When the 10th annual Living Future unConference came to a close just last week, architects, engineers, city planners, and visionaries from around the world left Seattle with the energy and ideas necessary to transform the built environment.

Attendees stand with ILFI CEO Amanda Sturgeon (second from right) and advertise their own visions for a Living Future. Photo by Danielle Barnum.

The conference opened on Wednesday, May 11th, and was filled with a series of workshops and summits surrounding this year’s theme of Truth + Transparency.

Attendees chat about truth and transparency. Photo by Danielle Barnum.

As some attendees discussed how to achieve net positive water in building design, others took tours of Living Buildings in the area. The Bullitt Center, as the world’s first six-story class A Living Building, was high on many’s priority list, while Heron Hall–home to ILFI founder and Chair of the Board Jason F. McLennan–served as another popular tour spot. In the afternoon, attendees met to discuss biophilic design, the water cycle of buildings and more.

At the opening-night keynote on Wednesday, Steve Curwood, host of critically-acclaimed radio show Living on Earth, spoke about solutions needed to heal the earth. He left the audience with a new sense of how to reconcile humanity’s relationship with the environment and encouraged listeners to reach across partisan lines to engage in political dialogue.

Steve Curwood discusses the intersection of politics and the environment. Photo by Danielle Barnum.

Thursday kicked off with a video showcasing the future leaders of the environmental movement and asked attendees what will they promise to do to ensure that all children will inherit a living future.

Chalkboards invited participants to write their vision of a Living Future. Photo by Danielle Barnum.

Then, morning keynotes by ILFI CEOs past and present: Jason F. McLennan and Amanda Sturgeon took the stage to talk about how the Living Building community began, where we’ve gone, and the hurdles we have yet to cross.

ILFI CEO Amanda Sturgeon presents former CEO Jason F. McLennan with an award at LF16. Photo by Danielle Barnum.

Amanda took the audience on a journey through her life, from her grandfather’s greenhouse in the U.K. to the rugged outdoors of Australia, ultimately revealing what impassions her to pursue biophilic design. It is under Amanda’s direction that ILFI continues to create communities for everyone.

CEO Amanda Sturgeon rallies the crowd. Photo by Danielle Barnum.

The Equity Drafting Table, held in partnership with King County, engaged passersby in equity in their own communities. Participants tallied whether or not they feel a sense of community where they live, chatted with others about their experiences of injustice, and brought solutions to the table. The focus of the installation is to draw attention to the need to also create social sustainability and remove racial, class-based and sex-based disparities.

The Equity Drafting Table engaged participants in questions of social justice. Photo by Danielle Barnum.

Thursday night, keynote Juan Martinez, today a National Geographic young explorer, spoke about growing up in a low-income Latino/a community in south-central Los Angeles. Witnessing street fires and gun battles as a young child informed his vision of justice, and he became involved in the Sierra Club’s first environmental justice academy. Juan also brought two mentees onstage to share their own journeys and life experiences.

Juan Martinez, environmental justice advocate and National Geographic fellow. Photo by Danielle Barnum.

CEO Amanda Sturgeon stands with the 2016 Heroes. Photo by Danielle Barnum.

That night, the Institute also announced its 2016 Hero Awards. Selected individuals have nurtured the Living Building Challenge as a movement – locally, regionally, nationally and internationally, and have led by example. The 2016 Heroes range from experts in regenerative design to pioneers in municipal leadership. They are the stalwarts in the regenerative design movement and are paving the way for future generations.

This year’s Heroes are:

• Kevin Hydes, President and CEO, Integral Group
• Ted van der Linden, Board of Directors, International Living Future Institute
• Mary Tod Winchester, Vice President of Administration & Operations, Chesapeake Bay Foundation
• Greg Mella, Vice President and Co-Director of Sustainable Design, SmithGroupJJR
• Patti Southard, Program Manager, King County Green Tools
• Peter Doo, President, Doo Consulting, LLC
• Lorraine Doo, Principal, Doo Consulting, LLC
• Hervé Moal, Director of Development and Innovation, Astrance

A selection of Ecotone books about Living Buildings were available at the bookstore. Photo by Danielle Barnum.

We also announced three (3) newly certified Living Buildings, bringing the total number of buildings achieving the world’s most rigorous green buildings program to 11. Additionally, nine (9) new projects have been certified Net Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB). Today’s certification brings the total certified projects in the Living Building Challenge (LBC) to 44 worldwide, with an additional 331 projects in the pipeline. Learn more about the newly-certified projects here. 

The Brock Environmental Center, a Certified Living Building in Virginia Beach, VA

Living Buildings:

• The Chesapeake Bay Brock Environmental Center (Virginia Beach, VA)
• Old Oak Dojo (Boston, MA)
• Dixon Water Foundation, Betty and Clint Josey Pavilion (Leo, TX)

Net Zero Energy Buildings (NZEBs):

• zHome Phase II (Issaquah, WA)
• DPR San Francisco (San Francisco, CA)
• DPR San Diego (San Diego, CA)
• Sustainable Dreams (Edmonds, WA)
• PNC Bank Davies and Andrew Branch (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
• Chrisney Branch Library – Lincoln Heritage Public Library (Chrisney, IN)
• 2938 Madrona (Bellingham, WA)
• Ballard NZE House (Seattle, WA)
• Journey to Net Zero (Seattle, WA)

Petal projects:

• NRDC Midwest Office Expansion (Chicago, IL)
• UniverCity Childcare (Vancouver, Canada)
• VanDusen Botanical Gardens i(Vancouver, Canada)
• Mohawk Design Studio (Dalton, Georgia)

To top everything off, the Living Product Challenge announced its first two certified projects from Owens Corning and Sirewall. ASSA ABLOY was awarded the Manufacturers Visionary award for leadership in the product transparency movement. The evening culminated with Denis Hayes receiving the Award of Excellence for his service on ILFI’s Board of Directors and commitment to the environmental movement. 

Denis Hayes providing a bonus keynote.

Friday came quickly, with Ed Mazria of 2030 Architecture expounding upon his vision of a radical building standard: to have all new buildings carbon-neutral by 2030. From detailing his presentations before the United Nations to his comprehensive work steering buildings toward a low-impact model, Ed enthused attendees by providing data and concrete statistics that prove a carbon-neutral urban environment is not only possible but probable.

Ed Mazria of Architecture 2030. Photo by Danielle Barnum.

One of the highlights of the conference occurred on the last day with an educational session entitled “Designing Equity in Our Communities Through Cultural Understanding.” In it, social justice leaders confronted issues such as affordable housing, access to nutritious food, public safety, community-based health care models, and equitable transportation systems in TEDx-style presentations. Then, attendees examined the lifecycle of projects and incorporated concepts of inclusivity and justice into the design process.

Conference attendees discuss equity. Photo by Danielle Barnum.

The world’s leading companies filled the halls with the Living Future trade show, where they displayed their healthy products and innovative services.

Jarami Bond, Sustainability Coordinator at Interface

This week, as the movers and shakers of Living Future 2016 return to their offices, job sites, and homes, they do so with a renewed commitment to build regenerative communities. Together, we are shaping a world that responds to climate change in its very form–that heals the world through the built environment.

Check out our photos of yourselves and fellow attendees here!

Reveal, a program run by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), aims to make commercial buildings’ energy use more transparent and therefore broaden people’s access to information in the corporate sphere. By labeling a particular building’s electricity consumption, Reveal targets an invisible and oft-hidden component of physical structures. The Reveal label brings forward numerics and data in an easily accessible manner so that a building becomes imprinted–quite literally–with its own energy footprint.

Reveal does not designate any renewable energy requirement. Instead, the immediate goal is transparency, with the understanding that labeling keeps a building’s energy use in the forefront of employees’, executives’, consumers’, and citizens’ minds alike. Following on such transparency, many companies and owners may voluntarily choose to invest in renewable energy and thereby improve their Reveal label. Reveal, therefore, is a vital ingredient of the renewable energy economy, a stepping-stone to forthright and honest business relations that millions of citizens desire.

Beyond a building’s energy use, a Reveal label also designates the building type, location, local climate region, and square footage. In addition, it denotes a building’s energy use as compared to an average building of its type, plus the building’s renewable energy production as a percentage of its total energy use. Going above and beyond mere numbers, the Reveal label marks a building’s place in its local environment as well as in the energy economy as a whole.

Make no mistake–Reveal carries the potential to transform the urban environment. By imagining a city in which all buildings display their energy use, Reveal shapes a future where the grid is smart, energy sources are renewable, and builders committed to reducing their footprint.

We sat down with Brendan Cook, manager of the Reveal program at the ILFI, to find out about how the label works.

Question: What is the purpose of Reveal?
Brendan Cook: Reveal is a transparency label for buildings. It is meant to share buildings’ energy consumption with the world.

Q: Why make a building-specific energy tool?
BC: The Reveal label will educate stakeholders about your building’s performance, boosting its visibility, transparency and sustainability profile. More and more, buildings’ energy use is as much a part of their profile as the design and location.  Be a leader! Reveal is a simple, easy tool to communicate your building’s energy efficiency profile.

Q: Can you explain what an EUI means?
BC: An EUI (Energy Use Intensity) is a metric designed to measure and compare energy efficiency by looking at the amount of energy used (in kBtu) per square foot per year (kBtu/ft2/year).  To get this figure, you need your total building energy use for one year and the size of the project in square feet.

Q: What is the potential for the Reveal program?
BC: There are three main reasons to pursue Reveal:

1. It’s an excellent marketing tool and an ILFI-verified program.
2. Understanding EUI drives change and highlights your project’s efficiency.
3. It’s affordable!

Cities, companies and nonprofits are all looking for benchmarking programs for energy efficiency. The potential for Reveal to grow is huge!

Q: How many Reveal labels are there?
BC: There are 29 as of our launch.

Q: What are the largest projects you’re working on?
BC: The Edith Green Wendall Wyatt Federal Building, Vestas America HQ, and all ILFI-Certified NZEB/Energy Petal and LBC Projects.

Q: Can you share an inspiring anecdote about a company that recently applied for a Reveal label?
BC: Here’s an account from Glumac, one of our Reveal partners:

With a mission to deliver “Green Buildings that Work,” Glumac happily agreed to partner with ILFI to help test out its new REVEAL label for energy efficient building performance.

Glumac actively tracks post-occupancy building energy and water use data from its projects and analyzes it to inform new designs. The firm believes the REVEAL label aligns with its design philosophy. Justin Di Palo of Glumac explains, “As an engineer and energy analyst, measurement and verification are my feedback loop. Without real data on building performance, it’s nearly impossible to calibrate and optimize our design and modeling processes, strategies, and techniques.” The firm finds the REVEAL label especially important in providing a third-party verification of its projects’ building performance. “Having a third party review our results and help provide a sole source to define the actual building EUIs adds tremendous credibility to the results and claims we market for our past projects,” says Mitch Dec, Senior Energy Analyst at Glumac.

The firm has submitted two high performing buildings, including the Vestas North American Headquarters and the GSA Edith Green Wendell Wyatt administration building. The owners are proud of their buildings’ accomplishments including a deep renovation of an existing building and LEED Platinum certification. The GSA building in particular boasts an on-going Energy Star score of 99. They see the extra marketing benefit that the REVEAL label brings.

Q: What have been the most impressive results of Reveal so far?
BC: The ease of understanding and recognition that it’s a useful market tool with excellent design.

Photo: Vestas Headquarters, Courtesy of Glumac

The floods that struck São Paulo in early 2015 quickly overwhelmed urban infrastructure, transforming roads into rivers and washing cars away. The region as a whole, however, suffered from severe drought. São Paulo, whose 12 million inhabitants make it the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere, was watching its reservoirs dry up. When the storm abided, the reservoirs were still dry—and the drought continued for months.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of weather events in São Paulo, and many municipalities lack the resources to stave off the worst effects. Moreover, marginalized communities are often hit the hardest: São Paulo’s slums (also known as favelas), neglected by the government for decades, witness a disproportionate amount of destruction when flooding hits. Already lacking infrastructure for water and waste, favelas face increased threats with the accumulation of standing water. Across Brazil, particularly strong storms have displaced entire communities. For millions of citizens in the Global South, the effective mitigation of climate change is a necessity for everyday life.

At the University of São Paulo, a group of architecture students is combatting climate change head-on. Led by Professor Lara Leite Barbosa at the College of Architecture and Urbanism, the students hope to alleviate the effects of flooding by providing stations where citizens can escape high water. Since levees break and river diversion causes untold ecological damage, the students work directly with people where they live rather than modify the landscape. Their solution? Portable bathrooms designed to ship across Brazil when flooding strikes.

Photo Credit: Apis Project

The bathroom scheme, titled Project Apis, is named after the Latin word for bees. “The Apis Project bears this name because its biggest goal is to promote a boon for society that’s carried out in a collaborative way, from its conception to its construction,” says Dr. Barbosa. Her architecture students are not just sitting in classrooms mulling over blueprints, but are venturing out to communities affected by the flooding and assessing human need.

“The inspiration for this project came from my doctoral thesis,” explains Dr. Barbosa. “I studied the relationship between nomadism and sustainability, analyzing projects that combined mobility with thoughtful use of material and energy resources.” She points out that when floods strike, getting people out of flooded areas and into shelter is essential. But shelters quickly become unsanitary if there aren’t bathroom facilities for everyone. Shelters are also difficult to move, and of little use in the face of sudden, sporadic floods. This is where the students’ designs come in.

Dr. Barbosa challenges her students to think outside the box of single-location structures, and simultaneously pushes them to use local materials. Twenty-first-century disaster response in Brazil may yet incorporate ecological, human-centric design—in fact, these elements are necessary to bolster resilience against climate change.

Most government relief programs rely on citizens getting themselves to shelter. In the favelas, though, poor road and nonexistent transportation leave many residents stranded. “The bathrooms can function independently of the existing urban infrastructure,” says Marina Lima Medeiros, a student working on Project Apis. In concept, the bathrooms can be deployed anywhere there is need, circumventing established relief routes and directly reaching citizens.

Each bathroom contains single-sex showers, sinks, toilets, and dressing rooms. Designed to serve around 60 people per day, a single bathroom functions as an independent unit and eliminates the need to connect to municipal water or sewage systems. Therefore, says Dr. Barbosa, the bathrooms “reduce the spread of infectious diseases and other health problems due to lack of public health accommodations.”

Portability is key to the project’s success, so the bathrooms are designed to be compact, fitting into shipping containers for easy transportation. They use built-in hydraulic and electric systems in order to operate away from the grid, so rooftop solar panels heat water and produce electricity. (Energy generators provide backup power.) An “ultrafiltration system” collects water from the flooded area, then cleans the water to make it suitable for use in the showers and toilets.

Producing the bathrooms provides a windfall for the local economy, the students insist. Many materials inside the bathrooms are locally sourced: the partitions between the bathroom stalls are made of banana fiber, as is the exterior paneling. Banana fiber is abundant in São Paulo. “From a sustainability perspective,” explains Dr. Barbosa, “the use of local resources both diminishes the environmental impact of [the bathrooms] and facilitates the acceptance of banana fiber as a building material because it is culturally familiar.” Dr. Barbosa hopes that the more people see structures made of banana fiber, the more they’ll latch on to local, homegrown construction—and demand for the fiber will grow.

The São Paulo students have partnered with several businesses to transform their designs into a functioning reality.  Contain[it], a construction company, builds the shipping containers for the bathrooms, while Imperveg—a company that produces polymers—donates leftover resin for the project, which is mixed with the banana fiber for construction purposes. Sociedade do Sol (Society of the Sun) is a local company that donated the solar panels, and another company, Sansuy, helped develop the flexible reservoirs for blackwater and graywater in the bathrooms. A company called Caldeplás, meanwhile, produced the reservoirs for cold water and hot water. If one thing is certain, building bathrooms is a dynamic process that engages whole communities.

Students are working directly with the community of Eldorado, a São Paulo municipality with a population of 15,000. According to The Economist, Eldorado is one of the poorest and most violent of São Paulo’s slums—and the area has been hit by successive flooding year after year. “Despite the fact that these floods have occurred periodically for many years now, it is still very difficult for the government to organize response teams in the aftermath of natural disasters,” notes Dr. Barbosa. “Each time we get a new mayor, we also get new officials, and that brings problems for the continuity of actions in the long term.” The team at Project Apis hopes that once their working models are complete, they can turn over the bathrooms to the Ministry of Civil Defense, which can roll out the emergency units when storms strike urban areas of Brazil.

Project Apis holds profound lessons for community engagement as well as the human response to climate change. When human need is made the central goal of design, architecture becomes a means of service. As these students demonstrate, architects themselves can respond to disaster while regenerating places and communities.

“Architects need to organize together with affected communities to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams,” says Ms. Medeiros. “First and foremost, architects need to listen to the people who are suffering from natural disasters, because many times the local people suggest solutions that are most efficient and appropriate for the areas where these storm events occur, since they live there and know the risk areas very well.”

By listening to local residents, architects’ work becomes more like that of bees: a communal process wherein each individual lends a hand to shape the built environment. Structures, when they emulate hives, provide ample resources for all individuals—not just a select few.

The Declare program, developed by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) in 2012, is an ingredients initiative for building products that is designed to shape a greener, healthier environment for construction workers, business employees, and customers alike. The Declare program operates through a label given to building products that shows a full list of ingredients, thereby exposing components that potential buyers and employers would not otherwise know were there. While most manufacturers keep their ingredients under wraps under the guise of “trade secrets,” leaving citizens in the dark when it comes to toxins in their homes and working environments, Declare brings those ingredients into the open.

Declare, like all ILFI programs, operates on a basis of transparency. The logic behind a transparency model suggests that providers and customers alike will be happier when no one’s trying to hide toxic chemicals in their paneling, framing, or insulation. Labeling those chemicals where they exist, after all, creates an incentive to remove them altogether and develop safer alternatives. In fact, the Declare label has already borne success in this regard: one company has quickly phased out PVCs in its plumbing products. Declare helps shape a healthier future for all people.

Declare uses the Red List, a catalogue of the world’s most toxic chemicals, in order to classify products. Product don’t necessarily have to be free of Red List ingredients–the immediate goal is transparency. However, if a manufacturer eradicates all Red List compounds from its product, it receives a special designation.

Operating like a nutrition label for the building industry, Declare brings to the fore the inner makeup of materials that surround people every day. In an ever-globalized world, Declare helps shape a transparent materials economy.

We sat down with Andrea Cooper, manager of the Declare program, to peer into the pillars of Declare and glimpse how it operates.

Question: Can you give me a brief purpose/goals statement for Declare?
Andrea Cooper: Declare is a transparency platform to help product specifiers select transparent building products that meet the most stringent health and ecological requirements.

Q: What is the Red List and what does it do?
AC: The Red List is the identification of the 22 worst-in-class chemical families. The Red List includes chemicals, compounds, and elements known to pose serious risks to human health and the greater ecosystem. These chemicals are a common occurrence in the building products industry and we believe that their use can be phased out through healthy substitutions and green chemistry practices.

As it relates to the Living Building Challenge, the Red List serves to guide product manufacturers, specifiers, and purchasers to healthier and ecologically responsible products. The Red List encourages sustainable innovation in the building products industry.

Q: How is Declare integrated within the Living Building Challenge (LBC), the Living Product Challenge (LPC) and the Living Community Challenge (LCC)?
AC: The Declare program was developed to directly support the material selection efforts of Living Building Challenge project teams. Declare labels report product California Department of Public Health (CDPH) compliance in support of the Healthy Interior Environment requirements; ingredients and references to Red List chemicals and applicable exceptions in support of the Red List requirements; Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) content and availability in support of the Responsible Industry requirements, final point of assembly in support of the Appropriate Sourcing requirements; and end-of-life options in support of the Net Positive Waste requirements. Additionally, incorporating Declare labels is a direct requirement of the Living Building Challenge and the growth of the Declare database supports the integration of Declare products into projects.

Involvement in the Declare program is a requirement of the Red List Imperative within the Living Product Challenge, a core Imperative. The Living Product Challenge is a multi-attribute product certification program, which directly supports and furthers the Declare program’s mission of healthy product chemistry, ecological responsibility, and transparency.

Declare products can also be specified in the Living Materials Plan used by Living Community Challenge projects to meet the Red List requirements. Declare can be specified in the project Master Planning documents to encourage health and ecological responsible product selection at both the building and community or campus scale.

Q: How many total Declare labels are issued?
AC: There are over 400 Declare labels from 15 Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) MasterFormat Divisions and 87 manufacturers, representing thousands of unique products.

Q: Can you share an inspiring anecdote about a company that recently applied for a Declare label?
AC: TOTO USA applied for multiple Declare labels for their plumbing fixtures. Inspired by the Living Building Challenge Red List requirements, they re-engineered many of their flush fixture products to remove PVC. PVC components were replaced with Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer. TOTO USA now has 25 Declare labels, 13 of which have achieved Red List Free of LBC Compliant Declare status. Many manufacturers are following in the footsteps of TOTO and working to evaluate and redesign their products to reduce and eliminate the occurrence of Red List ingredients.

Q: Do you see manufacturers encouraging others in the industry to register Declare labels?
AC: One of the biggest hurdles for many manufacturers interested in Declare is obtaining transparent ingredient lists from their supply chains. We are witnessing many manufacturers successfully advocating within their supply chain to join Declare. There are more coating, binder, and small component manufacturers reaching out about their interest in Declare. This will open up Declare for many new building product manufacturers; they are looking to these transparent component manufacturers to create a more transparent supply chain for their own products.

Q: Are unexpected businesses catching on?
AC: I wouldn’t say there are unexpected businesses catching on, but the rate at which many manufacturers commit to Declare is surprising. It is not uncommon for us to receive a commitment from a manufacturer to submit twenty or more products for Declare (at once).

Manufacturers are taking notice! Much of this growth can be attributed the advocacy work of our Living Building Challenge teams. Many manufacturers are learning about Declare through conversations with project team members. They understand the growing demand for transparent and healthy products. Manufacturers want to actively support the efforts of the most sustainable design and construction projects in the world.

Q: Can you talk about the significance of Declare’s acceptance into LEED v.4?
The Declare program’s acceptance as a documentation method for Option 1 of the LEED v4 Building Product Disclosure and Optimization, Materials Ingredients credit expands the program’s audience and speaks volumes to the importance of the core mission of Declare: Material Health and Transparency. Acknowledgement by the USGBC supports the specification of healthy, transparent products beyond those projects attempting certification under the Living Building Challenge and further rewards those manufacturers who have joined Declare in support of the transparency movement. Acceptance into LEEDv4 also allows project teams attempting both the Living Building Challenge Materials Petal and LEED to streamline their product selection and documentation efforts; those products highlighted in the Declare database now support both certification paths.

Q: How do you read a Declare label?
AC: The top portion of a Declare label features the product name, manufacturer, final point of assembly and end-of-life options. The information in the top portion clearly identifies the product and highlights the relevant information for the Living Building Challenge Living Economy Sourcing and Net Positive Waste Imperatives. The middle portion of the label includes the product ingredients, organized by component. Ingredients on the Red List are highlighted in red text and ingredients on other chemical of concern lists are highlighted in orange. The center of the label also references the applicable product exceptions and their corresponding components. The bottom of the Declare label includes the Declare ID, label expiration date, and Declare status.

Products with a Declare status of Red List Free have been designed without any Red List ingredients and do not rely on any Living Building Challenge exceptions to demonstration compliance. LBC Compliant products meet the written requirements of the Living Building Challenge using one or more published exceptions. Both Red List Free and LBC Compliant labels can be used by Living Building Challenge project teams without any additional research or documentation. Declare status products are fully transparent, but contain one or more Red List ingredients not currently covered by existing program exceptions. Declare status manufacturers have committed to the transparency movement and their products comply with the LEEDv4 documentation.

Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood neighborhood has suffered in recent decades as American manufacturers have sent operations overseas and shuttered their U.S. factories. Pittsburgh, once known for its steel production, has transformed itself in the 21st century into a mecca for technology companies, with Google, Intel, Apple, and IBM siting facilities in the city—but by and large, Hazelwood has been left behind by the boom. As jobs burgeoned in wealthier, whiter areas of the city, jobs in Hazelwood—where 45% of residents are black and one in every four people lives in poverty—have trickled out. Pittsburgh’s last steel mill, based in Hazelwood, shut its doors in 1998.

Dr. Nina Baird, Assistant Professor of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) entered into the setting several years ago. Baird has been studying neighborhoods like Hazelwood and trying to understand their plights from a variety of perspectives: racial segregation, urban blight and gentrification among them. Over time, and after some stumbling, she has developed a relationship with the community; enough to visit Hazelwood with her students to discuss neighborhood issues and hopes as the residents see them. The Hazelwood community is now helping Dr. Baird and her students create a case study for collaborative redevelopment. The students are learning how to listen to the community first, and then using an amalgamation of sustainable architecture, affordable housing, gatherings and workshops, they recommend design solutions to meet the resident’s needs. Baird is hopeful that the fusion of her students’ passion with that of the residents of Hazelwood will yield positive results for the community.

The Carnegie Mellon crew, though, quickly learned that supporting residents in their efforts to revive their neighborhood would be no small undertaking. Hazelwood’s last grocery store folded in early 2009, and the community quickly became a food desert. In recent years, food deserts have become emblematic of the injustice of America’s food economy: as grocery stores and markets vacate a neighborhood, the only food left is processed food found in convenience stores. Hazelwood residents travel miles from home to purchase lower-priced groceries, and residents with little mobility seldom get fresh food. Food deserts often hit minority communities the hardest.

What’s more, aging industrial zones (termed “brownfields”)—such as those where steel mills were once located—are often heavily polluted. The coke ovens, furnaces and rail yards of Hazelwood were never clean operations, and even abandoned, may still threaten public health.

In 2013, when Dr. Baird received an Alcoa Foundation Pillars of Sustainable Education grant, CMU students began sitting down with Hazelwood residents and learning the neighborhood’s story. What struggles do people face? What memories of the community did they hold dear? What do they want to see in the future? Racial divides in the neighborhood are still prominent, and residents are frustrated with many nonprofits that come into the neighborhood to help without consulting the residents first. Regardless of good intention, those who cannot relate to the community demographics will not be able to grasp the neighborhood’s plight.

That same year, for the first class Dr. Baird taught about Hazelwood, students advised ACTION Housing, Inc., a local affordable housing group, in the sustainable renovation of several buildings. “There’s a learning curve regarding U.S. building methods and sustainable renovation,” said Dr. Baird, explaining that most CMU graduate students come from rapidly developing countries where renovating buildings is rare—old buildings are likelier to be razed to make way for new, larger ones. In Hazelwood, students got first-hand experience evaluating old and, in places, dilapidated buildings: ACTION Housing will redevelop an old grocery as well as the Spahr Building, a former variety store, for the benefit of the community. The students’ role was to advise ACTION about more sustainable materials and methods on such factors as insulation, windows, lighting and appliances. In the process, says Dr. Baird, they learned a lot about renovating old masonry and about certain stores’ specific needs. Today, a bakery is slated to move into the old grocery store, while the Spahr building will become home to Pittsburgh Community Kitchen, an organization that prepares food and trains food service workers, and will offer sit-down dining in Hazelwood. ACTION is also courting tenants for the upper floors of the building.

One of the first lessons of working in Hazelwood has been the understanding that the community’s largest concerns aren’t necessarily what Baird had on her agenda when she first began volunteering in the community. Prior to receiving the Pillars of Sustainability grant, Baird had led workshops in various cities on weatherizing one’s home for monthly utility savings. Those workshops were successful, she said, but in Hazelwood she soon realized that home renovation was the least of residents’ concerns. “People are trying to make ends meet,” explains Dr. Baird; their priorities center around putting food on the table and paying next month’s rent. Any up-front costs associated with weatherization would be cost prohibitive. Residents are also tired of outside groups coming into the community to help without consulting residents about community needs.

So Dr. Baird and her students set about talking to Hazelwood residents and getting to know the local landscape. What arose were collaborations with locals instead of impositions upon them—a lesson, surely, for all architects interested in sustainable design. The CMU crew offered classes on how to use the Internet, equipping residents with marketable online skills. They also taught Geographic Information System (GIS) software to teens, as software is used in many professional environments, and offered map-reading classes for children. CMU students also offered a bike repair workshop for residents and local police donated bikes for repair and use. The bike workshop was so successful that it will occur again in 2016. More recently, CMU students have offered their own version of Operation Better Block—a community gathering to clean up debris, plant trees, bushes and flowers, repair concrete foundations and sidewalks, and reroute storm water.  In November, Hazelwood hosted the debut of CMU’s  digital fabrication trailer, providing the community with information about technology and jobs in building design and construction and working alongside a group of veterans providing construction skills for neighborhood projects.

Today, Hazelwood residents are expressing concerns over the rate at which old houses are being demolished. The CMU architecture crew doesn’t see their job as pushing for new development, but rather as safeguarding the structures and community that already exist. The renovation of the old grocery and the Spahr building, in line with such a sustainability plan, are scheduled for completion in mid-2016.

“It’s a work in progress,” admits Baird. But similar to almost all work in collaborative community redevelopment, “good work builds on itself and can inspire more hope and creativity. My own hope is that everyone involved in these projects, the students and the residents, recognizes his or her ability to be a change maker and to help shape a better future.”

The work presented in this article is part of the Pillars of Sustainable Education program that funds universities to support the realization of community-based projects to explore innovative uses of sustainable materials and design. More information about the program – made possible by Alcoa Foundation – can be found at pillarssustainableeducation.org