nonprofits did. And eventually some government agencies started picking up because they wanted to lower the operations costs.
00:23
But in terms of professional responsibility, I can't emphasize enough ethics. You know, it's sort of, we didn't used to sue bartenders if they over-served bar patrons and they went home and, you know, drove in their car and got in an accident and killed people. But we're at a point where, you know, people do, in fact, hold their bartenders responsible.
00:42
Bartenders have to get certified to serve and they have to know when to cut people off. And we're at that point, I think, in our profession where we're the bartender, you know, and we're over-serving our clients and we have to know when to cut them off. And it's not about telling our clients what their buildings need to look like, but just saying I won't design a lower performance building than this.
01:01
You know, or if you insist on me designing a brown building for you, I'm going to have to charge you more for brown building than green building because my liability is going to go through the roof, you know. I have no interest in designing a brown building for you unless you want me to charge you a premium. And I think we need to reverse that shift and say there's a premium for brown building. If you just really want to be the biggest waste, you know, generator of all times with your building, then fine.
01:25
But it's my ethics and my responsibility and I'm going to have to charge you more. And I think, you know, as soon as we have that relationship with our clients, they're going to be winding up down the block. And I think sustainable design or sustainability is sort of a buzz word. And people forget the literal meaning of it.
01:42
And, you know, I always, sustainable, you know, it has to be able to be maintained over time. And so, you know, right now in this country we use the resources of six planet Earths to maintain our lifestyle. So it's obviously not sustainable over time. We've only got one planet Earth and we're going to run out of it really fast. So basically being able to maintain our function over time means we have to put back what we take
02:07
or reuse it and not harvest new resources. So, you know, buildings should be generating energy. Their own energy should be able to generate water or clean water and reuse it over and over and over again.
02:21
Building materials, you know, being able to build out of old building materials that have already been extracted and processed or buildings that can be reconfigured so that we're reusing the same buildings over and over and not tearing them down and throwing them away. And we just feel like we have this inexhaustible bank account, I guess. But the bank, it's not about money. It's about resources.
02:40
And I saw special on the world's largest tallest skyscraper city, whatever they were thinking about putting in Asia. And the fact is there's not enough concrete or steel or cranes in the world to build it. It's great. We can design it. We can engineer it. We don't have the physical matter to build it out of. So sustainability is really just making sure you have enough credit in your sort of resource bank to keep going.
03:04
And we don't at our pace. And the sad thing is we've gotten a lot more efficient, but our increase in usage far outpaces our increases in efficiency. Same thing with cars, buildings. We keep using more than we save, even though we are saving.
03:23
It's something I always cared about. And when I was in school and started hearing the statistics about three-quarters of landfills being full of demolition and construction debris or 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions coming from the built environment, I was just sort of aghast and thought, that's my profession. We should be doing something about that. That's my responsibility.
03:41
I actually, by the time I finished design school, didn't want to be a designer. I really wanted to focus on sustainability. And I care about very much how buildings look, but I don't want to be the person who designs how they look. I really care about how they function. And to me, it's like a Rubik's Cube. There's a sweet spot every building has where you can meet the program and the schedule and the budget
04:01
and make it the best and most highly functional and performing building. So the direction, I think, is just standard of care. It's going to be inherent in practice. I think when AutoCAD took over the profession, at first you had people who were probably CAD specialists, you know, and the few people in the office that you could go to, and now maybe it's Revit and BIM. You've got people who specialize in it, and it's creeping into the profession.
04:24
But I think sustainable design, you won't have... My goal is to put myself out of a job, is to bring up the level of knowledge of everyone here to the point where, you know, they don't really... maybe I'm just the librarian, but they don't need me to guide them through the design process, but that everyone remembers how to design for the environment, as architects used to have to do.
04:46
And it's a constantly moving target, because there's always... people are inventing new materials and new technology every single day, you know. I mean, it's literally every day, you know, you say, oh, I want something, a low-emitting product that does X, and there's not one, and the next day somebody calls you or emails you and says,
05:03
hey, we just invented this low-emitting product that does exactly what you need and it's fire rated and, you know, meets all the specifications that you laid out there. So you can ask for anything, and somebody will invent it because there's a huge market for it now. And I really think there's a lot of interesting work around.
05:21
I think, you know, buildings should generate energy, not just use it. And a few years ago... my thesis project was actually on the integration of high-rise building design and wind energy, and so it's been such a joy to see so many high-rise buildings go up now that are trying to integrate the on-site generation of wind power. They're just wind towers waiting to happen, you know. I mean, it's like, duh. You know, it's a tall building.
05:44
The higher it goes, the more wind acts. And we're designing them to withstand lateral loads from wind, and yet no one thought to stick a turbine on there for years. And I'm not saying I invented it, but I'm just saying I'm so glad that at the same time I was thinking of it, there were other people who were as well. This is horrifying to me, but I find a lot of times I'll have a design team here
06:04
that says, you know, don't talk about water for urinals. They don't want to hear about it. Don't talk about green roof. They don't want to hear about it. And I go into the meeting with the client, and the client's like, oh, yeah, we have, you know, water for urinals in our building, our office. Love them. We have a green roof on our office. We love it. We would totally do that.
06:20
And so I never, you know, it used to be the architects, the designers driving this forward, and I think we're at a point where through our own, I don't want to say inability, but in comprehension of just how important it is to the public, we're holding our clients back. And I, you know, that's the last thing you'd ever want is to feel like we're holding our clients back from doing the right thing
06:43
and that they're often not making decisions to take a building to the next level in terms of performance because we tell them we don't know how or we aren't confident, you know, because we haven't done it before. And it should be more of a, we'll do it. We'll make it happen. We don't know how, but we'll figure it out. We'll research everything we need to, and we'll get it done,
07:02
and we'll stand by you. And if it's the first project to use this technology, then if it doesn't work, we'll make sure that we take care of it, you know? That it's not, we're so worried about getting sued all the time, which, you know, is a justifiable worry, but if we're holding people back from making decisions that they really want to make that benefit, you know, the entire society in which we live and participate in,
07:22
that's a problem, so. How do we get there? How do you teach students in school how to design a carbon neutral building or a 50% reduction in emissions? You know, that's, students don't have, I mean, I never use a carbon calculator in design school. No one ever said, let's figure out what your building is responsible for.
07:41
I didn't even know until recently a landscape type of plant material you put around, how much earth are you disturbing, what kind of plants you put around your building have a huge impact on your carbon emissions, you know? I mean, nobody talks to us about that, and in fact, in design school, I'd say that you're often really disconnected from reality in many ways. I mean, you never have to deal with a budget. You never have to source your materials.
08:01
You never know if these materials exist or how much they cost or where you have to bring them in from, and I've been on a jury in a studio, and they had to go through a LEED scorecard, and, you know, these kids are giving themselves 59 points or, you know, 52 points and saying they have a LEED platinum building, and I'm like, really? Because it's really, really hard to get the real world.
08:20
I mean, I commend you for your ambitions, but, you know, how did you, did you go and find the materials within 500 miles? Did you, you know, did you weigh the cost of those versus something that comes from Asia? You know, it's, but it's, so we absolutely have to bring that into the school. You know, they really need to take this seriously, and there needs to be performance criteria for their faculty.
08:42
I know tenure is a tricky issue, but, you know, it's got to be in there. We shouldn't be accrediting architecture schools that don't address, you know, critical. I mean, if we all have to understand ADA to a certain degree, at least as practitioners, if not as students, you can't build a building and not be ADA compliant. I don't understand how we can build a building
09:01
and not, you know, not barely exceed code, and I'm sure someone else has said it, but, you know, the code building, the code compliant building is the worst building you can build, you know? I can't believe our profession is driven by, by for the most part the worst building we can legally build. You know, it's really tragic, so.
09:23
Throughout architecture school, everyone always told me that architects can do anything. You know, we're in such demand because we're these great creative problem solvers and everybody loves architects and everyone wants to hire them to do everything, and, you know, the reality is that's totally not true. Nobody wants to hire architects but other architects.
09:40
It's, you have to work ten times harder to get somebody who's not an architecture-based business to hire you if you want to do something outside of architecture. Everyone has a lot of respect for the profession and the level of detailed learning and the whole, but they just don't think it's relevant to their business or organization or practice. So if you're getting out of architecture school
10:02
and you don't want to be a traditional architect, be prepared to work really, really, really hard to convince other people that what you do is relevant and that you have something to offer to a non-architectural profession.