At the Paris climate conference (COP21) late last year, 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate accord. It is a big deal that world leaders have finally acknowledged the climate crisis and committed to do something about it. But let’s not kid ourselves. As Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org put it, “This agreement didn’t save the planet, but it may have saved the chance of saving the planet.”

To actually save the planet—and ourselves—we need to get beyond the scientific and technological solutions that comprise the Paris Accord. Indeed, we must transform the cultural, economic and political conditions at the heart of the climate crisis. It sounds impossible, but history offers a model for this kind of transformative change: the dismantling of the slave economy in the 19th century. Understanding the centuries-long abolitionist movement offers insight into the vision, the structural changes, the personal commitments, the political struggles, and the global movement required to stave off catastrophic climate change.

Too Weak and Too Late

The changes called for in the Paris Accord are meager in relation to the global climate crisis. The strategies outlined are not specific enough, nor are they likely to be quick, deep, or distributive enough to change the status quo. The agreement’s carbon targets are too weak and too late to stem the negative effects of climate change on our environment, food, water, air, and overall quality of life. A Paris Accord with teeth would have demanded the elimination of fossil fuel combustion as an uncompromising solution.

It’s time to get serious about our climate crisis. And, in fact, a host of actors—governments, corporations, nonprofits and consumers—are advancing a range of climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives. We are greening our buildings to increase energy and water efficiency. We are decarbonizing our transportation systems with mass transit solutions. And, even though the EPA’s Clean Power Plan is held up in litigation, many states are moving forward with plans to decarbonize the power sector. Solar and wind farms are harvesting renewable energy. Distributed energy, food, and water systems are answering the call to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate.

These efforts are necessary but not sufficient for tackling global climate change. Many are transactional, not transformative. They operate at the edges of substantive issues of property, profit, power and privilege. They do not get at the root cause: a globalized fossil fuel economy committed to extraction and exploitation of our natural and human resources, without regard for short- or long-term consequences of diminished biodiversity, resource depletion, income inequalities, and toxic communities.

Moreover, climate change is narrowly framed as an “environmental issue,” when in fact it is tightly interwoven with the crucial economic and social issues of our time, like inequality and structural racism. To say that climate change is about the environment is like saying that slavery was about farming practices.

Going deep on climate change means disrupting the status quo. The climate goals and challenges we face today are existential in nature, requiring re-examination of our cultural values and the workings of our industrial economy. We need a movement that is the vanguard of all other movements, one that seeks to make the way we live not only more sustainable and resilient, but also socially and economically just.

But for the most part, this is not the change we seek or even envision. Even the most radical and transformative vision of Buckminster Fuller—to “make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone”—while squarely addressing interrelated issues of environment, economy and equity—assumes that change can come without struggle, that it will be “spontaneous and cooperative.”

If we are serious about climate change, we need to dismantle the fossil fuel economy and replace it with a moral economy that values ecosystems, sufficiency, distributive justice, and real democracy. And that kind of transformation will not come without struggle. The only precedent that comes close in scope is the movement to dismantle the slave economy: the abolitionist movement.

Parallels Between the Slave and Fossil Fuel Economies

The abolitionist movement offers a playbook for advocates working for climate, economic, and social justice. That movement challenged the very foundation of the global slave economy by dismantling the pillars that supported it: property rights, profits, privilege, and power.

Property Rights. The abolitionists successfully challenged the idea that some people were property to be bought, sold and owned. Building a sustainable and just economy requires a similar shift in thinking about nature.

The bedrock of climate change is an industrial economy rooted in exploiting and commercializing the environment. The earth’s natural resources—water, minerals, forests, the atmosphere—are enslaved to the global market economy in a way that is analogous to Africans under the slave economy. Like human slaves, our natural resources are devalued and chained to private interests by legal protections.

Just as slaves were denied agency and self-determination, we now prevent nature from regenerating—with consequences that are both immediate and intergenerational. We have, for example, diminished the quality and supply of our freshwater resources—rivers, lakes, ponds, aquifers—denying their capacity to nourish the coral reefs, and the fish, animal, and human species dependent upon them.

And yet, the right to extract our water supplies (and other natural resources) is fiercely protected by private property laws and public indifference to their mistreatment. Advocates for water are losing the battle against private property rights in the US courts. Twenty-seven states are currently suing EPA’s latest effort to define and protect the Waters of the United States (WOTUS). Opponents of the EPA ruling charge that it is “unconstitutional,” “communism,” and a “land grab.”

The Abolitionists faced a similar challenge. Dismantling the slave economy required a long, global struggle to outlaw the right to own, control and exploit African labor for commercial gain. Whether or not the US Constitution directly sanctioned and defined slaves as property is debated. What is clear, however, is that three clauses in the Constitution clearly permitted exploiting African slaves for their commercial value: the three-fifths compromise; the slave trade clause (Article I, Section 9.); and the fugitive-slave law (Article IV, Section 2). But those “rights” fell to a constitutional challenge, and ultimately to the thirteenth amendment, which outlaws the right to own slaves.

Similarly, dismantling the fossil fuel economy requires challenging the right to own, extract, and exploit the environment as personal property. These rights are scattered throughout the Constitution, with private property protections supported by “due process,” the “takings” clause and “contracts,” found in the fifth and fourteenth amendments and in Article 1 of the Constitution’s main text.

A constitutional challenge and an amendment to the US Constitution are essential for protecting our environment. A credible climate change movement must integrate with the efforts of the global south and the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, which argues that “there is no justice as long as nature is property in law.” This movement is a worldwide effort to challenge constitutional rights to hold nature as property and to acknowledge “that nature and all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.” The Alliance’s eco-centered approach balances the needs of humans and other species without exploiting one to the detriment of the other.

Profit. Profit generation is a fundamental, but hidden, driver of climate change. Massive accumulation and maldistribution of wealth in the slave and fossil fuel economies occur from exploiting and controlling the engines (sources of energy) that drive production. Three hundred years of free slave labor fueled the growth of the agricultural and domestic economies, only to be replaced by fossil fuels as the fuel of choice in the industrial economy.

In the antebellum South, slaves—and wealth—were concentrated in the hands of an estimated 3,000 owners of large plantations, creating considerable political and economic power where “cotton was king.” Many northern industrialists supported the abolition of slavery in order to shift political power and wealth from the South to the emerging class of industrial robber barons. For those industrialists, coal [and other fossil fuels] was king for fueling factories, trains, ships, and more.

Dismantling the slave economy—while partly religious and humanitarian in intent—was, in the main, a fierce struggle for power and control over the means of production and the wealth it generated. There is a lesson here for climate change advocates: As we transition our economy once again to a new source/form of energy, we must be mindful of the economic consequences and struggles behind our decisions.

This is likely to be a long-term struggle. Notwithstanding the moral, environmental, and other costs of fossil fuels, they have made a small group of people very rich. In the fossil fuel industry, wealth is concentrated in the top five oil companies, which made [a total of] $93 billion in profits in 2013; forty percent of those profits were used to repurchase stock to increase the wealth of shareholders. The CEOs of the top five oil companies were paid $96 million in that same year (not including bonuses), which was 400 times the US median family income.

The fight for sustainability, therefore, is also a fight for economic justice. The base struggle is over fossil fuels vs. renewables, as it means the demise of a legacy industry and the emergence of a new one. Beyond that, however, is the ethical question of who will own and control the new industry—the harvesting of the sun, wind and other renewable energy sources. And at a deeper level is the question of who controls the engines of the economy. But economic issues of profit and wealth distribution get lost when climate discourse is focused on incremental solutions like living buildings, greening the economy, or winning a university divestment.

The structural changes in the transition to a clean energy economy could be as profound as those that accompanied the transitions from the agricultural to the industrial and digital economies. We need to widen the lens and take a holistic view of what’s at stake. A growing number of climate justice advocates have framed these changes as a “just transition,” seeking to create a sustainable economy that is fair and inclusive for everyone. For example, a Just Transition could include a shift from energy monopolies to “energy democracy,” community-owned renewable energy that is treated as a public “commons.”

Power and Privilege. Finally, the transition to a sustainable future requires grappling with questions of power and privilege—who has it, how it is used, and how it is distributed and controlled.

The slave economy created a society of haves and have-nots separated by race, class, gender and privilege. The US Constitution, for example, counted African slaves as three-fifths of a person. Notwithstanding the larger premise that all men are created equal, the slave economy baked structural inequalities into all aspects of society. The Constitution, laws and informal sanctions denied African Americans access to citizenship, voting rights, education, health, family life, quality housing, food, clothing, language, religion, culture and more. These denials were essential to maintaining power and control over property and profits.

Dismantling the slave economy was the earliest effort to eradicate such privilege and inequities. The ratification of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, in 1868, granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” Unfortunately, the vestiges of inequality persisted post-slavery and adapted to support the power and privilege of the fossil fuel economy. Dismantling the fossil fuel economy should entail another effort to contest all the ways that our institutions support inequalities. Again, there are parallels between slavery and the fossil fuel economy:

• Religious institutions once ordained dominion over slaves as divine providence; similar doctrines sanction human dominion over nature.
• Pseudoscience is used to justify privilege: Just as slaves were deemed inhuman and intellectually inferior, pseudo-science now claims climate change is a hoax.
• Educational institutions institutionalize power and privilege through textbooks that transfer culturally biased “knowledge and values” in favor of privileged groups.
• Laws and legal institutions are used to protect property rights and discriminatory practices that serve the affluent.
• Financing institutions are used to grow power and privilege through preferential lending.

Building a Transformative Movement

If the abolitionist movement teaches us anything about how to save ourselves from climate change, it is this: We need a movement for transformative societal change. It won’t be easy. In some ways, we are all slaves to the fossil fuel economy. It is embedded in all aspects of our economy and lives and entails a deeply entrenched culture and mindset. “Abolition” of climate change requires changing norms, values, and strongly held beliefs about property, profit, power, and privilege. But, while the challenges are great, we don’t have an option.

Biophilic design was the reason I became an architect. I developed a deep-rooted love of life when backpacking around Australia in my early twenties. The sheer beauty of the country, its unique flora and fauna, and the vast expanse of pristine land was life changing. The Australian landscape stood in stark contrast to the developed cityscapes of England where I grew up.

I entered architecture with the commitment to connect people and nature through the buildings that we spend 90% of our time within. Most of us have experienced buildings where the movement of the sun through the sky creates shadows and pools of light that connect us to the time of day, the season, and our sense of inner rhythm. There is a regenerative, lasting power in these moments, spurring the formation of memories that we carry through life.

For example, buying a home with a view will always come with a premium, and when eagerly making early reservation at a favorite restaurant we aim to get the table near the window. As occupants of buildings we are drawn to spaces that interact with nature. But often we are left with spaces that do not give us that choice, ones that have no windows, no fresh air, or views of anything other than a wall and parking lot.

Biophilic design has been practiced for thousands of years, but since the industrial age we have used our buildings to assert domination over nature and to highlight our separation from it. Once electricity became widespread, naturally ventilated and lit buildings became a thing of the past. Energy was apparently plentiful and able to be wasted. People became reliant on automation of their air and were trained to be passive observers and to no longer manually open windows or pull down shutters. With the advent of the air conditioner we could be kept at a perfect temperature, no matter what the external environment. Now that the impacts of global climate change require us to move to urgent solutions, buildings and their 40% share of the energy consumed are an essential influencer. We have to radically reduce the energy consumed by buildings in order to meet the goals established at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris earlier this year, and our approach to designing buildings has to be unraveled in order to move us beyond small incremental change.

Biophilic design is a conscious discipline, and has the potential to intentionally reconnect people and nature through buildings. Some project teams have tried it out by adding plants and trees or a fountain in their buildings. Stopping there and going no further, these teams miss the power of this new discipline to completely revolutionize the way that we create and design our places. The opportunity of biophilic design is to connect to the particular ecology of the place, to its culture, history and beauty and to create a building that will regenerate life.

Today more than half of the world’s population lives in urban environments, and the UN projects that by 2050 that number will grow to 66%: “Urbanization brings opportunities for more efficient development and improved access to drinking water and sanitation. At the same time, problems are often magnified in cities, and are currently outpacing our ability to devise solutions,” commented Ban Ki-moon. City supplies of water, food, energy will have to double to match the need presented by urban growth. Within this future shuffle for needs, it is easy to see how place and nature could be lost. Biophilic city–scale initiatives, rooted in biophilic design, have sprouted up to combat this disconnection and produce positive community impacts: reinvigorated urban natural systems, economic capital resilience and a focus on quality of life.

In any crisis it is often simpler to isolate an issue and focus deeply on it alone. Yet, the solution that may fix that one issue will prove to make another worse. The crises we collectively face are not siloed. To achieve sustainability and resiliency, biophilic design and a systems-thinking approach that allows us to take inspiration from nature are required.

There is no easy checklist to bring biophilic design into mainstream design practice, no single guidebook, no rules and regulations that can be put into code language. It is a philosophy that requires a shift in thinking. But more profoundly, it requires each individual to draw on the instinct that guides us to pay more for a home with a view of a park, the mountains, or the water, or to live on a street lined with trees. If we were to listen to that instinct we would not need research that proves we are more productive, happier, and healthier when our buildings connect us to nature. That research is available, but research alone will not alone lead to adoption. If we are looking for proof—waiting for the doctor to prescribe that we take inspiration from nature—then we are missing the point and will miss the opportunity.

Stephen Kellert, Judi Heerwagen, and Terrapin Bright Green have developed thoughtful Elements and Patterns that create categories of biophilic design and provide a framework for integrating the thinking into a project. Projects are embracing these frameworks and making some strides, but for broad adoption to happen we still need a mind shift in thinking that is systems based. We need built examples that can demonstrate how their design approach was transformed because biophilic design was the driver for the design concept. We need built examples that intentionally pull on the instinctual connection to nature that is within all of us. We need built examples that demonstrate the transformation that occurred and the beauty that was created for every occupant of that space.

Together we must change the way we train architects and designers so that they can think and act systematically, developing inspirational tools to communicate this need with building owners and developers. For this reason, many of us with a passion for reconciling our relationship to nature and for regenerating life have joined together. Broad adoption of biophilic design is our mission. We believe we can only achieve this by many coming together, through looking systematically at the issue and addressing education, tools, resources, inspiration, collaboration, and research. There is no cost barrier, there is no regulatory barrier; the only barrier is ourselves—our behavior, our habitual patterns of thinking of nature as the other and as something to be dominated and ignored. Making systemic change to the design of the built environment will not happen overnight, but a movement is building.

To learn more about biophilic design and how to put it into practice, check out the Biophilic Design Initiative.

stok’s journey to become a transparent company wasn’t easy. It started two years ago, when one of our team members attended Living Future unConference 2014 and learned about the JUST label for the first time. As a culture- and purpose-driven company, JUST seemed like a no-brainer for us to pursue. However, we quickly found that transparency is a difficult and polarizing subject to broach in the workplace. Although JUST would allow us to share our successes, it also required to publicly share our shortcomings. This openness and vulnerability was initially a confronting thought.

About a year later, we went through what one might call organizational soul-searching, and ended up redefining and rebranding our company. Previously known as Environmental Building Strategies, we had primarily focused on LEED consulting, commissioning, energy modeling, and other service lines tailored to a single building or development. Our soul-searching resulted in the realization of the need and value of “zooming out” to offer services that approach sustainable development differently and holistically. From real estate acquisition to decommissioning, we saw the need to define and align sustainability goals every step of the way in order to create a radically better built environment.

We finally saw how we could make great change, and from this we defined our purpose—“to boldly catalyze an environmentally restorative and socially equitable world”—and our core values of autonomy, empathy, sincerity, equity, authenticity, grit, and nature. When it became clear that social justice and equity were inherent to the foundation of our new company, we had no choice but to align our business operations with our new vision, values, and services. It was time to overcome our fear of vulnerability and change, just as we urge our clients to, and to pursue JUST.

Challenge & Solutions

When we first filled out our JUST label in 2014, it was discouraging. We had a lot of categories with zero or one star, which we originally saw as a failure. Letting our employees know we were scoring poorly was scary; publishing it to the entire world was downright terrifying. That outlook created a lot of road blocks and stopped us from publishing our label.

After our rebrand we shifted our perspective around low scores; we chose to see them as opportunities for improvement instead of failures. As a 28-person company, there were a lot of things we hadn’t considered in the past, including maternity leave, salary equity, and giving back to the community. Instead of being disappointed that we were scoring low in those categories, we decided to use the JUST label as a framework for improving our practices and policies. As a small business, that was invaluable. Instead of hiring a consultant or bringing on a full-time employee to improve our HR practices, we were able to do it on our own with the guidance of the JUST label and the International Living Future Institute.

In hindsight, we also realized that the biggest source of the internal pushback against JUST stemmed from a lack of understanding of the program. Because the JUST program is new and still relatively unknown, we found that it was difficult to get the rest of the company on board for something they knew very little about.

We discovered the best way to describe the JUST label was by likening it to something we all know and love—building certifications systems. While JUST is not a certification program, the concept of visualizing the company’s operational attributes was something we could identify with as consultants working on LEED and Living Building Challenge projects. One benefit of certifying a building and having a plaque on the wall is that it educates the occupants; by revealing that one building is performing “better” by meeting certain sustainable design standards, it reveals that most buildings are not performing well. That is what the JUST label does for business. It reveals that social equity is missing from most business operations, and thus pushes that conversation to the forefront.

Results

We spent the last six months of 2015 identifying our areas for improvement, analyzing costs, and prioritizing amendments to our company handbook. Starting January 1, 2016, we now offer the following thanks to JUST:

• Community Volunteering: Our team members previously struggled to make time to give back to our local community. Now, we offer all employees four days of paid time off for volunteering each year, and we created a “Giving Back” committee that connects with local non-profits to plan volunteer days that are open to the entire company.
• Gender Pay Equity: It wasn’t until we filled out our first JUST label that we realized we had a gender pay gap within our company. So we created a salary matrix, or equitable compensation guidelines, that removes negotiations from the compensation discussion to foster equitability across like-for-like skill sets, deletes systemic bias, and levels the playing field for different communication styles. Now our salaries are based solely on our skills and the responsibilities we hold, leaving little room for subjectivity.
• Family Friendly: Before pursuing JUST, stok did not offer paid maternity or paternity leave. We now offer three months of paid maternity leave, and new dads get two months of paid paternity leave. Team members’ family members are also insured, with dependent healthcare and dental options that we previously offered only to employees.
• Continuing Education: Team members now get a $750 annual continuing education stipend (previously $250). In addition to the stipend, we cover 100% of the costs for approved classes, conferences, and other events. So far this year, our team members have used this stipend for InDesign classes, WELL & LEED AP exams, brokerage licenses, countless webinars, and even courses at a local community college.
• Local Sourcing: In keeping with the “buy local” culture San Francisco loves, most goods and services (59%) are bought locally, such as office snacks from Buyer’s Best Friend and Imperfect Produce. Formerly, just 20% was sourced nearby.

To be fair, our pursuit of the JUST label came at a time when we were already rethinking a lot of our internal policies. Making that many changes at once is likely not feasible for most companies. But by viewing the blank spaces on your JUST label as opportunities for growth, you too can begin to move in the right direction and use JUST as a pathway for that.

Benefits

We’re already seeing results from the changes we made only six months ago. Last month, we took a classroom of first graders to a national park in San Francisco to plant, mulch, weed, and learn about native species. By collaborating with local non-profits Literacy for Environmental Justice and Candlestick Point Eco-Stewards, we transformed a multi-acre piece of land into the city’s second official campsite. For some of the kids, it was their first time being hands-on in nature, and for most it was a rare opportunity to escape the harsh realities of growing up in the inner city.

Before pursuing JUST, this trip would not have been possible for stok. “It is amazing to be a part of a company that encourages me to get out of the office, to connect with some wonderful kids, and to actually dig my hands into the dirt to make a lasting change in the city where I live,” says stok’s Anjanette Green. Lena Wilke, another stok team member, agrees: “Working for a company that not only supports but helps facilitate these activities makes me feel more whole as a person.” Anjanette, Lena, and everyone else that volunteered came back to work refreshed, inspired, and reminded of why we do what we do every day.

In addition to our contribution to the local community, our team members’ families also now feel truly supported. “I love working for a company that allows me to take time to bond with my daughter during the precious, early days of her life,” says stok’s Burke Pemberton, who recently took two months of paid time off for paternity leave. “stok understands the correlation between my family’s health and happiness and the long-term value that I generate for the organization.”

We’ve been getting positive feedback from potential new hires as well. On a recent phone interview, an internship candidate brought up the JUST label after seeing it on our website. He asked several questions about why we had only one star in certain categories, but clarified that it didn’t really matter: the fact that we were so transparent about our business, whether or not we were scoring well, made him want to work for us immediately.

Even with all of the internal improvements we have made, our label isn’t perfect. But through the JUST process, the greatest lesson we learned was to embrace vulnerability. Because with it comes humility: admitting that you’re not perfect, but doing what you can in the spirit of fighting for what’s right and constantly striving toward improvement.

We now believe that our social justice metrics are at least as important as financial metrics. And we humbly invite our employees and clients to dive deep into our JUST label and point out where we have room for improvement as an organization. We’re excited to share our story and hope you will join us and ILFI on this journey to social equity.

stok

stok is a vertically integrated real estate services firm focused on creating a radically better built environment. We balance the financial and performance goals of our projects with social and environmental needs, resulting in restorative buildings, exceptional workspaces, high-performance systems and lasting, trusted relationships with our partners. In all that we do—from tenant representation, project management and strategy to design, certification and quality assurance—we take a broad-thinking, partner-focused approach to solving complex problems.

Since opening in late 2014, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s (CBF) Brock Environmental Center in Virginia Beach has greatly exceeded expectations. The Brock Center received its Living Building Challenge certification in May of this year, and it is the first commercial building in the continental United States permitted to capture and treat rainfall for use as drinking water.

With solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal wells, rain cisterns for drinking water, waterless toilets, and natural landscaping, the center is a model for efficiency. Elevated 14 feet above sea level, it is also a prototype for coping with climate change in a region increasingly prone to flooding.

The results so far have been remarkable. Electrical hookup fees for the 10,500-square-foot building add up to only about $17.19 per month, the minimum fee to tie into the grid. In fact, in the past year the center has produced about 83% more energy than it has used. Thanks to conservation efforts and innovative technologies, the building uses 90% less water and 80% less energy than a typical office building of its size.

The center houses CBF’s Hampton Roads staff and that of another local environmental nonprofit, Lynnhaven River NOW. It also hosts CBF’s award-winning environmental education programs in Hampton Roads and features meeting space for community discussions and collaboration.

From the very beginning, the Brock Center was a team effort. Along with CBF, important partners include architect/MEP engineer, SmithGroupJJR; general contractor, Hourigan Construction; owner’s rep Skanska; WPL Site Design; and J. Harrison, architect. This truly transformational building wouldn’t have been possible without a stellar team of transformational leaders. Below are some of their stories.

Mary Tod Winchester

Chesapeake Bay Foundation Vice President of Administration and Operations

For Mary Tod Winchester, the Brock Center is the culmination of over four decades of pushing the envelope with sustainable building practices. Winchester began working for CBF in 1971, and has seen the organization grow from its first building in 1975, a log cabin with a composting toilet, to the 2001 completion of the group’s headquarters at the Philip Merrill Environmental Center, the world’s first LEED Platinum Building.

At the Brock Center, pursuing Living Building Challenge certification was a chance for CBF to set the bar even higher. “The Living Building Challenge made us stretch our thinking, forcing us to go further and be more ambitious and creative in finding solutions,” says Winchester. “As a result, this building has become a game-changing teaching tool. People are eagerly learning that it is possible for each of us to reverse our negative impact on the natural environment.”

For the environmental nonprofit that works to restore the Chesapeake Bay and local rivers and streams, promoting innovative building practices is a matter of “practicing what we preach,” according to Winchester. “For far too long, people have taken the easy way out with buildings that consume huge amounts of resources and send polluted runoff into our waterways. So we set out to create a center that actually gives back to the environment,” she said.

The building nests gracefully into the surrounding rivers, coastal forest, and marshes. The center is not just office space, it’s also an important part of the community, hosting education programs, conferences, discussions, and local events for all. Its beauty and elegance has turned it into a magnet for visitors, with over 30,000 people coming in the building’s first 18 months.

That’s exactly what Winchester hoped would happen. “The Brock Center has become a beacon that inspires others,” she said. That includes everyone from an architect or developer tackling a new living building project, to a local resident looking to install a rain garden to stop polluted runoff.

The center is an important part of CBF’s mission to reduce pollution in the region. “I always tell people that they don’t have to build another living building to make a difference. If they can take away one thing to do themselves from their visit to the Brock Center, they’re moving in the right direction,” Winchester said. “When people take action, they become part of something bigger. All of a sudden they’re part of the team working to restore our environment.”

The building is located on one of the few undeveloped waterfront properties in Virginia Beach, and has expansive views over the blue waters of the Lynnhaven River. “The Brock Center’s design draws you in,” Winchester said. “When you enter, you see the waters we are working to save, the salt marshes, the migratory birds. It’s a huge recruiting tool. After seeing it, people are inspired. They want to volunteer with us, become members. They often ask ‘How do I get a job here?’”

With the Brock Center far exceeding expectations, Winchester said it wouldn’t be possible without the dedication of the project’s partners, which include SmithGroupJJR, Hourigan Construction, WPL Site Design, Skanska, and J. Harrison. “Part of my job was picking the right team members,” she said. “I saw them get excited and push each other, building partnerships and camaraderie. There’s no way we would have blown past our goals without such a cohesive partnership.”

Greg Mella, FAIA

SmithGroupJJR Director of Sustainable Design, Vice President

Greg Mella, vice president and director of sustainable design at SmithGroupJJR, was the architectural designer and project manager for the Brock Center. For the Washington, DC–based architect, it was an opportunity 15 years in the making.

The story dates back to 1998 when SmithGroupJJR and Mella collaborated with CBF to design the Merrill Center, his first exploration into sustainable design. As he stayed connected to Winchester and the project during the decade that followed, he witnessed how a single building could help shape society to embrace sustainability. The experience increased Mella’s understanding of how CBF leverages its green buildings as an environmental education tool, and provided countless lessons learned on sustainable design.

So in 2012, when Winchester told Mella that CBF was interested in creating another environmental education center, this time for the Hampton Roads region, he leapt at the opportunity to create a second pioneering design.

“I recognized the opportunity to apply the lessons learned from Merrill to a new design,” Mella recalled. “At the same time, I could translate into reality what I had learned as a Living Building Challenge ambassador.”

The design of the Brock Center is rooted in its unique site. The design process began with a site visit, during which Mella catalogued its unique attributes and resources. He explored how the form of the building could harness breezes and sunlight—to not only minimize the reliance on energy, but also to generate power. The site would also serve as a design inspiration, challenging Mella to draw on the beauty of the shoreline, marshes, and meadows to create a form that was of its place.

“We envisioned the Brock Center to be a living, breathing organism, fine-tuned to harness the site’s resources and to blend indigenously with the shapes, colors, and spirit of Pleasure House Point, while embodying the soul of CBF,” Mella recalled. The curve of the building’s form responded to the nearby shoreline, maximizing daylight and views while embracing passive solar principles. The design of the building’s prominent, curving roofs was inspired by the forms of the site’s wind-swept live oaks, the wings of a gull, or the protective shell of an oyster, while also embodying rainwater collection.

Working hand in hand with his SmithGroupJJR colleague Cindy Cogil, who led the engineering systems design, Mella’s design approach was marked by a highly iterative, integrative process using simulation tools to validate each design decision. These tools allowed the design to optimize performance resulting in maximizing passive design while minimizing resource consumption.

Architects often think their involvement ends after construction is complete and the photographer snaps the building’s portfolio of professional photography. Conversely, the Living Building Challenge requires the team to stay engaged during the building’s first year of operation, until the team can demonstrate that net zero energy, water, and waste has been achieved.

For Mella, this makes complete sense. “Buildings, especially Living Buildings, are like living organisms. We don’t abandon our children after giving birth, and staying engaged until our ‘babies’ are successfully operating on their own is a learning opportunity to truly understand how to achieve success,” he explained.

“Staying involved with the Brock Center during its first year was both rewarding and informative. I know the lessons our team learned will carry forward throughout our careers.”

Tyler Park

Hourigan Construction Assistant Project Manager

It’s not often that the first project of your construction career is one of your biggest and most significant. But that’s what the Brock Environmental Center may become for Hourigan Construction’s Tyler Park.

“This will be one of the most important buildings I’ll ever have a part of creating,” says Park, who joined Hourigan in 2012 after graduating from Virginia Tech a year earlier. The Brock Environmental Center project was his first development with Hourigan, and, during construction, his sole focus. “It’s incredibly rewarding looking back, seeing the responsibilities I was given and seeing how the project team and the project itself came together as a whole. It’s incredible to watch that grow and know you had a hand in it.”

Since the project’s completion, Park has become an expert in sustainable construction, speaking about sustainability and the Brock Center on behalf of Hourigan as he travels to conferences around the country.

In the beginning, his initial role involved pulling together documentation for materials involved in the construction. Over time, Park was given the responsibility of securing the required materials for the project, including zinc roofing, triple-paned windows, old wood flooring from a middle school gymnasium, salvaged sinks and mirrors, and century-old cypress timbers pulled from the bottom of Southeast waterways that would be used as siding.

“There was an incredible amount of work done to ensure that the proper materials were gathered. There were over 5,000 pages of documentation collected during the process,” he says, noting that though he was leading the charge, many other individuals were essential in gathering and analyzing information. “Without them, we would never have finished getting everything put together.”

Park, now 28, became irreplaceable and highly knowledgeable in the specifics of the material needs at Brock. Initially a part-timer with Hourigan, he was hired as a full-time employee to manage quality control, and eventually promoted to assistant project manager to run the day-to-day needs of the Brock Environmental Center’s creation. He continues to be involved in post-occupancy building performance testing.

Park became passionate about the materials associated with the project. He and the Hourigan team took the time to source and vet every piece that went into the Brock Center. In addition, subcontractors, vendors, and manufacturers all had to be educated on why materials were so critical to meeting the Living Building Challenge requirements. He recommends that general contractors heading into LBC projects lead the material gathering and documentation process.

“We became invested in the research and took time to find the materials. So if I spent six months trying to find a specific product, I’d be absolutely sure that the contractor was going to put it in the building correctly,” Park says. “Going into a project like this with anything less than 100% dedication isn’t the Hourigan way. I spent many a sleepless night and weekend making sure that all elements of this project were done right.”

Construction was complex and had its share of challenges, and it required constant communication from the many teams involved. “There were many hurdles and questions and gives and takes, so we had to work together as a team in order to succeed,” Park says. “Everyone understands that it was important to come together, find solutions to problems, and move forward to do the right thing for the project and mission. “

Today, the team members involved in the creation of the Brock Center consider themselves family, even more than a year after completion. Dinners at one another’s homes in the Hampton Roads area are the norm.

“Four or five months into energy reporting we realized that we were really doing well—the building was overproducing electricity, and even the water system was working flawlessly,” Park says. “The building looked good and we were happy, but this was a building that had to perform. It had to do what we said it was going to do. And it did, many times over.”

Post-occupancy, Park has worked with the CBF team to train employees on how to operate the building. A Building Information Model (BIM) and Building Management System (BMS) allows occupants to view a 3D model of the various systems to understand how the Brock Center lives and breathes and requires upkeep, and controls the building both locally and from afar. “If the building manager doesn’t know what’s going on he knows he has to make one phone call to us and it’s taken care of,” he says. The Brock Center, he says, has “put Virginia Beach on the map” as a leader on sustainable architecture, design, and engineering. “It’s an incredible honor for the city and community to have.”

A Team Effort

Establishing a game-changing building like the Brock Center not only requires vision and leadership, but also a lot of talent and hard work. That effort is spread across a far bigger group than the three leaders profiled here. A much larger team worked with Winchester, Mella, and Park to make the building a reality. Less than two years after opening, the Brock Center is already making waves and inspiring people well beyond Virginia Beach. As a transformational building, the Center is opening eyes to what’s possible in the future.

Since 1977, Carol Sanford has been forging the path for the regenerative business. Carol has the innate ability to see the inner workings of a business and align systems to better benefit industries, social systems, cultural beliefs and governing practices. Her vision for industries is rooted in tangible success for all levels of the business: from finance, business development sales, marketing, IT, to operations. In the classrooms of leading business schools including Harvard, Stanford and MIT, this vision is taught through her books, The Responsible Business and The Responsible Entrepreneur. We interviewed this experienced thought leader to learn more about the innovative process of regenerative business.

What is a regenerative business?

Regenerative business thinks about systemic change in how it does business, working to create greater capacity for all living beings, thus promoting each realizing its essence.

That means that a regenerative business works:

1. With each life form as a living whole, not breaking it into parts (e.g., water programs separated out from a life shed);
2. From potential, not ideals (no best practices across systems, no end states);
3. Recognizing reciprocity as natural and does not foster competition (no rewards to incentivize);
4. Realizing each being as having a singular essence, not categorizing where it fits with others (e.g., works with each customer as unique and discrete);
5. With living system as nested one in another, not as parts (e.g., humans are nested in nature);
6. Nodally to increase vitality of a whole, not with human-centered priorities (e.g., they look for acupuncture points for intervention rather than programs to cover everything or be efficient);
7. Developmentally, not manipulatively or extractively (e.g. growing each being for its own direction rather than get the most out of it/them).

Regenerative business is a paradigm shift.

It is not another name for sustainability, renewal, restoration, resilience, or other higher-intention efforts. It starts in a different place and goes in a fundamentally different direction. A business has to start looking for and pursuing wholes, potential, reciprocity, essence, nested wholes, and nodal points. The “do good” paradigm primarily pointed out what we must do less of and in what arenas we can do better, mostly offered through programs on sustainability, fair trade, and other well-intended improvements.

Tell us about an organization that has created a successful regenerative business.

Regenerative business is not a state to achieve, but a way of working. Many businesses have incorporated some of it and none have done it all, all the time. We live immersed in out-of-date paradigms that are hard to shed.

Merida Meridian does not think of its work as fair trade, which is a partial way of looking at a practice. It looks at renewing and restoring a village of craftspeople who know how to weave and dye textiles, giving the elders back a respected role and passing on their knowledge and wisdom to younger generations. It not only creates extraordinary textiles, but reweaves the culture of villages that were losing them. Fair trade is good, but it is partial and only helps the direct workers.

Why have they been successful?

Many businesses are pursuing and experiencing regenerative process, and many more will be taking them on over time. The Regenerative Business Alliance is offering an annual Regenerative Business Prize.

Until the entire paradigm shifts for all businesses, there is no use in talking about any one business being a successful example. For example, Neill Corporation, the major distributor for Aveda products, which are earth-friendly products, offers salon owners ways to bring meaning into the lives of employees and customers, as well as to renew their experience of work and life for employees and suppliers. With how they work, they get healthier, not just by giving benefits, but by learning how spirit works and can be developed in a work system, with owners, and stylists bringing that renewed spirit to customers and their partners. Success is a Western idea, not an idea in nature. It is a bad idea to look for successful examples. That is why the summit we are conducting is about moving whole industries at one time, not one business at a time.

What are some common mistakes that you see from startup businesses?

Far too often, startups copy the same old paradigm practices, like incentives and rewards that work against individual creativity and growing systemic health. They do this because they have been brought up in families, schools, and jobs that are structured based on gold stars and ranking people relative to one another. They have no idea of essence in each being. Then the new business is surprised that as they grow, people are less motivated and they have to keep upping the ante of incentives. That model is based in the study of rats, not of whole human beings working in community. Startups focus on the product or service and not on the way they will work. It is so easy to copy the traditional forms and not notice that their way of working is creating culture every day, and it is invisible.

Share a bit about the Regenerative Business Summit?

To shift a paradigm, you need to work on shifting industries essential to life. At the summit we work with six business streams that pervade all life or for anything that seeks to be alive, like individuals, families, communities, and natural systems. These include food, shelter (including habitats and buildings), transactions (for resources and exchange, e.g., energy, finance, communication platforms, insurance), adorning (how we fit with tribes and belong), recreating (how we find meaning and renewal including education, health, media), and communing (connecting with what is beyond humans as sacred and encompassing, beyond one’s own ego).

How do you work with businesses and individuals to help them make the shift to a regenerative business mindset?

It requires an education process, not a consulting or project effort that imposes preset systems and structures. The leaders, those with fiduciary responsible for the business, sit in a room and learn together, simultaneously preparing to carry out decisions made after entering a different way of working. They work to create a different mindset and to shift their worldview. They learn to use a different mind. That takes working on the business with different frameworks, systems language, and reflective processes. So we work on redesigning the way they learn, the process they use for decision-making, and the full experience of how they can work to produce enlightened disruption.

What is the difference between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and regenerative business?

CSR was an effort to stop problems that focused on doing less harm, a reasonable ambition, and with very high intentions. It is about doing less harm than we normally do, and even doing good if we can (mostly a human-centered directive). It does not bring a new mind, in fact the same mind that created the problem CSR is speaking to is used in trying to overcome it. They work on smaller and smaller aspects and parts, creating new ideals to replace the extractive ones, shifting where the incentives are focused, etc.

“Equity” and “equality” have long been used interchangeably, but the terms are often confused with each other. While the focus of equality is framed with sameness being the end goal, equity may be defined as a state in which all people, regardless of their socioeconomic, racial, or ethnic grouping, have fair and just access to the resources and opportunities necessary to thrive. Beyond equity’s newer association with pluralism, it has long been connected to financial capital, as well as to collective ownership, vested interest, and a sense of value or self-worth.

Equity has a strong potential as a new paradigm and social construct to succeed on multiple levels—equity in education, equitable practice in the workplace, and social equity in access to basic life resources, healthy and safe communities, and public space in our urban centers. The equity-focused value proposition at all these levels is rooted in transparency, education, collaboration, and trust.

The lack of equity in architectural practice and allied professions has made them prone to lose talent to other seemingly more lucrative career paths due to multiple factors that challenge retention: long hours, low pay, lack of transparency for promotion, and work that is misaligned with professional goals. In order to have justice and equity in the built environment, the AEC design workforce needs a more diverse representation that reflects the rapidly changing demographics that we serve. We are also prone to the public not fully understanding the value of what architects and allied professionals bring to the table in terms of the social impact of design that can inform equitable, just, and sustainable public and private spaces.

There are several areas where the lack of equity and diversity in design participation and consideration results in deficiencies in public space. For example, the design and planning of public restrooms may not seem obvious to all, but those who must endure the challenges of their shortcomings can inform design professionals. The design of public restrooms typically segregates into binary gender designations, and the traditional design of semi-private stalls in similar ratios between males and females often results in longer wait times for females, particularly at large assembly or transit spaces such as airports, train stations, etc. The design of public restrooms based on binary gender also prevents parents of opposite genders from assisting their young children and possibly risks health and safety for kids going in by themselves. And more recently, there has been great public debate about the laws passed in North Carolina that prevent the transgender community from access to binary gender public restrooms.

Within these challenges, there is a great design opportunity to address equitable access to restrooms as well as to propose reformed public policy that recognizes the basic human right to have adequate access to public restrooms. Several cities (including San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seattle, and West Hollywood) and public institutions have adopted gender-neutral restroom policies and designs that accommodate fair access to these public facilities. Designers are part of the solution as well, proposing private, gender-neutral restrooms that are essentially a row of individual toilet stall “rooms” with full doors that open onto a common area where everyone can wash their hands at a row of sinks and check the mirror. Another design solution is designated, family-friendly restrooms that recognize a single parent managing the needs of multiple children in a public setting.

Another aspect for design consideration is the equitable access to public space that accommodates actions often viewed as “private space” activities. Nursing mothers have historically been marginalized when trying to find public space with privacy for breastfeeding or designated clean space for pumping in the workplace. While providing such spaces may be viewed as special treatment for a particular group and not “equal” or fair, the spaces are equitable in allowing mothers who are returning to workforce to have supporting resources.

Additionally, there is a significant lack of access to safe public space for school-aged children between the time that school ends and when their parents return from work. In particular, these types of spaces are needed most by single parents who don’t have access to childcare resources.

Finally, the most troubling aspect of equitable access to the safe, healthy, affordable communities is heavily influenced by structural bias based on race, ethnicity and immigration status. In April of 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported that “Where you live could determine how long you live.”[1] Important indicators like education levels, poverty, commute times, quality of housing, access to fresh food, and clear air and water correlate with location to greatly influence life expectancy. One of the stark examples in the study: the difference in life expectancies between New Orleans’ French Quarter and Lower Garden District, only a few miles apart, can be as high as 25 years.

The 2016 Equity in Architecture Survey conducted by AIA SF Equity by Design earlier this year, coupled with an interactive discussion, will encourage the development of equitable practices for increasing diversity, expanding career opportunities to retain practitioners. By better representing the populations we are meant to serve and developing empathy in design professionals who are more socially and environmentally conscious of design’s influence to create equitable space for all, we can have greater impact for retaining talent with meaningful work, gaining commissions on projects focused on social justice and access, and producing design outcomes that are valued by the client and community. The results of the survey will be launched on October 29th at the fourth symposium hosted by AIA San Francisco, Equity by Design: Metrics, Meaning & Matrices.

Social and environmental equity have a direct impact on improving opportunities for not only the historically disadvantaged populations, but also has the potential for economic prosperity for all. In terms of physical space, fair access to environmentally safe places for residency, education, employment and full participation in the political and cultural life of the community is one of the greatest challenges that we as a society face today.

Equitable Design has the power to problem solve on multiple levels including social situations. A recent example was featured in Huffington Post, with a clever video Op-Ed by Esther Sperber, owner of Studio ST Architecture.[2] The New York architect offers an “out-of-the-box” solution to the ongoing “gender-charged restroom” debate in an animated video in the post.

“It became clear to me that the typical gender divided public bathroom creates inconvenient situations which affect a wide range of the population,” Sperber said. “Innovative solutions, both in architectural design and in other fields, often emerge when the problem itself is redefined.” By designing bathrooms by size—small, medium, large, extra-large, etc.—Sperber provides special efficiency, sustainability, safety, and equitable access.

Equitable Design in the workplace and in our interactions in practice with clients and communities has the ability to bring about unique problem-solving skills to highly political issues related to access of essential services, public space, affordable real estate, and urban resources.

[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/04/11/where-you-live-could-determine-how-long-you-live/

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/transgender-bathroom-esther-sperber_us_5783e590e4b01edea78ef6da?

“Imagine a building designed and constructed to function as elegantly and efficiently as a flower: a building informed by its bioregion’s characteristics, that generates all of its own energy with renewable resources, captures and treats all of its water, is toxic free and beautiful.” From the Living Building Challenge Standard

In March of this year, the Living Future Institute of Australia (LFIA) asked designers around the world to consider this fundamental aspiration of the Living Building Challenge—in the context of a retail center in suburban Melbourne, Australia. The Brickworks Living Building Challenge design competition asked built environment professionals and students to compete for more than AUD $30,000 in prize money by designing a retail center for an old brickworks site.

Living Retail?

The New Yorker recently published an article entitled “Are Malls Over?” (March 2014) that professed to express what all workplace cubicle dwellers know—people like natural light and fresh air and, when deprived of them, feel oppressed. Perhaps for this reason, more than two dozen malls have closed in the US since 2010.

The WorldGBC report Health, Wellbeing and Productivity in Retail: The Impact of Green Buildings on People and Profit, solidifies this proposition with the inclusion of data from the International Council of Shopping Centres (ICSC), which showed that “lifestyle” centers—those connected by pathways and are largely outdoors instead of contained within undercover malls—perform better. The survey tells us what we all intuitively know: that better buildings are visited more frequently and enjoy a higher number of repeat visits.

So instead of a “fast-as-possible” or “tolerated” experience, shopping centers must become genuine destinations that offer an increasing array of services for the local community. Traditionally a sector grounded in excess and waste, the shopping center of the future is surely one that attracts more foot traffic, is a place to be enjoyed, functions beautifully, promotes positive health and well-being, and has a net positive impact on its environment. What better tool exists than the Living Building Challenge (LBC) to provide the framework needed to realize what the shopping center of the future could be?

Commendation Design Student Category: Farmulous Urban Agriculture Education Centre

A Unique Prospect

The design competition was introduced because when the LFIA originally set out to ask what the world’s most sustainable retail center looked like, no one really knew the answer. At its heart, we were asking designers to consider the LBC in a new sector, in a country that has yet to see a certified Living Building, and on a real site with real-world constraints, owned by a real developer, Frasers Property Australia.

Describing their aspiration to create the world’s most sustainable retail center, Peri Macdonald, Frasers property head of retail says, “[We are] not just about using tools or securing ratings. We continuously invite design teams, professionals, students and anyone else interested to not just think outside the square, but reinvent the box. We are calling on extraordinary people to think boldly.”

Commendation Design Student Category: Brickworks Green

Passionate people would spend huge amounts of time and energy to both unearth and give birth to new ideas in this new context: ideas that could be potentially applied to retail centers worldwide. As such, one of the key moves in the design competition was that the intellectual property for these ideas stayed with the designers—a unique gesture that many designers greatly appreciated.

Out-Of-the-Box Ideas to Celebrate

The winning prize in the Design Student Category, called “Burwood Life Centre,” by University of Melbourne students Bhargav Sridhar and Monica Sutisna, integrated an orchard, with rammed earth as an amazing visual feature that also uses excavated materials on site. This was a design that included a research lab and library, and the addition of bees to the site for pollination and regeneration.

Winner Design Student Category: Burwood Life Centre

The professional commendation went to a project titled “The Gathering,” led by KPA Architects. The design was based around a central garden that connects two levels of a building that behaves like a flower, with inwardly embracing elements that stretch outwards. When asked what the main challenges for retail center design were in pursuing the Living Building Challenge, the design team noted that:

“A challenge we faced was to grapple with the seemingly conflicting outcomes of the retail center. On the one hand a retail center encourages consumerism, needing to be profitable by bringing in more foot traffic or through more spending. On the other hand is the social benefit to the shoppers and community, being a place of physical and psychological health and well-being which implies an austere simplicity.”

Third Place Commendation: The Gathering

The professional runner-up prize and winner of the People’s Choice Award went to a project titled “For the Common Good—A Restart to Retailing,” which was a collaboration between Buchan Group, Grün Consulting, and Inhabit. Their design displayed an inventive digital communication and education concept, where the center became a community gathering space instead of a shopping center, challenging traditional thinking whereby the design “starts with sustainability” and works backwards to make retail fit (which is the opposite of common practice to treat sustainability as an add on).

People’s Choice & Runner Up: For the Common Good

The Professional Winner was an outstanding submission called “The Difference is Living,” by thirty passionate professionals from eight organizations: dwp|suters, Aurecon, CJ Arms, reedbed technology, Eco Harvest, Biomimicry Australia, Future Food, and Watpac. Using a modular “screwed not glued” construction typology that could be taken apart and reused later in the retail center’s lifetime, and integrating key principles of biomimicry, the team created a social heart at the project’s center, invoking strong spirit of place and acting as a link between the retail and residential communities.

When asked about their experience of the design competition, the team responded:

“The Living Building Challenge is the Everest of sustainability challenges, to reach LBC’s demanding targets we found that everyone in our team needed to walk in the shoes of others. As architects we had to understand what the builders require; our engineers needed to see things from the shopper’s perspective and so on. Intense cross-discipline collaboration, open mindedness and engagement were key to developing breakthrough ideas that actually work in practice.

Ultimately sustainability in itself is not a discipline or skillset that can be added onto projects. Understanding that sustainability is a way of thinking and living, as opposed to a service, is fundamental.”

Winner: The Difference Is Living

A Legacy for the Future

Alongside the competition for professionals and design students, the LFIA held a similar competition for students attending local primary schools. The winning design came from a student at Antonio Park School and showed practical ways to reduce energy demand using solar panels, natural light and external shading, and water captured and distributed via cleverly placed funnels that filter it down through vertical gardens. The design also illustrated a human scale, with a focus on pedestrians and cyclists—noting that the main entrance was not a car park! The prize for the winning school, and a legacy for the competition itself, was a 5kW solar photovoltaic system, to be installed by one of Australia’s market leaders, Solgen Energy Group.

Wider Impacts

At the awards party in June, several other prizes reflected the competition’s impact beyond this one site. Two special commendations in particular were awarded for standout efforts that went well beyond the call of the design competition.

The first special commendation went to a project called “Living Retail,” by NH Architecture, Ark Resources, Aspect Studios, E2 Designlab, Ceres, and Mott MacDonald. The submission was a visually impressive “long life, loose fit” design, integrating high-density residential buildings, included a mobile batching plant to address waste, and proposed an arrangement whereby the retail tenants pays for power, incentivizing battery storage. Aside from the innovation presented in the project, the remarkable thing about this piece of work, and hence the award, is that some of the team that produced it have been working on the site with Frasers Property. Being ineligible for a cash prize, this team went to great lengths to re-examine their own design work, and reimagine it in the context of the LBC, outside of the design competition itself.

The second special commendation was awarded for an entry called “The BioVale,” by DesignInc Melbourne, WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff, Outlines Landscape Architects, and Will Nash. Within the course of the competition time frame, the team did some remarkable volunteering, contributing to a number of not-for-profit community and environmental groups, including tree planting with Landcare, a Trail Walker with Oxfam, and Bushcare at an Australian National Park. Their volunteering work stood out among more than twenty projects that received many hours of volunteer time as one of the design competition outcomes.

Volunteer Champion: The Biovale

In addition to the remarkable volunteering, the design competition also required entrants to try out their skills in advocating for greater transparency through the Declare label, and improved social justice through the Just label. More than fifty organizations in Australia were contacted as part of the design competition, being asked to consider “nutrition labels” to provide a holistic picture of both the products they produce and the human story behind those products.

Summing Up

The overall response to the design competition has been overwhelmingly positive, and speaks to a compelling vision for a living future that we wish to share. Much like the LBC itself, the entire exercise has been unique in that it has not been about settling for previous notions of best practice; instead, it adopts an uncompromising and unashamed future focus to ask questions we may not yet have the answer to, but which we cannot afford to ignore.

The act of casting a global net to elicit truly innovative and progressive designs to unlock new possibilities for sustainability in retail, a traditionally wasteful sector in need of new ideas, has shown us that from primary school students and manufacturers to world-leading designers, inspiration can come from anywhere. This competition has unlocked some truly different thinking, and that’s what the Living Building Challenge is all about.