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The HOK Guidebook to Sustainable Design, 2nd Edition, is a practical reference guide on the integration of sustainable, high performance design which covers major sustainability issues on an introductory level. Newly updated, this edition emphasizes the project process, cost implications, case studies, and lessons learned from HOK's wide range of project experiences. You'll find:
- Coverage of issues and design strategies related to site planning and design, energy and water conservation, materials selection and specification, and interior environmental quality.
- Concise checklists of issues to consider at each stage of the design process, accompanied by detailed how-to guidance.
- New chapters on post occupancy evaluations and greening your practice.
- A detailed glossary of terms.
This comprehensive, updated edition of the definitive reference on sustainable design includes extensive new design process information, updated case studies, and post-occupancy evaluations organized to support use of the USGBC's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System. Complete with practical tools and real-world examples, this hands-on reference for architects, engineers, planners, landscape architects, interior designers, construction contractors, building owners and operators, and students includes:
- Eighteen case studies (reflecting HOK's own application of sustainable design principles to real buildings, several with postoccupancy evaluations that demonstrate how sustainable design can be practical, cost-effective, and good for both buildings and business.
- "Ten Key Steps" provide a road map for the integrated multidisciplinary design process that is essential to successful sustainable design projects.
- Concise checklists of actions to consider at each step in the process, followed by detailed how-to information and guidance on best practices organized by the LEED categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality.
- Building type-specific guidance on how to apply sustainable design to airports, convention centers, correctional facilities, health care facilities, laboratories, museums, office buildings, and commercial interiors.
- Building type-specific guidance on how to apply sustainable design to airports, convention centers, correctional facilities, health care facilities, laboratories, museums, office buildings, and commercial interiors.
From the Foreword
The HOK Guidebook to Sustainable Design, 2nd Edition, is a testament to the rapid transformation of the largest industrial sector in the world - the built environment. Although our cities seem to grow slowly, urban areas undergo a constant process of transformation. In the United States, cities replace themselves every 30 years. In Europe, they cycle every 50 years. Although historical buildings remain, the bulk of the city is constantly being replaced by new bricks, mortar, wood, rock, glass, plastic, tile, and concrete. If we could watch our cities using time-lapse photography, we would see an organism in dynamic movement of growth and decay. It would resemble a plant or ecosystem with rectilinear geometries.
The built environment is not only the largest industrial sector in economic terms, it is the largest in terms of resource flow. The amount of material that is "metabolized" by buildings and their supporting infrastructure surpasses automobiles, food, and energy together. In fact, buildings are the largest users of energy. Buildings are not just where we work, play and sleep; they are where we invest most of our financial and natural capital.
One of the unsung stories of our time is how buildings are changing, or "learning," to borrow a phrase from Stewart Brand's book. Starting sometime in the 1980s (even earlier with some of the early renegade architects like Sim Van der Ryn, Peter Calthorpe, Malcolm Wells, and David Sellers), the design community began to reimagine what a building is, and specifically what a building is in a given environment. HOK helped introduce this perspective into the mainstream with its work beginning in the early 1990s.
It was a figure/ground shift. Rather than ask which buildings should go on a given piece of land, the new questions were: What building will this land produce? What kinds of buildings will the Earth support? And, which buildings support the future of our resources, species, and children? Out of these early queries and experimentation has emerged a series of initiatives, studies, organizations, and practices. This book is a tool to share some of those important lessons. The design community, without question, has been a leader in integrating its profession with the needs of the planet and humankind. These changes could not be more timely or necessary.
On March 30, 2005, the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report was released by organizations representing 1360 scientists in 95 countries. The $24 million Assessment was historic. For the first time, global civilization came together to survey the world's biological resources and assess the impact human activity will have on health, the economy, and the future. Although detailed in its analysis, the conclusions were simple: the Earth is wearing out and will soon become exhausted. There was little new data that hadn't been said, published, or ignored before.
Oceans are overfished, with many marine stocks reduced to 90 to 99 percent of their preindustrial levels. Coral reefs are fast becoming algae reefs, with one-fifth of coral reefs already lost and another fifth on the brink. Cultivated farmland, with all its associated chemical runoffs, has increased more in the past 50 years than the prior two centuries. Oceanic dead zones caused by nitrogen-fed algal blooms increased to over 50 worldwide. Wetlands are disappearing, extinctions increasing, water availability diminishing, alien species invading, and forest cover shrinking.
Looming over all is the Damoclean sword of climate change. The report acknowledges what scientists have been stewing about for decades: Ecosystems, like all nonlinear systems, do not necessarily wind down over time, but can reach triggering thresholds where they quickly collapse. Like dominoes, one collapse can take down the others with it. It is time to act.
Cities are where human beings have the smallest per capita ecological footprint. If we are to save Earth, it will come about in large part because we have redesigned our dwellings and cities. Cameron Mitchell, the cofounder of Architecture for Humanity, puts it succinctly when he asks his colleagues to "design like you give a damn." No profession will have a greater influence on our future than architecture (remember, politics is not a profession). No profession is in a better position to rearrange our thinking about people, places, and nature. And no profession is better equipped to see the problems outlined in the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment as solvable design opportunities. The design community cannot do it alone, but its leadership is critical is we are to sustain life on Earth.
- Paul Hawken, director, Natural Capital Institute
About the Authors
Sandra Mendler, AIA, LEED AP, is a design principal at HOK in San Francisco. California. She is a nationally recognized advocate for sustainable design and a leader of HOK's sustainable design initiative within HOK.
William Odell, AIA, LEED AP, is a design principal at HOK in St Louis, Missouri, a frequent speaker about sustainable design, and a leader of HOK's sustainable design initiative within HOK.
Mary Ann Lazarus, AIA, LEED AP, is a senior vice president and firmwide sustainable design director at HOK, providing education and resources to project teams. |
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