I’m starting to ask this question, again.
Let me be a mini case study.
My practice is starting our sustainability leadership journey — again. When we started Here Studio in 2009-2010, our practice was all bleeding heart and busy hands — all “purpose” and “action”. Sleeves up; sacrifice. Although we knew what we were as a practice, unfortunately, we didn’t quite know what it took to run a business, and that cost us.
Copenhagen 2009
Starting our practice, I had just witnessed Copenhagen 2009 and Australia’s pitiful response to climate change at a federal level. Australia was the spokesperson for a coalition of blame against developing nations — the very nations seemed to be the ones protecting indigenous knowledges and undergoing the most change!! It was pretty depressing. In the final days, when we were kicked out, it became clear that focusing on the leadership of cities — via ICLEI and the Schwartzneggers of the world — seemed to be the only way forward.
Community development and participatory design
Consequently, my early practice Here Studio poured its heart and hands into community development and participatory design. We figured that urban governance was broke, and a change to any more ecologically aware systems (and economies), needed a radical shift in how communities and individuals make decisions. We sanded floors, held hands with social enterprises to write their business plans, fund-raised, painted walls in community working bees, ran maker events, recycled furniture by hand, baked cookies, retrofitted old buildings via volunteer labour, and bent public disagreements over urban regeneration to clear arguments and actions.
Coming back to the question: how can we do climate action?
Many years later, and lots of internal work and learning the hard way, as a now relatively financially sustainable business it’s time overdue to come back to this question: how can we do climate action?
We notice we are not doing enough anymore. We notice that although architects may claim to have been leaders some decade or two ago, strong on ideas and vision, today there are many other industries doing a lot more than we are. There’s a lot we can learn — again. Humility is required. So, we’ve signed up our business for a sustainability leadership course which in the process will also provide us certification.
From a business perspective, the main benefits of getting back to climate action work seem to be about marketing (“sales”) and staff motivation (“productivity”). OK.
Being climate-active is a growing norm, increasingly expected of by clients and staff, and, now authorities. People want to work with and for people with aligned values. And, minimum — “good” standards — are becoming more regulated. Where once typical architects provided much more sustainable products to the market than any building designers or draftsperson could, today, with updates to the National Construction Code this is questionable (if not a bit elitist).
Can architects be sustainability leaders?
To build our own Sustainability Action Plan, we found the American Institute of Architect’s workbook very useful: see Creating a Sustainability Action Plan that works (PDF) As a first step, we clarified what our vision and purpose is as a leadership team and business – so, we are getting clearer on our approach to work, as a practice, and as individual team members!
Key discussions we had
All team members need support to learn about Environmentally Sustainable Design, starting with the basics. Much of what the director had learnt at school no longer is being taught! Architects have a lot of influence over environmental impacts, however, this is through our clients. The first-order impacts – recycling in the office, and catching public transport to work etc, are small fries.
The second-order impacts are major — what buildings are retained, how big a building needs to be, how spaces are orientated, what materials and finishes are selected, and what mechanical and electrical systems are employed — all of these are ultimately the responsibility of our clients.
We need to better understand our agency as architects.
A Sustainability Action Plan
We started by mapping our practice against the United Nations, 17 Sustainable Development Goals\. We considered which ones were relevant to us, and of those, which ones we really needed to focus on in the first version of our Sustainability Action Plan:
- No poverty
- Zero hunger
- Quality education
- Gender equality
- Clean water and sanitation
- Affordable and clean energy
- Decent work and economic growth
- Industry, innovation and infrastructure
- Reduced inequalities
- Sustainable cities and communities
- Responsible consumption and production
- Climate action
- Life below water
- Life on land
- Peace, justice and strong institutions
- Partnerships for the Goals
Finally
What takes time to do this work is the collaboration — doing it together so it is owned by the people in the practice. As a business, it is about integrating the purpose with action and self — who is going to do this work.
It is like wading through mud and it feels heavy. We’ll keep working on it.
I don’t have a fancy, neat conclusion to this blog. My sense is that there is something for architects to understand about agency, and start to do the messy work of integrating intentions with actions now in all we do.
The above is the first of our “ground-up” vignettes of how architects, built environment professionals and individuals are facing the climate emergency. If you have a story to tell or an experience to relate get in touch. We will be most grateful at ACAN Australia. We all need to share how we are all feeling about the demise of the earth and its ecosystems.