Sustainability is like Teenage Sex...

A recent tweet I saw made me laugh: "Sustainability is like teenage sex. Everyone says they're doing it. Most aren't. And those that are, are doing it badly." But then I stopped laughing and did a bit of introspection on the darker side of my industry.

Sure, most businesses who are reporting on sustainability metrics try to make themselves look better than they are. Disclosure is rewarded more than performance and many companies include 'sustainability' as a core value, with little executive buy-in or understanding of what it means.

However in many cases, corporate sustainability is far more insidious than securing bragging rights; it is often a front for the corporations whose very existence is founded on extracting value from human and natural systems to give their existence a green sheen. The green sheen of pond scum on a dead river perhaps?

The other morning I read the proud claims that the first McDonalds restaurant had been certified with a bespoke Green Star rating in Australia. That's right folks, McDonalds. And they led with the tag line "Would you like sustainability with that?"

So, by sponsoring a bespoke green building tool, installing some efficient building services, a company can effectively erase in the minds of its customers, the fact that it nearly single-handedly shifted an entire agricultural industry towards intensive, beef-led agri-business (ok, there were other big players, but please forgive me for being dramatic).

The fast food behemoth appears to imagine that targeting the 'Topsoil Preservation' credit on a restaurant could undo countless millions of tons of topsoil destroyed by extractive agriculture. It's as though they believe that by increasing the fresh air rates in their restaurant they would counter the atmospheric impact of cleared forests for beef production – the very lungs of our planet.

The ecological and health impacts of the corporation are so huge – the fast-food-fueled obesity epidemic afflicting western cultures among others – yet our attention is focused on the small steps in restaurant design that green buildings offer them.

It's a bit like mining houses claiming 'sustainability' credentials for their green buildings (e.g. The 6 star Rio Tinto Tower in Brisbane)... Does including recycled steel in your building say anything about the strip-mined forests of conflict-ridden West Papua?

Or banks - will the superior economic performance of green buildings fill the hole left in the actual savings of real people when the bubble finally bursts for good, and the house of cards comes crashing down?

For many corporates, it is not just a case of green-washing - making themselves appear greener than they are - but rather Orwellian doublespeak. Peace is war, truth is lies, 'green' fast food is healthy (in the words of my wife) and extractive mining is the panacea to the development of our communities.

And it is not that green buildings are bad, quite the opposite. The built environment is a huge contributor to humanity's resource consumption - and addressing their impact through design is critical.

I'm glad McDonalds built a green restaurant and that they pioneered the use of bespoke Green Star tools, I'm glad that Rio Tinto have helped increase demand for green buildings. But I cannot stomach the self-congratulatory attitude as though these decisions of theirs outweigh their deeper, darker impacts.

Ten Points

1. Integrated design.

 2. Whole systems.

 3. Purpose and function.

 4. Participation.

 5. Restorative.

 6. Decentralised.

 7. Cyclical.

 8. Non-toxic (benign).

 9. Optimised across a system.

 10. Stewardship.

Multi-, Inter-, and Trans-Disciplinary Approaches

When I first started thinking about designing future cities, I had no idea that there was so much contention over the different terms for how a group of people with different expertise can work together. But there is. So let's start with a disclaimer: I am not an expert in the theory of how teams work, so the ideas in this post are simply my own interpretations.

This post is just an exploration of how I believe we can shift our shared understanding of complex design challenges (like cities) by reframing the rules of engagement between design team members, from multi-, through inter- and towards trans-disciplinary design.

The shortfalls of specialists working in isolation have become increasingly apparent in the design of complex systems. It seems that even the most conservative of design spaces - old school engineering - have begun to recognise this. There are few remaining proponents of the 'my-way-or-the-highway' engineering, who simply demand that all other systems meet their requirements...

While the bluster of self importance often remains, I have witnessed a shift in professional attitudes - to be more accommodating and understanding of the importance of other disciplines in complex design challenges.

Multi: many. Many disciplines. Multi-disciplinary approaches recognise the importance of having a range of specialists on a team, and that the communication lines between team members need to be transparent and clear. This distinction from conventional 'specialists-in-isolation' approaches allows design challenges to be informed by the needs of all the specialists.

In my (short) career I have seen the rise of multi-disciplinary teams as the preferred model for the built environment (although it is still an emerging trend in the local industry). The idea that the free flow of information and design concepts between mechanical, electrical, civil and structural engineers may improve the quality of the design, while novel, is not outside the realms of mainstream understanding. Green building tools such as Green Star have also made multi-disciplinary design (sometimes called integrated design) a critical part of new buildings.

But multi-disciplinary approaches only take you so far. Having clear communication between disciplines is important, but it does little to break down the discipline silos. Multi-disciplinary design solutions avoid some of the obvious pitfalls of experts working in isolation, but are not able to really take advantage of the diversity of expertise and understanding in a team.

The first step in getting more from a team of specialists is the concept of inter-disciplinary design. My understanding of inter-disciplinary work is that it implies a sharing of methodology between disciplines. In many cases, it can be using quantified analysis where previously only qualitative tools had been used, or vice versa.

For example, urban designers have made huge steps in the qualities of successful urban spaces (bulk, look and feel, mixed use, massing etc). However adding a layer of quantified analysis, in terms of resource intensity or density thresholds for different technical systems, provides a level of insight  that can really inform the design and optimise urban systems.

Similarly, bringing qualitative assessments such as building community or social justice to technical fields - like the provision of infrastructure for basic services, can assist in making the interventions appropriate to the end users. Many of the failures of technical urban interventions are due to the lack of consideration given to social systems.

This 'borrowing' of methods for advancing design appropriately, while not limited by any means to quantitative/qualitative assessments, is at the core of inter-disciplinary thinking. It recognises the value of different approaches and paradigms in delivering design that is more sensitive to its context.

And yet even inter-disciplinary processes still largely rely on individual specialists, each working in their area of expertise - taking inspiration from other fields for sure, but still operating in a specialist paradigm.

Which brings us to trans-disciplinary thinking...

Trans: across. Across disciplines... An approach where specialists are not confined to their fields; options and insights from non-specialists inform design; methods are shared, debated, dissected - from all sources. Human experience informs process, and the patterns of interaction begin to inform the details.

While 'multi' acknowledges the importance of communication between silos and 'inter' builds real bridges between them, 'trans' dissolves the silo walls completely and opens the debate on design to all participants.

By virtue of having walked down a street, the structural engineer can comment on public space and aesthetics. Crossing a road qualifies a QS to engage on traffic. Governance specialists, artists, mothers and teachers all have something to contribute to inform the development of technical systems. Engineers must be able to deliver their specialist knowledge, but not be limited to it. Above all, every design decision becomes rooted in context.

Trans-disciplinary approaches are critical in the assessment of complex systems because they allow broad patterns to be considered concurrently during design. While ivory-tower specialists typically isolate elements and work from details to wholes to make progress, trans-disciplinary teams work from the whole, and fill in the details in time.

In observing, analysing and designing cities, trans-disciplinarity allows us to see the whole picture: the lives lived; the children playing safely in the park; the community; the jobs; the amenity; the commerce; the built form; the climate resilience; the return on investment; the food security; and the green spaces - in one multi-coloured, multi-layered picture. And the picture is informed and held by the team, not just an individual.

Trans-disciplinary approaches bring us into the world of 'both/and', not 'either/or', demanding awareness and humility. But its rewards are resilient and relevant systems in a world where reality is complex.

The Age of the Generalist

Over the last few weeks I have been struck by how stuck professionals are in their expertise... The most confronting of late has been the medical profession with whom my wife and I are working towards the birth of our first child; negotiating our way between the mid-wife-led natural birth community and the conventional medical fraternity of obstetricians, medical aids and hospitals. Both camps seem to lack the flexibility of thought to adapt and allow us to walk a path between them, drawing from each side as it suits our particular need and preferences.

This same inflexibility of thought is something I have witnessed in the engineering profession and it appears to be of epidemic proportions in our 'specialist' areas of knowledge. Our modern approach to most things has been focused on increasing levels of specialisation to the point where there are few real mavericks/thinkers/jokers/game-changers left on the implementation side of life. By the time a professional can call themselves that (read engineer, lawyer, doctor etc) they will have studied and/or been a candidate-whatever for at least 7 and as much as 10 or 12 years... No wonder they feel the need to hold that hard-won ground so fiercely...

And in this stagnant marsh of specialist turf-war thinking, the shining lights are the people who can tell the whole story, bringing in the relevant areas of detail as required, but all the time keeping a broad narrative which reflects real life in all its complexity. It is these yarn-spinners who are the real hidden gems, who keep our disabled institutions limping along with promises of a new story.

In the sustainable design business we spend a lot of time talking about integrated design, yet our approach is still heavily focused on specialists each doing their bit (while at least talking to each other) – we have not yet leveraged the power of true generalists and story tellers in our approach to design. In other words, we are getting to grips with multi-disciplinary approaches, but haven’t yet got to the trans-disciplinary approach of those disciplines which pursue an understanding of societies, communities and eco-systems and can put design in context. And context, my friends, is everything.

Which is why I'm looking forward to a new age; the age of the generalist... I want people who have enough understanding of the details to keep the specialists honest; but as a priority are able to provide context to design. We should look in the fields of anthropology, ethics, peace studies, ecology and the arts for those thinkers with the breadth of understanding to ask not just what is possible, but also what is right, appropriate and fitting. People who can describe our preferred futures in broad terms and help navigate the path to get there.

Missing Pieces of the Urban Puzzle

The start of 2012 in Cape Town has seen a huge focus on urban and design issues; Design Indaba, Future Cape Town, the Cape Town Partnership, Modila Trust, Portside, 22 on Bree, Convention Centre Phase II and the City of Cape Town tenders for urban renewal nodes in Kapteinsklip and Athlone Power Station have all raised the urban profile significantly (and politically).

As might be expected, urban design issues have played their role in this discourse - density, mobility, urban renewal etc; but from my perspective, there are some significant pieces of the puzzle missing in planning for future cities.

On the face of it, the new urbanists seem to have it all sorted out: go to war on urban sprawl, shopping malls and car-based transport... Densify, invest in functional public transport and cycle ways, commit to pedestrianised urban malls and build good public space.

The urban design community seem to be well across this in terms of the design interventions and priorities for new urban spaces. Development corridors, mixed use ratios, thresholds at which public transport becomes viable and amenities for urban living are all well covered and we see them coming out in some of the world's leading cities. Architects have even started talking about context at the urban scale, which is a sure indication, of changing attitudes...

But we have absolutely no clue of how to quantify in design terms, and therefore design for, two key elements of urban spaces:

1. Our infrastructure requirements are only considered in terms of peak demand - we have no culture of quantifying the resource consumption and waste stream implications of urban design decisions; and

2. Our understanding of critical mass and nature of green space required for effective ecosystem health, biodiversity and ecosystem services is woefully inadequate.

What this means is that in terms of the key environmental factors of sustainability, our urban designers are effectively flying blind. When faced with some of the excellent work on resilience coming out of Sweden like the Nine Planetary Boundaries concept, we don't have the design tools for quantifying our cities' performance in resource or ecological terms.

And so we revert back to the building scale, and limit our focus on sustainability to demand mitigation at the building level. And this is the place many of our leading urbanists are stuck.

One of the benefits of urban-scale ecology and resource intensity models are that they provide a tool for facilitating integrated urban design, much like the detailed building simulation tools of thermal and daylight modelling did for architects and building engineers. This then opens the door for the design of integrated, decentralised urban infrastructure, which in turn unlocks the potential for nested systems to optimise the use of waste streams. And therein lies one of the secrets to getting our cities functional at a resources level as well as at an interactive level.

Even those of us with a passion for cities must acknowledge that we don't have a clear picture of what our cities should look like in a severely resource-constrained world. Energy, food security, supply chain and water issues are typically put into the 'too hard' box because they rely on such far flung, complex systems for their integrity. Our only response seems to be 'reduce demand for resources', yet with no evidence for this actually happening.

The first step to building smart cities must be providing urban designers with the critical performance models that allow design to be directed by resource limitations as well as social outcomes. Once we understand city morphology in resource and ecological terms as well as urban terms, we will be a big step closer to the sustainable cities of our imagination.

Urbanisation and Poverty Alleviation

I must admit to being something of a rural idealist – imagining the life of the peasant farmer as one of simplicity and content. However, a quote from one of Africa’s most accomplished urban designers sticks with me as I think about urbanisation in Africa: “If you think urban poverty is bad, try rural poverty”. And he has a point...

The daily reality of most of Africa’s rural poor is not the rustic chic picture of Provencal or Tuscan peasantry: wine, pastis, olives, local bakeries and poaching grouse on a neighbouring estate. Rather it is a grinding poverty of failed subsistence crops, aid reliance, malaria, child mortality and uneducated misery. It is inter-generational and it is soul-destroying. It breeds hopelessness in the saddest sense of the word. And in the face of rising energy (and associated commodity) prices and climate uncertainty it is looking bleaker still.

There are two facts about Africa’s population: it is growing and it is urbanising. And the status quo model for this urban growth is slums - the slums that surround and permeate our cities - with violent crime and a sense of cultural displacement replacing the grinding poverty of rural areas.  This urban poverty has become known in some circles as the 'fourth world' - in development terms, a step below the 'developing' third world that seemed to define 20th century Africa.

So what, then, is the role of cities in alleviating poverty, and perhaps more importantly, what is the role of design professionals in taking up that battle? Government take the majority of the responsibility for poverty alleviation - social grants, education and public health care services for the most part. However there are opportunities for the physical nature of our cities to play an important role too.

Since the dawn of civilisation, cities have played a pivotal role in pulling people out of poverty through the provision of entrepreneurial opportunities and access to education and healthcare. Sanitation, drinking water, mass transportation and information technology are just some of the levers that have driven modern cities to the heights of human achievement. In short, cities provide reliable access to resources and a high 'hit-rate' of innovative interaction.

However, the other inescapable element of modern cities is that they are also the heart of ecological impact, resource consumption, waste generation and harmful emissions. Our cities are the face of humanity's unsustainable behaviour. The links between human endeavor and ecological health are becoming clearer and the picture that is emerging is that for successful social development, a healthy ecosystem is required. These socio-ecological systems are at the heart of current research into resilience.

So to be effective in alleviating poverty, our cities must provide reliable access to resources and high quality human interactions for the poor and must achieve this in a manner which complements natural ecological systems. Every design intervention must have its human face and it's natural face for resilient socio-ecological systems.

Sanitation, water purification and food security would be my highest priority in addressing urban poverty and there are design solutions which are able to address all three in an integrated manner. Current resource allocations to new human settlements (RDP housing in SA) prioritise roads and sewage connections to centralised city infrastructure - both expensive investments in industrial-age models.

I would prefer to see decentralised water treatment, using ecological filters (wetlands) where possible, and the use of recycled water and recovered nutrients for urban agriculture. Combined, this water-waste-food system provides huge opportunities for local economic activity while also promoting healthier lifestyles through access to drinking water and healthy food.

On the ecological side, a wetland-based water treatment system allows the reintroduction of biodiverse nodes into the urban environment, improving ecosystem services (to urban agriculture) and broad system resilience.

While reallocating funding from roads may be contentious in our car-based cities, I acknowledge the need for investing in functional public transport to enable this shift. However, I would suggest that this is a prerequisite for equitable cities and leave that discussion for another time.

My second priority for addressing urban poverty would be widespread information connectivity. The mobile data revolution in Africa is paving that way already, with among the highest smart-phone penetration rates globally. Access to fast information and communications is a core requirement for successful micro-businesses in a post-industrial economy and underpins the small, medium and micro-enterprise (SMME) approach to poverty alleviation.

It would also begin to allow better non-governmental intervention in education - another pre-requisite for human development. The mobile information revolution has already been applied to banking, but partnered with micro-finance, has the potential to unlock even more entrepreneurial creativity.

Again, on the ecological side, fast information and virtual-presence connectivity reduces the need for physical transport - a major household and environmental cost.

While there are huge requirements around basic services for effective poverty alleviation - healthcare probably being top of the list - my final design-related priority is the inclusion of basic child-care facilities in the buildings which comprise our cities. Architects should include provision for a crèche in every building.

Aside from the cultural barriers to women working, one of the major reasons Africa's urban women are excluded from the workplace is the lack of child care options which can realistically and affordable be accessed. Flexible work and child care options are an important gender justice issue, but beyond that, they are a critical issue to address urban poverty in Africa.

Guardian columnist George Monbiot, had the following to say: "If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire." Africa's women work, hard, and are responsible for a substantial share of the continent's development potential.

This does not mean women should be compelled to work, nor should new mothers be rushed back into the workforce so that a generation of Africans are raised by strangers (as we see in so many developed nations). But rather that the infrastructure supports their options to return to work in a manner that works for them. In short, our women must be able to be mothers and employees or entrepreneurs, at the same time.

I acknowledge that poverty is a complex issue, often muddied with past inequality, racial discrimination and, in Africa, the stigma of colonialism (past and present). However, as designers of Africa's new cities, there are clear steps we can take in prioritising systems and infrastructure which break some of the barriers of entrenched poverty,  while fostering resilient socio-ecological systems in our cities. 

Green Buildings 2.0

The green building movement has been shaping our built environment for a decade and a half, and there can be no doubt that it has been a commercial and marketing success. Recent reports from Australia indicate property value premiums of as much as 12% and rental premium of 5% for Green Star certified buildings in Australia. This is consistent with much of the research emerging from the USA over the last decade.

However the commercial success of Green Star must beg the question on its environmental performance: if we filled our cities with Green Star or LEED certified buildings, would we be a significant step closer to addressing the major sustainable development challenges that face our country, our continent and our planet? A list which includes, but is not limited to poverty alleviation, health, education, social justice, ecological health, food security and climate change adaptation. And I'm afraid that at this point, the answer to that question must be no.

The framing question for modern green buildings has been "how can we reward the design and construction of buildings that have a smaller impact on the natural environment?" This question has led us down the current path of green building rating tools such as LEED and Green Star; tools which have started with a broad assessment of the environmental impacts of buildings and then rewarded discrete improvements in efficiency and process. This has allowed relatively straightforward decision-making around "green" initiatives, but has not been able to reward the resilience of complex systems that do not fit the mould of individual credits.

The question of simply reducing impact is not sufficient to deliver the sustainable cities on which our continued prosperity depends. Modern green buildings have typically improved their resource efficiency, resulting in lower stresses on city infrastructure, but without making significant contributions to sustainable cities. No longer is it sufficient to design buildings which look inward and seek to be "less bad" (as Cradle to Cradle author Bill McDonough has termed them). Rather we need to reframe our approach and ask: What kind of buildings do our future cities need? I believe this question could frame the development of Green Buildings 2.0.

Without the context of functional cities (ecologically, socially and economically), modern green buildings are unlikely to deliver the sustainable urban spaces that we pictured when first imagining green buildings. Similarly, if we rely on precinct tools which ask the same questions as building tools, just at a bigger scale, we will never see our existing cities transformed. We must accept that our cities are primarily made up of privately held plots and buildings, each separate, yet with a profound effect on the common urban landscape and functionality. We cannot look at buildings with impermeable boundaries any more, we must consider the spaces in between. To see our picture made real, we need to reward buildings for providing the spaces and services that our cities need beyond their immediate boundaries.

Primarily, we need buildings that are multifunctional. They must meet their primary function of providing places to work, trade, live and play. However, further to that our buildings must have secondary roles of providing decentralised services to our cities (water, power and waste services); and tertiary functions relating to the creation of excellent public space, enhanced opportunities for education and fostering of urban ecosystems.

On the topic of resource efficiency, it is not sufficient for buildings to simply reduce resource intensity or tie into existing green infrastructure. We should reward buildings that provide basic services (clean energy, waste treatment, clean water, nutrition) to their neighbourhoods, cities or villages. We must have tools for rewarding restorative buildings, and stop rewarding variations on the status quo.

Buildings that are premised purely on economic return in the private sector are typically poor at creating exceptional urban spaces. We must reward buildings that provide public services to their communities. These could include health services through the integration of clinics with retail, public amenities and education through both the construction and operation processes. Buildings should empower women in their function through the provision of child-care facilities and minorities in their expression of culture. When we recognise leadership in the development of our urban spaces, these are some of the things we could consider...

It is insufficient for buildings to act simply as investments for large funds, premised on the current global financial indicators. Buildings are too big a part of our lives to only provide prosperity to a single sector. We should reward "green" buildings that are economically functional across a range of city sectors, considering job creation, poverty alleviation and micro-business.

Finally, buildings that are only functional are not sufficient for our cities. We must reward buildings that are a delight for residents and visitors alike. We must reward decision-making that is based on the place-making potential of our buildings, and not just their revenue-generating potential.

So, how to move forward... Are our existing tools too far gone, requiring an alternative; a green building revolution? Or can we take our existing tools and re-imagine them to be more relevant to sustainable cities - a green building evolution? Being of Darwinian persuasion, I feel that evolution is the most appropriate way to go. It would allow us to stand on the shoulders of giants (for in their time, our present tools were indeed giants to an industry without even a starting point for sustainable development) while maintaining the industry legitimacy of the current establishment.

I intend to explore how this might work in more detail in future posts, but my framework that could allow us to both simplify and broaden building assessments follows.

1. Start with the status quo - categories of environmental impact (energy, water, construction management, materials, emissions, transport, IEQ, land use) as these remain key areas for contribution instead of simple mitigation.

2. Add to them key missing links, including, but not limited to:

•   Biodiversity and eco-system services

•   Public amenity

•   Broad economic activity

•   Planning

•   Heritage

•   Social services

3. Instead of looking down and in, look up and out. Instead of devolving into credits, describe broad performance criteria which will enable sustainable cities. Create benchmarks of contribution to the city, not benchmarks of reduced impact on the environment.

One of the cornerstones of such a strategy is to move away from rewarding specific initiatives and instead reward the broad contribution to our cities. A good starting point for the style and format would be the Living Building Challenge (LBC 2.0) by the Cascadia GBC; however the content would be informed more by sustainable urban design and broad systems thinking than living within the natural footprint of the building.

My hope is that we can move away from line by line checklists, which are only able to reward incremental improvements in the efficiency of our buildings; and towards a system able to reward design which is cognisant of- and makes a contribution to- the real, complex, messy systems which are our cities.

For only once they are able bridge the areas between our buildings, will green certification tools be much use in delivering sustainable cities of the future. 

Musings on Design

When we come across the term "design", the first things that spring to mind are often fashion, the "egg chair" or those really strange looking lamps that my best man has in his apartment; mostly beautiful items to fill our houses or clothe ourselves. Occasionally concept cars will occur to us and once in a while beautiful buildings. But seldom gears, ductwork, concrete slabs or steel beams. Yet it is these behind-the-scenes elements of engineering design underpin our experience of the world - every day, in every way.

At university, my degree - mechanical engineering - included a core major of mechanical design; gears and the like. In many ways it was a very dry (and extremely technical) subject. No left-of-field characters, no champagne and to be honest, not much beauty. Having worked in a consulting engineering environment for a number of years now, I have seen the same trends professionally. Other design professionals are passionate, "creative" types, but many (not all) engineers seem to be turning the handle on a design sausage machine - producing technical systems that meet the clients requirements at the lowest cost, but seldom anything more. Further to this, many are stuck reproducing designs that have been done before, without questioning alternative paths.

I can hear the screams now: "but meeting the clients brief at the lowest cost is precisely what being a professional engineer means!!!". Well, I challenge that - as professionals we must meet our clients brief, we must do it responsibly in terms of cost (it's not our money after all); but we must also add to the world - beauty, heart, functionality - helping our clients to a new brief if necessary.

This blog is about how that lack of spark in engineering design is because we only get taught the last step: the design process, but never the preceding two: purpose and function.

But back to design.

The technical design process is the sausage machine; a set of rules and thinking patterns that match theory to a particular problem. It's a powerful machine and is why engineers are often referred to as problem solvers. It goes something like this:

Step 1: briefing - establish/clarify/inform the design brief

Step 2: concept design - identify and screen a range of early design concepts

Step 3: design development - refine the design concept selected during the concept design stage and establish the operating parameters

Step 4: detailed design - refine the design details and produce drawings for manufacture

Once this process has been undertaken a number of times for the same type of system, the early stages can be neglected as the experienced engineer already knows the answer, so all that remains is the detailed design - matching the already-decided design response to the local situation. Only very occasionally do the assumptions that inform the brief at the outset get challenged or revisited. And that is my main challenge with how we're taught the design process- all the effort goes into getting the details right, but so little goes into challenging the underlying inputs into the design process. Fortunately, the sustainable design evolution (we're still far too mainstream to consider ourselves revolutionary) is one process which is starting to question those underlying assumptions. And the first of those is unpacking the function we're striving for through design.

Function.

The first insight I had into the importance of function was a course I did on Biomimicry in September 2010. At the heart of the biomimetic design process is identifying function. This skill is something drilled into zoologists from very early in their careers, and was even drilled into me in high school biology classes: when studying an organism, it looks the way it does because it does a certain thing. Form fits function. If you want to interrogate the form, then you must understand the function.

The Biomimicry Guild have produced a taxonomy of functions to guide the process of design by Biomimicry. This is an excellent tool for beginning to look at any design problems from a functional perspective; some specific functions from the taxonomy are:

- to attach permanently,

- to protect from thermal shock,

- to capture energy.

The full list is far more comprehensive and forms the basis for the brilliant online resource www.asknature.org. Similar briefs in a conventional engineering approach would be to require the use of a particular glue or rivets (instead of the function of attaching something permanently); insulation (instead of protecting from thermal shock) or a solar PV system (instead of capturing energy). We have become so bound by the precedent of our professions, that many engineers have lost the ability to identify function in the first place. A common design brief in my field where function is often ignored, is the design an air-conditioning system instead of a system to maintain occupant comfort, or a system to provide fresh air to occupants.

Another reason why identifying function is important is that multi-functional systems are becoming increasingly important in sustainable design. It is no longer good enough for a water treatment system to simply reduce the impact of effluent that is expelled. To work in the cities of the future, it must now provide a source of energy, a source of fertilizer, a source of recycled water and become a node of biodiversity. We cannot hope to get multi-functional design right until we are well practiced in the art of identifying function.

Function must come before design. If design answers the how? then function must answer the what?. But there is something that must come before function. And that is the why? The purpose for which we are designing.

Purpose.

Again quoting a man who has given me a glimpse of the way forward for my profession - Bill Reed at the Green Building Council of South Africa conference 2010: "All systems have a purpose". When you look at a bicycle, it is clear what the purpose is; the purpose informs the function and the function informs the design.

Unfortunately, most of the modern commercial building projects that shape our cities are founded on the purpose of financial return. The purpose of the building is to generate revenue for the listed funds which invest in them. Not to foster innovation or build a functioning city; but to make money. Whereas in most of the truly inspirational buildings of our time the purpose was broader - to set a benchmark, to be a landmark, to build trust in institutions or to heal a nation. In comparison, the purpose of making money seems an awfully shallow one on which to base the cities in which we live, work and play.

And so, I believe we need to start championing a new purpose. A purpose that comes more from the heart and less from the pocket. A purpose that might allow us to actually create true value and prosperity, not just for the rich. While the generation of wealth won't ever come of the agenda, we must start designing our buildings with the purpose of healing our communities and regenerating the natural systems which keep us alive.

If developers and financiers are too locked into their status quo to see the need for this, then it is our responsibility as professionals to begin to do it anyway. We can start with the purpose of our business - is it to simply create shareholder value, or can we aim a little higher. Do we exist to add value to communities to end poverty? We can challenge the purpose of our projects, or at least approach them with (true) purpose. We can stop seeing the complexities of community and ecology as in convenient extras to report on at year-end and start to build them into the very fabric of what we do.

Ultimately, the purpose of our businesses, our buildings, our cities, our communities and our own role is of a metaphysical nature. The big question of why we are here. Far be it from me to answer that - there are far better qualified people to do so than I - but I do tend to agree with Bill's answer to the question: our purpose is to love. And how do we, as engineers, love? Well, in the immortal words of Theodore Roosevelt; "do what you can, with what you have, where you are".

We can impact the technical systems of the world’s cities such that they do not entrench the status quo of exploitation, inequality and environmental degradation. We can do it with our skills, our training, our systems and the influence that comes from being professionals.

Pattern Recognition: Decision-making and Cost Management

Patterns and pattern recognition are, for me, one of the areas of least expertise and greatest importance in sustainability. And so this post has two functions: my attempts to practice pattern recognition, and then perhaps to offer some insight into patterns I have observed in successful green building projects over my (relatively short) career. The key areas where I'll try and identify patterns are decision-making and cost management.

I am incredibly fortunate to have begun my career just as the revolution of green buildings was starting to sweep Australia, and then to transfer to SA again, just as it was taking off here. I have worked through two intense learning curves, both my own and two industries', and this experience has allowed me to engage with the design process of close to 100 urban development and building projects with a sustainability agenda in over 15 countries. I would like to explore some of the patterns; both good and bad; that I have observed on these projects.

Decision-making

Decision-making is, for me, one of the most interesting and important topics when it comes to sustainable design. On any project, there comes a point in time around the design table when the direction of the project is on a knife-edge; the client must weigh up the options put in front of her (or him), judge the advice of her professional team (architects, engineers, quantity surveyors etc) and make a clear decision on the direction of the project from that moment forward. The earlier in the process that these moments occur, typically the bigger the impact that they have - for good or ill.

These points are also revealing as they often show which decisions are taken for granted, and which require careful deliberation. A common decision early on projects is whether or not to "go green". This is a pattern which defines the progress of a project from the outset - even when the decision is 'yes', it frames any consideration of environmental or social initiatives as add-ons. Conversely, if that decision is never taken, and ESG (environmental, social and governance) issues are considered core project attributes, then it builds a base for future design decision-making on more solid ground in terms of sustainability.

In most cases, external drivers are to thank for sustainability being an assumption, not a decision. The biggest project I worked on in Australia, in the Melbourne Docklands, had a planning requirement for design, as-built and operational energy and green building certification. There was never a decision, but rather an assumption that these were core requirements. However, the most exciting projects are those where the assumption of sustainability is in the heart of the client and team - where they internalise the need to build functional communities in the same way that the priority of profit is internalised on most commercial projects.

The projects I have encountered with a core purpose of social, environmental and financial performance have typically been those which have run the smoothest; much more so than those who have added sustainability onto a conventional development structure.

Clients who start projects with an integrated sustainability vision entrenched from the start allow effective decision-making with respect to sustainability. Clients who view sustainability as an overhead, bolted onto a conventional design paradigm have difficulty making effective decisions with respect to sustainability.

One of the dominant patterns in sustainable design decision-making is the question: "How much is it going to cost?" - this question usually follows closely on the decision of whether or not to "go green". The question of capital cost (capex) is important, money is our dominant assessment of value, and a bird in the hand is always worth two in the bush: cash is typically king.

However, in my experience, this is only half the story as most property is seen as an investment, not just a cost. An investment view of buildings introduces a life-cycle element into the value proposition which should also be reflected in decision-making.

Projects that that are driven by purely capex-focused decision-making often lose many of the attributes that would contribute to value over the life of the asset resulting in a race to the bottom; while projects that start with a picture of life-cycle value typically achieve that value within the confines of their (better-defined) cost plans.

Another dominant pattern that I have seen drive decision-making is the balance between regulation and aspiration, or how much carrot and how much stick?

Whether the stick is felt as minimum regulatory compliance or minimum Green Star points is largely irrelevant. Projects which seek to do the minimum to get a label seldom excel, while projects aiming to maximise value can always show how the minimum has been achieved and exceeded.

Examples of the carrot often involve performance-based incentives, either intrinsic to the project (improved value) or external (rebates or performance targets). Good carrots respond to the performance of the whole, and allow multiple paths to achieving it.

This difference between designing to checklists and designing to performance is particularly noticeable in the building design process, where multiple complex design decisions all affect environmental performance. Unfortunately, most green building certification tools (including Green Star) are premised on checklists, not broad performance.

Complex decision-making is severely hampered in a compliance mindset as the individual impact of each element must be assessed and compared; but is relatively easy in a value-seeking mindset, where the outcome of the whole is paramount.

Cost control

While cost control is an important contributor to decision-making, as noted above, it is also an area where successful patterns have been established in its own right. All successful projects (conventional and "green") rely on excellent cost control, but projects which deliver real value require a deep understanding of how costs, investment and value are linked over the life of a project.

The status quo on building projects for cost control (as I understand it - and welcome an further clarity or discussion) is that a quantity surveyor undertakes a feasibility study on the basis of the market rules of thumb and produces a cost plan for a building that will deliver a particular yield. Unfortunately, a dominant pattern in commercial projects, is that once the original feasibility has been established the cost plan becomes law and no further investment in quality (beyond the original assumptions) can be motivated.

This reframes the idea of investment as simply an idea of cost reduction on many projects, which in turn results in a race to the bottom - a concept borne out by many buildings that populate our cities. Moving to life-cycle costing (taking operational performance into account) is a good first step, and ultimately life-cycle value management (taking the whole of life impacts of the project into account) offers a possible alternative to current cost management processes.

Further to these, the value of sustainability is currently poorly understood, as are the external long-term costs of environmental degradation. Moving away from simple cost management (which ignores many externalities) to value management (which should take these external, but real costs into account) may improve our understanding, our buildings and the sustainability of our cities.

Good cost control does not simply mean matching a design to a budget. Rather, it implies a live assessment of project value and projected performance that allows flexibility in design and, more importantly, is flexible itself to best reflect the value that is brought forward through design.

One of the terms that has emerged on projects, especially those that view Green Star certification as an important, but non-core initiative is the Green Budget - the extra-over spend to achieve a green certification. While this appears, in most circumstances, to be inevitable, it is rather in conflict with the assertion that sustainable design is tran-disciplinary in nature, and real environmental performance comes from the combination of building systems, not any single initiative.

The discretising of cost premiums may be useful to clients in one sense for allowing the cost-benefit of any single system to be established. It also lends itself to the tick-box approach driven by green building certification tools like Green Star. In fact the capital premium for certified buildings has formed the basis of most of the discussion on Green Star, not the improvement in environmental performance. Most consultants, myself included, have adopted this approach based on how closely it works with the green building certification tools that underpin much of our business.

So, for the most part, green budgets will form a core part of sustainable design. However, if our decision-making tools can be developed to reference real value from multiple systems, could our cost control of those systems not also develop holistic strategies to match. When Bill Reed speaks of integrative design (see http://www.integrativedesign.net/), he talks of projects which have moved beyond discrete green budgets and into a realm where holistic, whole system design is partnered with cost savings and improved value. I believe that our pursuit of green budgets is not a result of sustainability being considered expensive, but rather one of the causes.

A holistic approach to cost control in partnership with design can deliver better value than a discretised green budget.

Finally, on the topic of cost control, is an approach to value engineering. You may have detected a critical tone towards green building certification tools like Green Star, however it is in the process of value engineering that they do play an important role.

The thresholds of different levels of certification (4 star, 5 star etc) change the dynamic of marginal value and marginal cost for initiatives intended to improve the environmental performance of a building - the initiative which takes you from 44 to 45 points may ordinarily have been excluded during VE on the basis of its discrete cost, but is now retained as it is critical to realising the marketing value of certification. While this is still in the context of viewing sustainability as an overhead, it is still an important acknowledgment of the progress that green building have made.

Current building assessment tools are designed effectively for the current property industry culture of value engineering. New tools may be necessary as value is more broadly (accurately) defined.

Summary

So, where does this leave us? A brief recap of the italicised points:

Projects that that are driven by purely capex-focused decision-making often lose many of the attributes that would contribute to value over the life of the asset resulting in a race to the bottom; while projects that start with a picture of life-cycle value typically achieve that value within the confines of their (better-defined) cost plans.

Complex decision-making is severely hampered in a compliance mindset as the individual impact of each element must be assessed and compared; but is relatively easy in a value-seeking mindset, where the outcome of the whole is paramount.

Good cost control does not simply mean matching a design to a budget. Rather, it implies a live assessment of project value and projected performance that allows flexibility in design and, more importantly, is flexible itself to best reflect the value that is brought forward through design.

A holistic approach to cost control in partnership with design can deliver better value than a discretised green budget.

Current building assessment tools are designed effectively for the current property industry culture of value engineering. New tools may be necessary as value is more broadly (accurately) defined.

For me, the core patterns that begin to emerge relate primarily to three things:

1. How a project is envisioned from its earliest stages, dtermines the outlook on all future decisions.

2. Our current definition of value in the context of sustainability could do with some work; to move beyond cash and into a broader understanding of value to society.

3. Looking at whole systems, and not just at the parts, allows more effective decision-making and provides better value projects.

So, where to next?

Well, I'd like to see a concerted effort to extract deep patterns from green buildings globally. Projects that have excelled and exceeded expectations as well as those that haven't.

I also want to explore how inspiration affects project teams as a driver for value.

But more on that in later posts.