Design the Future – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Dr. Mae-ling Lokko is an Assistant Professor at Yale University’s School of Architecture and Yale’s Center for Ecosystems in Architecture (Yale CEA) and the founder of Willow Technologies Ltd., in Accra, Ghana. 

As an architectural scientist, designer, and educator from Ghana and the Philippines, her work focuses on the design and integration of biogenic material practices across the agricultural, architectural and textile sectors. This year, she joined the board of the International Living Future Institute.

She references the importance of breaking boundaries between silos and communities because, she says, “the materials that we work with surely do.” She is proud of her many collaborations across and between academic, industry, and communities: “We are are advancing top-down and bottom-up approaches to getting these biobased materials not just known but normalized” in the AEC community. Throughout her work, Mae-ling is inspired by the stories of how biobased materials were used over long periods of time in different societies, “which offer us clues for how they could be used today and in the future.”

Lu Salinas has been working in the green building industry since 2006 -- with firms and on projects in the US, Australia, Southeast Asia, and Mexico, where she works today. Her consulting firm, THREE Environmental Consulting, has worked on everything from small affordable housing projects to large infrastructure projects such as the New International Mexico City Airport in Texcoco. 

She grew up in Mexico in a family of civil engineers, and happened upon the James Wines book, Sustainable Architecture, in the early 2000s, which sparked her awareness of and interest in the field. 

She sees the international green building industry from Mexico and has built THREE to help advance the level of the work in that region. “I am especially proud of our company’s rule,” she says. “We always do what’s right. I think we have held to this -- doing what is right for the most people.”

Salins is proud to be a part of the movement, which she sees as “an infinite one -- in which people are passing the baton to others.” Salinas takes issue, however, with the idea that the next generation will be the one to address climate change. “The responsibility is with every generation that is currently living,” she says. “We all need to be doing something.” 

Noorie Rajvanshi is Director of Sustainability and Climate Strategy at Siemens USA, part of a multinational technology company. 

Noorie talked to us about her family’s sustainability roots, her mechanical engineering background, and how her fascination with quantifying environmental impact led to her role at Siemens. She is proud of her work on performance tools to support cities with ambitious GHG reduction goals and of her current work on carbon pricing.

Noorie calls herself a climate optimist and a climate realist. And she says that she feels part of a movement -- one that is changing for the better. “The movement is not as exclusive as it once was. Some folks might scoff about the notion that ‘everyone is a sustainability professional’ but I think that is the goal we are working towards. Sustainability is not an additional thing, it is part of our everyday work."

Noorie told us that the people who inspire her most right now are the people, such as electricians, who are changing their jobs to do more of what’s ahead because of the sustainability movement. “They are becoming experts on heat pumps and EV chargers and more -- and that’s inspiring to me.”

Dr. Veena Singla is Senior Scientist with the People & Communities Program at the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). 

She seeks to address health disparities linked to harmful environmental exposures using an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating environmental health, exposure science, public health, and policy expertise. Her research investigates how toxic chemicals and pollution related to systems of materials use, production, and disposal threaten the health of communities. 

“If you work on buildings, you're actually working on health and justice, even if you didn't think about it that way,” she says. “Green building has influenced health and justice in both positive and negative ways. I've seen the movement expand from a more narrow focus on energy and greenhouse gasses to a more holistic approach. We are now thinking about how buildings fit into our lives, and trying to better integrate health equity and justice.”

Seema Bhangar is a Healthy Buildings & Communities Principal at the US Green Building Council; she focuses on research and innovation. She is also a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment. If you are interested in the field of human health and buildings, Seema advises you to “collect data and be curious and discerning and honest. We have evaluate impact and ask what we do not know.” Seema is working with a new team to rebuild a dedicated research function at USGBC. She is fueled, she says, by the magic that happens “when we bring researchers to our communities of practice.” 

Seema is deeply proud of the network of people she has cultivated during her career so far, "people who value having a vision, who ask questions at the right scales, and who voice their opinions," she says. "In buildings and health, it’s not about the individual superstar. The nodes are people. Each one has a set of expertise and knowledge, and we really advance when we connect and share.” 

She is excited for the frontiers that are now being explored in the movement. “Health is different than energy, so we’re using different methods than we did for the other pillars,” she says. “The community today has many tools and  appreciates the need for urgency and scale.”

Materials maven Annie Bevan is a facilitator, consultant, and collaborator focused on creating large-scale change and leveraging sustainability as a strategic business enabler. She’s effecting this through two roles: she is CEO of SMS Collaborative and CEO of mindful MATERIALS.

The mindful MATERIALS organization began as steward of a library tool. (That tool started at HKS, which gifted the idea to the built environment community.) Today it is a nonprofit convener, aggregator, and aligner centered on the Common Materials Framework — a system for thinking about products and holistic impact.

“We want building product manufacturer to hear a consistent language," Annie says, "so they can respond. Sustainable products should be the norm, not the option.”

Her consulting firm provides staffing solutions, mostly to manufacturers who are trying to do this work and talk about it effectively. 

Annie says that she worries that we’re getting carbon tunnel vision. “We need to bear in mind how broad this challenge is,” she says. “We have to attend to social health, equity, circularity, and biodiversity. We have to -- and we can -- solve these problems at the same time.” 

Through her consultancy, AIRLIT studio, Alejandra Menchaca provides expertise in mechanical engineering and building science to owners and design teams. One of her current projects will be the first performing arts facility in the US with full natural ventilation.  Ale holds a PhD in mechanical engineering and has taught at MIT and Harvard GSD, where she has mentored, she says, “several brilliant students who have become inspiring disruptors in the building simulation industry. That’s immensely rewarding.”

We talked to Ale about growing up in Mexico and her shift from aerospace engineering  to environmental stewardship and building science and her time at Payette and Thornton Tomasetti before starting her own firm. Ale co-founded Project StaSIO, a community of building performance simulators (consultants, architects, in-house building scientists) that strives to teach others how to ask the right building analytics questions and convey the results in ways that are beautiful and impactful (not tables!).

When we asked whether she feels like she’s part of a movement, Ale didn’t hesitate: “If speaking up and disagreeing with the status quo is being part of the movement, I'm definitely a member..” 

Victoria Burrows is a manager of portfolio development and industry partnerships at Kompas, an early-stage venture capital firm backing innovations for decarbonizing the built environment and manufacturing. Decarbonization has been the focus of Victoria’s career to date (her prior role was leading Advancing Net Zero at the World Green Building Council), and she lives it, too. She is renovating her own net zero home in France. 

Victoria is  excited to be working in venture capital right now because, she says, "the market needs a suite of solutions for every part of the problem -- solutions that are cost effective and reduce emissions. I’m energized to be on the ‘how’ side of things, helping to bring these solutions to fruition.”

Through Kompas, she is advancing innovations towards decarbonization that include technology such as AI and robotics to increase efficiency throughout the value chain. “I think the private sector has a responsibility to operate well in advance of regulation to prove the possible and show it can be done,” she says. This is part of creating confidence in governments so that they can set policy roadmaps and regulations. Activating the flow of sustainable finance to the solutions is critical. I want to see all finance linked to performance outcomes.”

Ariane Laxo is Sustainability Director at HGA, an architecture and engineering firm of 1,000 people in 12 offices. We talked to Ariane about her work, what she draws on to lead, and how she finds strength in the purpose of sustainability. She advises others to listen to the curiosity that pulls them and cultivate an introspective mindset. 

In addition to stewarding projects at HGA that demonstrate a holistic approach to design and deeply integrated sustainability, Ariane is also working on change management at the firm, which includes cultivating an inclusive culture and a distributed network of intelligence around sustainability, equity, and community action. The company has prioritized transparency and and is engaged in research internally and with outside partners.

Ariane appreciates the progress she is seeing in transdisciplinary thinking and would like to see greater advancement toward a circular economy in the building industry. “I hope that 200 years from now, historians will look at this moment as the fulcrum, the moment everything changed,” she says. “We are shaping a regenerative future.”

Mary Ann Piette is the Interim Associate Lab Director of the Energy Technologies Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She manages a research enterprise comprised of 700 staff and affiliates, including 120 principal investigators working across a broad set of technology R&D programs to accelerate decarbonization ranging from demand-side energy efficiency and grid integration to hydrogen technologies, energy storage, and renewable energy systems. 

We had a terrific time talking to Mary Ann about her mechanical engineering background and how she thinks about buildings, energy, comfort, and grids. She’s focused on four pillars of decarbonization: energy efficiency, electrification, grid integration, and distributed energy resources.

She wrote a chapter for a new book, Women in Renewable Energy (by Katherine T. Wang and Jill S. Tietjen (Springer, 2023) about using building loads dynamically for low-carbon energy systems. “When we change our electricity system to be based on wind and solar, we need to integrate with demand side systems,” she says. “Grid-scale storage is important, but flexible demand can be much more cost effective.” And she points out that this is part of a significant gap in current built environment conditions. “If we are are going to accelerate progress, we need to understand and utilize the feedback between design and operations.”