PHOTO: KIERANTIMBERLAKE
Ryan Welch’s inquisitive mind and passion for hands-on solutions led him to his current role at one of Philadelphia’s top firms responsibility to offer educational training series: Now you have this tool, how do you use it? How do you interpret results?” Welch notes two key turning points in LCA adoption: the LEED v4’s credit for lifecycle impact reduction and the surge in carbon-reduction policies across all government levels. In 2021, KieranTimberlake donated Tally to Building Transparency with the aim of transitioning it to a free tool. They are collaborating on development of Tally 2.0. “We started Tally as a piece of advocacy. Our role has now shifted to a knowledge expert providing resources to a nonprofit that will benefit the larger architectural community.” Locally, KieranTimberlake’s Research Group teamed up with Centennial Parkside CDC, YouthBuild Philly Charter School, and sustainable developer New Ecology to secure funding provided by the U.S Department of Energy’s Building Upgrade Prize for developing energy retrofit initiatives. The Prize focuses on addressing systemic social and technical challenges facing building upgrades in underserved communities: “You need a workforce that is familiar with the newer technologies, and you need to address legiti-
mate concerns about displacement, gentrification, and increased housing prices. This whole program is predicated on addressing those barriers, working closely with those communities to understand their particular concerns, and developing demonstration projects that can serve as catalysts.” Looking to the future, Welch identifies several areas that need further research, particularly in the realm of supply chain impacts. “An extension of our life cycle assessment work is understanding the impacts of supply chains, not just in terms of their global environmental impacts, but how they intersect locally or regionally with environmental justice issues and labor exploitation. We’re trying to understand how we can best minimize risk throughout supply chains, from building construction all the way back to raw material extraction and processing. This is a generational challenge, probably a 30-year problem to tackle, but we need to start committing resources to it as an industry.” AMALIA GONSALVES is a freelance writer, architectural designer, and associate at Perkins Eastman Architects.
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