One Earth

Sustainability, LEED, energy efficiency — we hear the terms everywhere. So what’s the future of sustainability in commercial real estate?

While energy modeling efforts and LEED checklists are certainly proving the value of sustainable development over the life cycle of green buildings, those tools are only the beginning. True sustainable development is really about the bigger picture — a promise for a bright, green future, without compromising today’s needs.

Humanity as a whole is using the planet’s resources as if we had 1.3 Earths. If we all lived like Americans do, we would be using the resources of 5 Earths. It’s clear to see that we need to take a more holistic approach to integrating sustainability as a fundamental of design excellence in the built environment. A local architecture firm adopted a design philosophy that embraces the question, “Can we live abundantly within the limits of One Earth?” The firm is working toward this goal through an approach to Design for One Earth.

One Earth Sustainability
The Design for One Earth framework encourages holistic design through systems thinking. Systems thinking provides better solutions by looking at whole systems and their interconnections, rather than addressing individual design components separately.
Creating truly sustainable built environments requires optimizing the triple bottom line of environmental, economic and social priorities. Design for One Earth is a philosophy that expands on the triple bottom line by identifying values and measures that define sustainable lifestyles and built environments at all scales.

The Design for One Earth values include:

• Zero Energy
• Carbon Neutral
• Water Balance
• Materials Balance
• Zero Waste
• Land Balance
• Visionary
• Resilience
• Prosperity
• Happiness
• Beauty
• Health
  

These values have real-life application in design. By considering just one of the values, such as resiliency, we can see how it addresses commercial real estate values. Resilience is part stability and part adaptability. It is a quality that promotes long-term viability and the ability to weather adversity. Buildings are typically designed and built to last 25 to 50 years or more. Incorporating resiliency through the sustainable design process helps promote long-term value growth.

Within the built environment, the long-term view is as important as a design’s initial energy consumption model. The question now goes beyond just how much energy or water might be saved, to questions about how the building will stay relevant and valuable in a rapidly changing future. By creating built environments that are adaptable and enduring, we see a continuing return in our sustainable design investments throughout a project’s lifetime.

Built Environments
Real life examples are under construction, many of these across the Western United States.

In Golden, Colo., one of the world’s largest zero-energy buildings is under construction and scheduled for completion in June 2010. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Research Support Facilities (RSF) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is a 218,000 SF office building, that is designed as a prototype for commercially replicable zero-energy buildings.

The NREL RSF project shows a zero-energy building future. Buildings are optimized for multiple climate responsive passive strategies, and then complemented by very efficient mechanical and electrical systems — extending even into the design of the data center and the IT system for the building.

The development is an H-shaped building comprised of two long thin wings, or “fingers,” with the proper solar orientation and a connecting spine. The building was designed in section first to ensure proper daylighting, natural ventilation, thermal mass, transpired solar collection and photovoltaic energy generation.

The simple but sophisticated energy solutions demonstrated in the RSF and a Design for One Earth approach are moving us toward a new reality, where large-scale, net-zero-energy buildings in government and commercial building sectors are the new sustainable new baseline.

Article written for AZRE by Craig Randock, AIA, LEED AP, who is a principal at RNL Phoenix, www.rnldesign.com.