I was looking through my photo archive this past week (which is all on an Apple Time Capsule) and I came across this photo:

I took this photo in the winter of 2011 on a snowboarding trip to Lake Tahoe. It’s of the San Francisco Federal Building, which was designed by Morphosis and completed in 2007.

The reason this photo stands out for me is because as my friends and I were taking photos of this building a man walked by us and said:

“Why are you taking photos of this shit?

…you guys must be architects.”

To me this was a frank reminder that the designs that my architecture friends and I obsess over (at least the contemporary stuff) often go completely unappreciated by a lot of other people – perhaps the majority of people.

This, of course, raises an interesting debate. 

If the majority of the public think a building is shit, is it a failure? Should a building’s success be judged more by how its occupants feel about it? Or is it the “expert” opinion that really matters? (Expert is in quotations because I don’t like this term.)

While important, I don’t think it’s as simple as these questions. Architecture can take years, decades, or even longer to settle in and become fully appreciated. Think about the buildings that your city may have demolished in the past but now regrets. Tastes change.

With that, below is an excerpt from the architect’s own description of the Federal Building. Keep in mind that this project started construction in 2003 and so design would have started years before that. Hopefully it’s clear just how relevant the ambitions of this project remain some 15 or so years later.

The re–definition of circulation and vertical movement paths provides opportunities for chance encounters, a critical mass in circulation, and places for employees to gather across the typical confines of cubicles, departments, or floor plates. The democratic layout locates open work areas at the building perimeter and private offices and conference spaces at the central cores. As Gladwell’s article points out, “…one study after another has demonstrated [that] the best ideas in any workplace arise out of casual contact among different groups within the same company.” Skip stop elevators, sky gardens, tea salons, large open stairs, flexible floor plans, and the elimination of corner offices endow the tower with a Jacobsian “sidewalk life” of cross-sectional interactions.

Many of the same design decisions that create high quality workspace also maximize energy efficiency. The Federal Building is the first office tower in the U.S. to forgo air-conditioning in favor of natural ventilation. As a result of the tower’s narrow profile and strategic integration of structural, mechanical and electrical systems, the building provides natural ventilation to 70% of the work area in lieu of air conditioning, and affords natural light and operable windows to 90% of the workstations. A folded, perforated metal sunscreen shades the full-height glass window wall system and a mutable skin of computer–controlled panels adjusts to daily and seasonal climate fluctuations. With an energy performance that surpasses the GSA’s criteria by more than 50%, the project sets new standards for applications of passive climate control, while physically democratizing the workplace and enhancing employees’ health, comfort, and sense of control over their environment.

“We can’t address climate change without thinking about buildings.” -Bryn Davidson, Lanefab (Vancouver)

This is a line from a recent TEDx talk by Bryn Davidson, who is one of the founders of Lanefab out of Vancouver. Lanefab is a design and construction firm specializing in sustainable infill / laneway homes. Unlike Toronto, laneway houses are actually allowed in Vancouver.

If you have any interest in climate change, I would encourage you to watch his talk. It’s less than 20 minutes long and he addresses many of the misconceptions that I think people hold about what it means to build “green”. Click here if you can’t see it below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEUShQ7r_tE]

While I think it’s great that the green agenda is much more front and center these days, I agree with Bryn in that we’re not yet on a sustainable path forward. For many people, being green means buying a LEED certified home, having a Tesla in the garage, and having a Nest thermostat on your wall. And certainly those things help.

But they’re not the whole story. Instead of just focusing on green and LEED buildings, Byrn argues that we need to take it a step further and start focusing on “Net Positive” buildings. In other words, ask yourself this: Will there be fewer green house gas emissions on the planet after your project is built?

More specifically, he outlines 3 criteria:

1. How good is your building?

2. Where is it located?

3. What does it replace?

The idea behind this framework is that the building itself (i.e. How good is your building?) is only one piece of the story. What also matters is its location and what it happens to be replacing. Is the building in a walkable area? Is it on a greenfield or infill site? Is it replacing an old energy inefficient building? Is it intensifying land use patterns?

All of these things matter when it comes to assessing our greenhouse gas emissions.

Let’s now apply this framework to three different building typologies: mid and high rise condominiums, and laneway houses. In the context of a Net Positive building, they all do quite well. In Toronto, we could certainly do a lot to improve the way many of our condo buildings are built, but they are usually in the right kinds of areas and they are the right kind of building typology.

Similarly, laneway houses as a whole are an incredibly sustainable building typology. In fact, I would argue that an energy efficient laneway house is easily one of the most sustainable homes you could build. They’re compact. They’re located on under-utilized and previously developed land. They often replace parking. And they increase population densities in established residential areas, which then makes transit more feasible.

But again, here in Toronto we’re not allowed to build them.

So whether you like it or not, if you’re involved in shaping the built environment, you’re also involved in climate change. This is a job for architects and developers, but also policy makers and communities. Laneway housing is a perfect example of that. Lots of people would build them — if only they could.

Image: Lanefab

There are a lot of great architecture firms in Toronto, but one that I’ve been following for years is Solares Architecture. Founded by a husband and wife – Tom Knezic and Christine Lolley – the firm focuses on “environmentally integrated homes”, which is simply their title for incredibly sustainable and efficient homes.

I discovered the firm a few years ago when I was trying to get my laneway house off the ground, and they were unbelievably helpful. That laneway house is still a work in progress (more on that in the coming week), but I’ve followed the firm ever since. They have an awesome blog where they have meticulously profiled the renovation of their own environmentally integrated home. Their new home was also recently featured in the Globe and Mail.

As more and more people wake up to the importance of sustainability, I think that firms such as Solares Architecture are going to become even more important. This is not just about a LEED rating, it’s about a mission. And I think that’s also great for the profession of architecture because it expresses a clear value proposition: this is not just about stye (though that’s important); this is about measurable performance.