LOOK INSIDE Practice with Purpose

This book is dedicated to Marsha Maytum, FAIA, whose inquisitive mind, generous heart, and fierce devotion to practice with purpose have inspired us all.

Architecture isn’t about one or two things— it’s about everything.

It weaves together form and function, space and light, art and science, material and craft.

It entwines us with our world, with each other, with history and culture, with the natural systems that sustain us all.

But architecture has even greater purpose: /// t o shape a resilient, zero-carbon future, enabling all species on our planet to thrive; /// t o advance social justice, celebrating the rich diversity of the human condition, welcoming, serving, and inspiring every one of us; /// t o build equitable communities that provide safe, healthy and dignified housing for all; /// t o preserve both the embodied carbon and the embodied culture of old buildings, crafting meaningful dialogues with time.

Architecture is practice with purpose.

6 FOREWORD EDWARD MAZRIA /// T aking Action in Practice 8 PREFACE WILLIAM LEDDY, MARSHA MAYTUM, AND RICHARD STACY /// M ission-Driven Design 11 INTRODUCTION ROBERT MCCARTER /// F rom Constructed Reality to Practice with Purpose

CLIMATE ACTION D esigning a Zero-Carbon Future

16 ARCHITECTS ARE CHANGE AGENTS 22 /// Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation 32 /// Nueva School Hillside Learning Complex 42 /// Edwin M. Lee Apartments

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EQUITY A rchitecture Is for Everyone

ARCHITECURE IS A SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUE 58 /// Ed Roberts Campus 68 /// Sweetwater Spectrum Community 78 /// Rene Cazenave Apartments

HABITATION H ousing the Unhoused

EDUCATION T wenty-First-Century Schools

ADAPTATION A daptive Reuse in a Climate-Positive World

88 HOUSING IS A HUMAN RIGHT 94 /// Plaza Apartments 104 /// Merritt Crossing 114 /// Nancy and Stephen Grand Family House

124 SCHOOLS ARE LIVING LABORATORIES FOR RESILIENCE 130 /// Nueva School at Bay Meadows 140 /// Michael J. Homer Science and Student Life Center 150 /// Walker Hall

160 ADAPTATION TURNS THE PAST INTO THE FUTURE 166 /// San Francisco Art Institute 176 /// Commonwealth Club of California 184 /// The Bay School of San Francisco 194 TAKE ACTION

/// Design a Mission-Driven Practice 198 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS 199 NOTES 200 IMAGE CREDITS

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TAKING ACTION IN PRACTICE FOREWORD EDWARD MAZRIA, FAIA In 2021 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its comprehensive and alarming Sixth Assessment Report 1 on the state of the crisis, elucidating in detail the impacts of greater and greater warming. Around the world, we have witnessed increasing heat waves, droughts, deadly flooding, and fires shattering world records and putting the health and survival of many at risk. The need to quickly reach zero-carbon emissions is clear. And yet people in many sectors and professions seem unclear about the role that their work and lives play in that draw down. We are all in this together, and we must all act quickly and boldly. /// Architects have a crucial role to play. We are the single industry across all political and geographic boundaries with the agency to affect global emissions

FOREWORD

immediately. How? We can decide to design and build to zero carbon today. Buildings alone account for about 40% of total global CO2 emissions; factor in interiors, sitework, landscapes, cityscapes, and infrastructure, and that percentage is much higher. If the world is to address climate change, we must provide the necessary leadership to eliminate CO2 emissions in the built environment. This is our role. If we do not reduce emissions and slow (and eventually reverse) warming, many endeavors for human and ecological health will be lost. /// In 2002, when I founded Architecture 2030 and issued the 2030 Challenge, achieving zerocarbon buildings seemed a distant aspiration. Today, thanks to the ingenuity of the global design and construction community, we have the knowledge, standards, tools, and technologies to achieve zerocarbon buildings in all climates, worldwide. /// That ingenuity is central to the mission-driven practice of Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects (LMSA). The firm has always seen environmental and social considerations as inherent to the design challenge, so its masterful

TAKING ACTION IN PRACTICE

solutions are fully integrated performers. And as the urgency of the climate crisis has grown, so has its commitment to being industry leaders—and to transforming the profession. The firm sees climate action (designing for a zero-carbon future) and equity (designing for everyone) as inherent to design, and that is central to its practice. The projects and proposals shared here demonstrate how a deeply unified approach can achieve the most successful results, and that climate action is possible for the full range of building types within budget. One of the chapters is dedicated to adaptation, acknowledging the importance of existing buildings. /// But this guide also addresses the importance of habitation and education in a practice focused on the human crises we face. And it includes a broader road map for architects seeking to cultivate a mission-driven practice—to shape the parameters within which all this activity happens.

This book is about architects as advocates, participating in how design happens, how the laws and codes are written, how the grid is organized, and how financing is structured. ///

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Our professional community has an extraordinary opportunity to lead in solving the climate crisis.

LMSA has embraced this opportunity and is leading by example.

This book’s fifteen case studies offer an unsparing look at how owners, communities, and architects can work together. The built results meet the needs of projects’ stakeholders and contexts, now and into the future. This guide to mission-driven design shares not only examples of projects but also instructive stories about the lessons gleaned from making them—and specific suggestions about how all architects can focus their work on their mission. /// Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects as a practice is a model for our industry. The firm appreciates that, collectively, architects are engaged in the ultimate design project, which extends well beyond one building at a time, or even one community at a time. The project is to transform an industry, its role in human habitation, and the rules that frame that role.

LMSA shows what architects can do, through design and advocacy, to influence the immense human crises we face.

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MISSIONDRIVEN DESIGN PREFACE WILLIAM LEDDY, FAIA MARSHA MAYTUM, FAIA RICHARD STACY, FAIA This book is about designing buildings beyond their property lines.

It’s about building an architecture practice that focuses the transformative power of design on some of our society’s most urgent challenges—a practice where every created environment is viewed as an opportunity to serve the clients’ needs, the needs of the broader community, and the vital needs of our planet, our only home. /// We call this mission-driven design. /// It is undeniable that we live in a time of unprecedented change and challenge: a rapidly advancing global climate emergency, festering racial and ethnic injustice, chronic homelessness, a raging global pandemic, persistent inequity for people with disabilities and the elderly, and the urgent need for

PREFACE

innovative education to prepare young people for an even more challenging future. These are not discrete phenomena. They are all inextricably linked in an ecological and societal emergency that cries out for creative, integrated solutions. Successfully navigating the torrent of information we receive every day and collectively and effectively addressing these challenges will allow current and future generations to continue to dwell and prosper on this planet. /// Of all of these challenges, the climate emergency is primary.

It is one of the greatest existential threats to all living things in a thousand years. If we fail to adequately respond to this emergency, everything else will become far more difficult.

As the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2018, avoiding catastrophic climate impacts requires “rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”2 Today, in 2022, many of these impacts are already upon us, way ahead of schedule. Climate scientists agree that taking immediate action is critical if we are to have any hope of restricting global-temperature rise to 1.5°C and avoiding a climate catastrophe.

MISSION-DRIVEN DESIGN

/// By now, we should all be aware that architects are a big part of the problem. We are among the biggest polluters on the planet, through the buildings and communities we design and build. But we’re also global citizens with the moral responsibility and the creative skills to address this most pressing challenge. During the crucial period of the next decade, architects and designers will have an important role to play. We must offer far more than inventive forms and the latest fashions. We must become innovative agents of change, providing the vision and skill to lead our communities toward a just, climate-positive future for all. /// Meanwhile, the other interrelated elements of this ecological and societal emergency cannot wait to be aggressively addressed. It is well documented that the worst impacts of climate change— extreme weather events, drought, wildfire, flooding, and economic destabilization—are experienced disproportionately by disadvantaged communities, communities of color, people with disabilities, and the elderly. Providing safe, dignified places for all humanity to live and thrive is crucial to the health, well-being, and future of our civil society.

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/// Architecture is essentially a values proposition. It rises out of the intersection of designers’ personal values and the collective value systems of our communities. How do our ethical principles permeate and inspire our work every day? To successfully address the ecological and societal emergency, the design values and practice of architecture must rapidly transform within the next decade. It’s no longer enough to meet our clients’ programs and budgets on schedule, as difficult as that may be. It’s no longer enough to view architecture as an isolated work of experiential sculpture, as fascinating as that may be. With every potential project, we must ask additional questions. How can this design satisfy the goals of both the client and the broader community? How can it help to advance an equitable, carbon-positive future for all species on our planet? How can it focus the transformational power of design on some of the biggest challenges of our time? /// This might seem like an overwhelmingly impossible task, but similarly “impossible” tasks have been achieved on numerous occasions throughout history.

They have invariably required

10 ///

prioritizing the success of big, collective ideas over the shortsighted convenience of the status quo. Much like designing a complicated building, finding the best solutions comes from creatively distilling and arranging a variety of information to determine the most integrated, effective, and elegant resolution. /// If you’re reading this book, you may be a designer interested in how architecture can help transform our world. If you’re a designer, why wouldn’t you design one of the most important things you own—your life in design?

If you’ve devoted yourself to a life in design, why wouldn’t you focus your career on helping to mend the unraveling fabric of our society? There’s never been a more exciting time in the history of architecture to be an architect.

We have abundant imagination, powerful tools, and important work to do. /// In the following pages, we offer a glimpse into our mission-driven practice based in Northern California. We organized the book into five chapters dealing with different aspects of the ecological and societal emergency that we strive to address through our work: Climate Action, Equity, Habitation,

PREFACE

Education, and Adaptation. These chapters begin with a brief essay establishing the context we’re engaging, the design intent, and the specific strategies we pursue and recommend to other architects looking to practice mission-driven design. Each essay is followed by case studies illustrating how we’ve addressed these issues in our practice. We include our personal stories of lessons learned in hopes these will benefit other architects’ work. Observations of clients, occupants, and the design team provide additional depth and detail. /// This is how we think about our work, how we do it, and the benefits that we observe. We hope you will find it illuminating and useful in ways we cannot predict.

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INTRODUCTION

FROM CONSTRUCTED REALITY TO PRACTICE WITH PURPOSE

INTRODUCTION ROBERT MCCARTER In the twenty-four years since I wrote the introduction to Constructed Reality, the first monograph on what would become Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects, the profession of architecture has evolved in ways that were rather remarkably presaged by the principles underlying the firm’s work.3 The constructing of reality, understood as the making of the contexts for the rituals of daily life through the crafting of architecture and the experiences it engenders, along with the parallel engagement of the process of making in transforming the culture of place, is today embraced as the most appropriate way to practice. From its beginnings, LMSA has understood that

the ethical imperatives that underlie this principled

approach

to constructively critical architectural practice require architects to engage with three overlapping programs. Individual experience is engaged by making places that engender human use and comfort, and that serve as the background or framework for the lives that take place in it (as Frank Lloyd Wright defined the task of architecture). Community and culture are engaged through preserving and strengthening the sense of place and collective identity. Sustainability is engaged through realizing the global and local strategies of ecological reparation and integration necessary for planetary survival. /// As the projects and principles of practice included in this book clearly indicate, LMSA has continued to lead by example.

Their recognition that we exist in a world of limitations as well as potentials, and that the realization of the full potential of any design is determined by the way the limitations imposed on the project are embraced and employed, is critically important. It is worth recalling Wright’s assertion, exemplified by the works in this book, that human beings “built

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most nobly when limitations were greatest and, therefore, when most was required of imagination in order to build at all. Limitations seem to have always been the best friends of architecture.”4 LMSA has been a leader in recognizing that two of the most critical limitations on architectural practice are those that hinder the achievement of social justice, and those that we must impose on ourselves to ensure planetary survival. /// An essential aspect of the LMSA transformation as a constructively critical practice over the last quarter-century has been its expansion of the definition of craft.

For the firm, crafting architecture, while remaining fundamentally grounded in a particular place and its local building culture, has expanded to become the crafting of environments, which involves engaging a building with increasingly wider territories across time and space. In the preface to this book, LMSA defines this as “designing buildings beyond their property lines”—a deceptively simple principle that, if followed rigorously, could completely transform the normative assumptions and procedures of architectural education and practice. The most important aspect of this redefinition is the

INTRODUCTION

realization that architecture is not a specialized practice responsible for only a limited number of elements or operating in a strictly bounded field. Rather, it is responsible for, exists in, and affects the most expansive of territories—as the architects write, “Architecture is about everything.” /// In this book, significantly subtitled “a guide to mission-driven design,” LMSA draws lessons from its critical practice and uses them to construct a general working theory of an engaged, proactive, and purposeful practice.

The need for climate action, and designing a zero-carbon future, rightly heads the lessons and themes. It acknowledges architects’ enormous capacity to be agents of positive change due to the significant social, economic, and ecological transformations involved in every construction. In achieving the maximum experiential enrichment and engagement of the climate and place by employing the minimum material and having the minimum environmental impact, LMSA redefines a successful project in a way appropriate to our time, while simultaneously reconnecting with ancient precedents. Making small buildings with big impacts, sharing resources like a forest,

FROM CONSTRUCTED REALITY TO PRACTICE WITH PURPOSE

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always acting at the neighborhood and urban scale, and having the intention of connecting to the land and to our collective memories of place and community are some of the ways the architects meet this standard. They call for a far more expansive definition of “sustainability,” which, while often described as a newfound aspiration, has in fact been a fundamental ordering principle of appropriate architecture throughout time. /// This book’s second theme is the essential need for equity in the practice of architecture, for architecture’s engagement with social justice issues, and for the understanding that architecture is for everyone. This is evidenced in the LMSA engagement with empathic design, with its understanding of buildings as places connecting to their neighborhoods, and its larger intention of building community with every project. They call for a proactive, purposeful agenda for design practice, including broadening participation in architecture and design culture, expanding the scope of the design process to be more inclusive and supportive of communities, emphasizing design for all that is welcoming and reposeful, and evaluating buildings based on the experiences

of the inhabitants—echoing the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto’s statement, “It is not what a building looks like the day it opens but what it is like to live in thirty years later that matters.”5 /// Habitation in the contemporary city, which first and foremost includes housing the homeless, is the third theme. The architects, understanding that housing should be designed for all inhabitants of the city, have employed their projects to help change city standards and codes to allow new forms of housing to emerge, as well as to establish sustainability as a requirement for all future projects.

They have developed adaptable, expandable, and contractable apartment types for new lifestyles and modes of dwelling. In addition, these housing projects have consistently set new standards for engaging and strengthening the local community, provision of sunlit apartment entries and gathering spaces, energy use reduction, increases in neighborhood housing density, construction of resilient spaces of refuge, and involvement of local, minority-owned businesses. In this they may be said to be transforming generic housing into what the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck called “built homecoming.”6

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/// The fourth theme of Practice with Purpose involves the transformation of schools for the twenty-first century, which the architects define as the evolution of an educational ecology through the development of inspiring places to teach and learn. With the intention of making schools that will engender “lifelong learners and global citizens,” LMSA projects involve learning from history in the engagement of local building culture, connecting to climate and place through student interaction with natural systems, the construction of native ecology landscapes and student-grown edible gardens, building orientation to allow natural ventilation and generous daylighting, encouragement of walking, biking, and use of mass transit, and making “buildings that teach” how to live in harmony with the environment. Their school projects can adapt to continuous change through a combination of flexible, field-like spaces and memorable, landmark-like places— a new type of school space recently defined by the Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger as “learning landscapes.”7 /// The book’s fifth and final theme is adaptation: the need to reuse, adapt, and retrofit existing

INTRODUCTION

buildings as an essential way to achieve a climate-positive world.

The extensive benefits to society of an adaptive approach include the cultivation of a meaningful dialogue with time, the bringing of the past into the future and inextricably binding them to our present experience, and the conservation of both the embodied culture and embodied carbon housed in existing buildings.

LMSA argues that architects must be proactive and advocate for adaptive reuse by convincing their clients, changing public policy and building codes, and supporting innovation in building technologies. This engagement with existing buildings and with the historic neighborhoods they help form, whether by direct reuse or by making appropriate new adjacent constructions, indicates the architects’ understanding that today every architectural project should be conceived as an addition to or adaptation of a pre-existing, human-occupied place. /// In all five themes, Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects argues for focusing the transformative power of design on society’s most urgent challenges. They emphasize the critically important role advocacy plays in this effort—the need for architects to champion

FROM CONSTRUCTED REALITY TO PRACTICE WITH PURPOSE

a sustainable vision of the future, the importance of which is not always recognized by the general public, politicians, or clients. In this the architects are putting into practice the Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza’s aphorism, “Architects don’t invent anything; they transform reality.”8 Sustainability has never been a matter of simply meeting technical standards and guidelines, however enlightened. LMSA understands that the only truly sustainable buildings are those that people want to inhabit— where they want to dwell, to live, to work, to meet, and to gather.

Sustainable buildings are those that nurture our fundamental need to dwell in harmony with each other and with the planet.

This more inclusive definition of appropriate architectural practice is fundamentally concerned with the need to make each place in which architects build better than it was before construction began.

The global crisis we face can only be overcome by the massive accumulation of such incremental efforts, and this can only result from a paradigm shift in architectural practice. Such a paradigm shift requires leadership, and never has the need for leadership in addressing the profound existential threat of climate change

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and social injustice been more urgent than today. It is therefore of the utmost importance that we heed the LMSA call to “practice with purpose.”

CLIMATE ACTION DESIGNING

A ZERO-CARBON FUTURE

18 ///

ARCHITECTS ARE CHANGE AGENTS

LMSA STAFF at Global Climate Strike demonstration, San Francisco, September 2019.

CLIMATE ACTION

There’s no sugar coating this: we are living amid an accelerating climate emergency, and urgent change is needed to stave off an environmental and societal catastrophe. Building operations and construction collectively contribute 40% toward global carbon dioxide emissions,9 making the built environment one of the major contributors to climate change. Today, architects need to step up to make transformative changes to the industry and profession to decarbonize the built environment as quickly

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DESIGNING A ZERO-CARBON FUTURE

as possible, or else settle for the status quo and make future generations cope with the aftermath. /// Put another way, we need to approach design prompts as ones that prioritize living systems: spaces that prioritize stability and longevity, durability, and human health. Spaces that enhance ecologies and living systems, and bring communities together. A human-centered response to the climate emergency can yield a spectrum of creative and crucial strategies, all focused on fostering the well-being of communities into an uncertain future. /// We’ve learned that we must be nimble and flexible with how to respond to climate change. As the industry catches up to prevailing research, we are working to adapt our own practice’s approach to climate action. For example, within the last decade, we have completely pivoted our focus to carbon—including embodied carbon—rather than designing solely to optimize operational energy efficiency or energy cost savings. We have learned to communicate the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels and step up our projects’ on-site energy storage capacities. We are connecting the dots between the

industry’s reliance on fossil fuels, the dangers of gas appliances installed in buildings in wildfire-prone regions, and equity issues in the supply chain. The next ten years may yield yet more revolutions in our practice, as we are ready to anticipate an increasingly strained energy grid, the promise (and the challenges) with electric vehicle movement, the market availability of lowembodied carbon technology, and adjusting to expectations for a post-COVID society. /// We have hope. Architects have been committed to a zero-carbon future for decades. The following strategies can serve as guideposts on the journey toward a zerocarbon practice:

/// B UILDING REUSE Adaptation is a strategy that can yield immense carbon savings, but it’s not always easy to find a client who is willing to transform an existing building into a space of their own. Being at the table for early scoping decisions, such as site selection or existing building assessments, can create visioning opportunities and open possibilities in surprising ways. (See the Adaptation chapter in this book for more on this topic.)

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CLIMATE ACTION

/// P ASSIVE DESIGN /// L OW-CARBON MATERIALS AND REDUCING LOADS Reducing the embodied carbon of

Going back to basics, passive design strategies are the most basic yet still among the most important (and the most architectural) methods to make buildings resilient to climate change.

Responding to solar orientation and prevailing wind patterns and designing an efficient envelope can bridge the gap between an inefficient, uncomfortable building and a highly efficient, resilient space. In this way, loads can be reduced using just architecture.

/// A LL-ELECTRIC SYSTEMS Designing spaces that eliminate on-site fossil fuel combustion can yield tons of CO2-equivalent emissions savings and can create safer, more healthy interior environments. Systems options exist today for all-electric buildings of virtually any size and type and that suit any climate zone. Their success relies on a strong partnership with a systems-engineering team. Explore ways to investigate renewable energy sources, both on and off site.

materials in a space is one of the most important elements within an architect’s domain. Specifying materials such as low-cement concrete, recycled steel, and responsibly harvested wood is among the highest-impact strategies an architect can make to reduce carbon.

/// SEQUESTRATION The opportunity for exterior landscape design to sequester carbon is an exciting resource.

Low-impact plantings that trap and store carbon over a building’s lifetime contribute offsets to its carbon budget, with an added benefit of allowing building users to interact with nature.

/// A COMMITTED PRACTICE Perhaps the most important climate action strategy is to promote a culture of persistence and passion to equity and the environment within an architectural practice. Every architect can work toward a zero-carbon future on every project, regardless of client demand, budget, or location.

DESIGNING A ZERO-CARBON FUTURE

/// The following projects provide net-positive climate resilience with a living-systems-based approach to low-carbon design.

The Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation demonstrates that designing within an urban campus is not dissimilar to responding to the sensitivity and interconnectedness of a forest ecology.

The Nueva School Hillside Learning Complex showcases the importance of connecting to the local ecology and watershed to create a thriving learning environment. And the Edwin M. Lee Apartments show how affordable, supportive housing can play a role in responding to the climate emergency. Other lessons of low-carbon design are woven into the stories of case studies throughout the book.

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 2015

JACOBS INSTITUTE FOR DESIGN INNOVATION

CLIMATE ACTION

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DESIGNING A ZERO-CARBON FUTURE

Design innovation starts with asking the right questions and ends with changing the world.

F

jacobs institute mission statement

OUNDED ON

on the conviction that design can help address some of society’s most pressing challenges, the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, is devoted to introducing sustainable and equitable design innovation at the center of engineering education and university life.

The university’s College of Engineering conceived the project as an interdisciplinary hub for students and teachers who work at the intersection of design and technology. Jacobs Institute models high-density and low-carbon living and learning in spaces that support project-based education, rapid prototyping, and fabrication. In this way, it inspires innovation for people and the planet.

The project’s tiny corner site, formerly used as a volleyball court, lies at the northern edge of campus within a dense, diverse context. Two four-story engineering buildings border the site on the west and south, while single-family residences and apartment buildings line the street to the north. The two-level basement of adjacent Soda Hall extends beneath a third of the site.

The program, intended to accommodate up to two thousand students per semester, includes flexible design studios, project rooms, and support spaces, as well as fabrication equipment rooms containing a variety of rapid prototyping tools and equipment. The project’s sustainability goals included a minimum of LEED Gold certification, with a stretch goal of zero net energy if attainable within the limited budget.

The compact 24,000-square-foot building fosters interdisciplinary engagement. It welcomes engineering students,

inventors, tinkerers, and more than thirty-five maker clubs from across the university to an immersive, action-based environment of intensive design exploration and fabrication.

Through the concentration and transparency of creative activity, the fast-paced interaction of interdisciplinary student teams, and the immediate availability of advanced tools and materials, the learning environment models the future of collective, sustainable invention. It creates an innovation marketplace where engineering, business, architecture, premed, and other students work together.

South-facing open studios provide abundant daylight and large rolling tables invite quick reconfiguration depending upon need. Flexible support spaces lining the north side of the studios are easily converted to alternative uses to meet the requirements of a rapidly evolving curriculum. Lobbies at each end of the building provide outward-facing exhibition space for the work happening within. In support of the institute’s mission, the architecture outwardly demonstrates sustainable design innovation and advanced resource efficiency, integrating economic strategies that foster practical and poetic connections between students and the natural world.

We designed the exterior of the building as an integrated response to environmental, functional, and economic considerations. To control construction costs while meeting the project’s ambitious energy efficiency goals, we conceived the building as a simple

structure with a highly insulated skin that responds to its varied exposures.

To the north, the building serves as a striking new threshold to the campus— a beacon of innovation expressing the sustainable values of the institute and the university with a sculptural, cantilevered photovoltaic array that provides 60% of the building’s energy.

A transparent facade opens south to the sun, the College of Engineering, and the university beyond, welcoming all and revealing the hum of activity within.

A solar patio invites creative work to spill outdoors in nice weather. Glassy stairs project outward at east and west, glowing like lanterns after dark to welcome visitors. The completed project exceeded the university’s sustainability goals by achieving a 92% reduction in energy from a typical university building of its type. It was UC Berkeley’s first LEED Platinum certification.

The Jacobs Institute project makes the most with the least. It illustrates how a fully integrated design response to site, program, and budget can result in a high-performance building that successfully supports the important mission of a client and its constituents.

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I’ve always loved the saying that “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Students at UC Berkeley are part of an ethos to be engaged in their communities and create technologies and advances that improve the lives of people broadly. To me, that’s key to the future we want to invent. I wanted to create a place where the students would feel empowered to invent a better future, and I believe that has happened. paul jacobs , chair jacobs institute board

CLIMATE ACTION

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DESIGNING A ZERO-CARBON FUTURE

 SUNSHADES reduce heat gain and glare while they enliven the building envelope with a biophilic mapping of the sun’s path through the day and the seasons.

 STAIRS are a place—they celebrate movement, reduce elevator use, and encourage collaborative collisions.

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CLIMATE ACTION

LUMINOUS innovation studios optimize embodied and operational carbon reduction through spatial efficiency, flexibility of use, and ample daylighting.

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DESIGNING A ZERO-CARBON FUTURE

SMALL BUILDING, BIG IMPACT

A

p r i m a r y g o a l of resilient, low-carbon architecture is to make the most efficient use of space, materials, and resources. At first glance, the tiny 11,000-square-foot site seemed challenging as the location for a 24,000-square-foot building. When required setbacks were accounted for, the net buildable area was a mere 6,600 square feet. Then we learned of the two-level basement beneath the site, which potentially reduced the buildable area even further.

Our design focused on achieving the greatest possible plan efficiency.

The above-grade structure cantilevers twelve feet over the basement to maximize buildable area. We organized the building around large, open studios at each floor, served by smaller spaces

on the north side intended for flexible use as modeling equipment rooms, project rooms, or faculty offices. Since the building offered excellent access at the east and west ends, the design eliminated internal corridors to create an even greater plan efficiency. The lack of corridors also reinforces the collaborative learning ethos of the Jacobs Institute by fostering greater daily interconnection between studios, students, and faculty.

Since opening day, the flexibility and efficiency of space utilization has served the institute’s mission well. Many spaces have been repurposed several times; office space has been converted to equipment rooms, and then back again. The lofty third floor hosts lectures, colloquia, exhibitions, and large

classes. The open studios are equipped with electrified, mobile worktables that allow for spontaneous reconfiguration to rapidly meet the changing needs of each class.

The Jacobs Institute was originally programmed to accommodate 2,000 engineering undergraduates every semester. Today, the building serves more than 3,500 undergraduate and graduate students as well as thirty-five maker clubs. Many students now perceive the building as the home of a robust, diverse community of innovators.

INTEGRATED DESIGN weaves together site and circumstance, program and climate, people and planet.

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CLIMATE ACTION

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DESIGNING A ZERO-CARBON FUTURE

SHARING RESOURCES LIKE A FOREST

I

 THE NORTH FACADE at the edge of campus tells a story: large windows admit north light into the offices and machine room, an exhaust chimney hints at the work happening within, and a solar wing hovers above.  THE JACOBS INSTITUTE within its university ecosystem. The building relies on essential resources from Soda Hall adjacent to the south, the campus core beyond, and the sun arching overhead.

n t h e p o s t - c a r b o n a g e , we should stop thinking of our buildings as independent, isolated objects.

Communities and campuses are very much like forest ecologies: they are symbiotic ecosystems where each individual organism relies on its neighbors for solar access, shade, fertilization, infrastructure, and energy. Just as trees in a forest communicate with each other and share nutrition through underground fungal networks, individual buildings can share their resources with their neighbors, and so significantly reduce their carbon footprints. At the Jacobs Institute, resource sharing occurs in at least three dimensions.

At the campus scale, the institute shares a vibrant student population with all the other academic buildings on campus. It attracts extraordinary human energy every day from across the university from enthusiastic design thinkers who have grown a fertile creative community around the invention of a just, sustainable future.

At the building scale, the institute connects underground to neighboring engineering buildings, providing access to their expansive academic resources, including sophisticated metal and wood fabrication shops, wind tunnels, and other advanced research tools.

The sustainable design attributes of Jacobs Institute, including abundant natural light, high ceilings, and natural ventilation, make it so comfortable that it’s easy for faculty and students to spend many hours there without feeling tired. Jacobs Institute is one of the most popular instructional spaces on campus. scott shackleton former assistant dean uc berkeley college of engineering

At the level of energy consumption, the institute depends upon a symbiotic relationship with a neighboring building. Early in design, we became aware that Soda Hall—a much larger building directly to the south of the institute—had recently received an upgrade of more efficient HVAC equipment, resulting in a surplus of hot and chilled water. We designed the institute to tap this surplus energy source for space heating and cooling, and this provided both cost and energy savings for the project.

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DESIGNING A ZERO-CARBON FUTURE

COMMUNICATING INNOVATION

A

 PHOTOVOLTAIC ARRAY illustrates the importance of clients as enthusiastic collaborators. Shown here on approach from the center of campus, the PV array was originally excluded from the project scope due to budgetary constraints. It was ultimately included because our client and project champion, Assistant Dean of the College of Engineering Scott Shackleton, personally secured funding for it.

k e y p r o j e c t g o a l for both UC Berkeley and the building’s lead donor was that the building serve as a striking new threshold to the campus—a beacon of innovation that would express the university’s role as a global leader. Since innovation is, by definition, constantly evolving and rapidly outdated, we sought methods of communicating this idea that would have lasting meaning.

One response is a cantilevered photovoltaic array that addresses multiple design intentions. It provides 60% of the building’s energy, helping to reduce total building energy usage by 94% from the national average for university buildings. The array also communicates the advanced sustainable agendas of both the building and the design programs within. Finally, by facing south and ascending to the north toward the community beyond, the hovering wing communicates a visceral, sculptural expression of aspiration toward a regenerative future.

We wanted to provide in the entry lobbies and stairs an interior finish element that would communicate design culture in a timeless way. The concept was to digitize a meaningful graphic and CNC-route the pattern into plywood wall and ceiling panels. While discussing potential imagery with the faculty, they suggested the idea of mounting a university-wide student design competition to find the answer. The winning scheme, by Anna Thompson, a student in the master of landscape architecture degree program, was inspired by photos of the hand gestures her fellow students make while talking about design.

Echoing the oldest known art made by humans—the 64,000-year-old hand paintings found in prehistoric caves in Europe and Asia—these panels remind students of their primeval heritage while suggesting that, even in the digital age, the hand remains one of our primary tools for design and innovation.

Jacobs Institute is a project that overdelivered on its climate goals. While it was designed to reduce energy use by 70–75%, the post-occupancy results indicate that it reached 94% reduction, despite more intensive classroom and lab usage than anticipated. The building is one of the best case studies I use in my own classes for showing that maxing out on-site renewable energy, designing toward flexibility and change of use over time, and basic passive design strategies are all interconnected. gwen fuertes architect , lms A

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CLIMATE ACTION

DESIGNING A ZERO-CARBON FUTURE

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TAKE ACTION

TAKE ACTION: DESIGN A MISSION-DRIVEN PRACTICE New technology or new laws?

Preach hope or warn about sacrifice?

Punish polluters or build green businesses? On the brink of climate catastrophe, it’s all of the above. “ the

climate issue ,” new york times magazine june

27, 2021

As the global ecological and societal emergency escalates around us, anxiety, confusion, and anger lie barely beneath the surface of daily life, erupting ever more frequently into view. Many wistfully yearn for “the way things used to be” yet are unable to see that “the way things used to be” is precisely what has brought us all to the point where severe climate disruption, mass species extinction, festering racism, social injustice, and cultural division are colliding everywhere, all at once.

Events of the day are so complex and unrelenting that common responses to them range from angry denial to a profound sense of helplessness. What can one person possibly do? ///

A s creative problem solvers trained to see possibilities and bring them to life in a messy, complicated world, architects are u niquely prepared to contribute vision and leadership in this dire moment.

There is no one solution. We must try “all of the above,” contributing our creativity and our passion to take positive action, putting the transformative power of design to work as a catalyst for change. We begin by showing up every day to act upon our values. Redefine the traditional role of architects as professional service providers and embrace new roles as creative stewards of our communities and change agents for the common good. Design and build equitable, resilient communities that promote a fair, healthy, and prosperous future for everyone. This is mission-driven design. /// There is no secret recipe for designing a mission-driven practice. Each approach is entirely circumstantial, based upon the personal values, priorities, and economic realities of individual practitioners, as well as the principles and aspirations of the communities they serve. Deciding to initiate a mission-driven practice is the first step, with the understanding that every small act

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DESIGN A MISSION-DRIVEN PRACTICE

ripples out to influence collective progress. No project is too small.

We must all do our part. /// Here are a few places to start.

/// C OMMUNICATE YOUR VALUES Establish a practice based upon clearly stated values, vision, and goals.

/// A TTRACT MISSION-DRIVEN PROJECTS Develop long-term relationships with clients, collaborators, and communities with whom you share common values. Create compelling project narratives and circulate them widely. In this way, you can move from chasing mission-driven projects to having them come to you.

/// B E SELECTIVE WHEN YOU CAN Position your practice so that every project advances your mission. This means developing the economic stability to pass up projects that don’t fit whenever possible.

/// S URF THE BOTTOM HALF OF THE WAVE Amid the ebb and flow of economic tides, design your practice to surf at the bottom half of the wave, staying nimble and keeping your head (and overhead) down.

Strive to be fiscally conservative and radical by design.

/// P RACTICE DIVERSITY Diversity makes us resilient. Seek out designers from underrepresented communities to provide new perspectives. Cultivate a strategic diversity of project types to cushion economic fluctuations.

/// R IGHT-SIZING PRACTICE With powerful digital tools at hand, practice size no longer limits project scale as it once did. Gather smart, action-oriented colleagues who share your values and goals.

Design a practice size and culture that support a diversity of project types while retaining a sense of common purpose.

/// C OLLABORATIVE WORKSPACE Despite the recent rapid growth of remote work, there is no substitute

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for a face-to-face design environment that promotes an educational transparency of purpose, process, and action. Creativity loves company.

/// A DVANCE BEST PRACTICES Sign on to the AIA 2030 Commitment and report your data every year. Integrate the AIA Framework for Design Excellence at every project phase. Stay abreast of rapidly evolving knowledge bases in zero-carbon design, embodied carbon reduction, and equity-based design. Actively seek adaptive reuse projects in your community.

/// S ERVE YOUR COMMUNITY Share your expertise with your neighbors, communicating the urgency to take climate action, build community resilience, and advance smart, integrated urban planning.

/// A DVOCATE FOR CHANGE Become an activist architect, advocating for rapid adoption of zero-carbon building codes; greater equity, diversity, and inclusion; more affordable housing; better schools; and an easier path

TAKE ACTION

for economic adaptive reuse.

///

The year 2021 was yet another unsettling milestone in world history, sixth on the list of hottest years since 1880. The November 2021 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, billed as the “last, best hope”36 to save the planet, yielded less meaningful action than promised.

Global-temperature rise above preindustrial levels has reached 1.1°C, and climate scientists predict fewer than eight years before the critical threshold of 1.5°C is reached, risking climate catastrophe. Time is running out, and radical action is urgently required by all. As a profession, architects have sometimes struggled for relevance—if not survival—in a turbulent world.

But today, our communities and our planet face an extraordinary emergency that we are uniquely qualified to help address. Now is our moment. In the history of architecture, there has never been a more important time to be an architect.

DESIGNING A ZERO-CARBON FUTURE

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/// ACKNOWLEDGMENTS w e ’ d l i k e t o e x p r e s s o u r d e e p g r at i t u d e to our colleagues who contributed their time and talents to producing Practice with Purpose: Gwen Fuertes, Aaron Thornton, Hayley Scott, Ezra Leader, and Mithila Jagtap.

Sincere thanks to our esteemed friends Edward Mazria and Robert McCarter for their excellent framing of the context for this book. Thanks also to Clare Jacobson and Martin Venezky for so capably guiding the editing and design of this book.

current collaborators leadership

Ryan Jang Gregg Novicoff Aaron Thornton Vanna Whitney Jasen Bohlander Idit Harlev Ian Ashcraft-Williams Dominique Elie Gwen Fuertes Mario Russo Corey Schnobrich Aruna Bolisetty Yung Chang Anna de Anguera Mykenzie Combs Christopher Detjen Nicholas Elster Mithila Jagtap Alice Kao Frances Kwong Sally Lape

Cristian Laurent Caroline Lebar Princess Martinez Cecily Ng Hannah Novack Enrique Sanchez Hayley Scott Sara Sepandar Alexander Siegel Emily Wang Jennifer Winnett Francke Wurzelbacher past collaborators

Jacob Aftreth Andrew Appleton Sade Borghei Casey Boswell Aaron Brumo Leigh Jane Bryant Kimberly Cailteux (Newsham) Chris Cary Je’Nen Chastain

Our practice would not be possible without the diverse community of visionary clients, public officials, consultants, contractors, and colleagues who have shared our passion for practice with purpose for the past twenty-three years. We are indebted to them all. Finally, we are particularly grateful to our gifted collaborators, both present and past, who are listed below. william leddy , faia , marsha maytum , faia , richard stacy , faia

Mark Chenchin Natalia Chetvernina Melissa Chou Jerome Christensen Erin Clinch Catherine Clow Elisha Cohen Angus Eade Aleksandr Faynleyb Adam Franch Phoebe Geonzon Palmyra Stefania Geraki Abigail Hammett Michael Hennessey Denise Hilton Michael Hinchcliffe Michelle Huber Jenni Ibanez Morgan Jones Sean Kennedy Laura Klinger Edward Kopelson Michael Kothke Katharine Lafsky Stanton

Ezra Leader Adrianna Leung Renata Li Jacqueline Liu Christopher Longman Marygrace Lopez Mattison Ly Jeffrey Marsch Christina Marsh Katherine Martin Christopher May Claudia Merzario Bob Mohr Thomas Monahan Beth Morris Nathan Nagai Rachel Najafi Sayoko Nakamura Steven Neil Kim Kirk Nelson Yoo Ju No Kathy Ortega Christopher Roach Anne Roderer Howard Russell III Kohei Sasakawa

Roberto Sheinberg Jessica Soberanes John Son Colin Speer Charles Stott Elizabeth Surya Sannihita Takkallapalli Luke Taylor-Brown Yung Tran Lindsey Rae Trogdon Christina Troup Mahsa Vanaki Mallory Van Ness Esselman Christine Van Wagenen Matthew Wadlund John Westell Zachary Whiteman Elizabeth Zavala Yuyi Zheng

/// CONTRIBUTORS e d wa r d m a z r i a , fa i a is founder and CEO of the nonprofit Architecture 2030 and is an internationally recognized architect, author, researcher, and educator. Over the past four decades, his research into the sustainability, resilience, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions of the built environment has helped redefine the role of architecture, planning, design, and building in reshaping our world. He was awarded the 2021 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for his “unwavering voice and leadership” in the fight against global warming and the 2021 Global Human Settlements Outstanding Contribution Award and Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Council for Science, among other honors.

is a practicing architect, author, and Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis; he has also taught at the University of Florida, Columbia University, and five other schools. He is the author of twenty-four books, including Louis I. Kahn (2nd edition), Marcel Breuer, The Space Within, Aldo van Eyck, Alvar Aalto, Carlo Scarpa, Understanding Architecture (with Juhani Pallasmaa), and Frank Lloyd Wright. In 2018 McCarter was an International Exhibitor in the 16th Venice Biennale of Architecture, and he was named one of the Ten Best Architecture Teachers in the US in 2009. r o b e r t m cc a r t e r