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The Revolution of Green Building

We spoke with David Kaneda, Founder and Principal at Integrated Design Associates(IDeAs), about the standardization of green building practices, the need for communication among architects, engineers and contractors, and the technologies that will enable the green building revolution.

Recently the conversation about sustainability, LEED designs, and green building has gone mainstream, but implementation of these practices has not.  Why do you think this is?

Traditionally the building industry has evolved very slowly.  Right now I’m walking around our office and there are drawings all over the place.  We use computers to draw them and laser printers to print them, but essentially we’re doing the same thing that was done hundreds of years ago: putting lines on paper to tell somebody how to build something.

So when you consider sustainability and green buildings, the buzz and discussion is a pretty new phenomenon.  You’re right that it’s gone mainstream, but it’s only done so in maybe the last 3 years.  In high tech terms that’s eons, but in terms of building design that’s barely enough time to even react and think about it.  To design a building is frequently a 2 year process, not to mention acquiring the property and the money.  From the time you hire the architect, design it, send it out and get it built it takes 2 years.  So a firm that heard the buzz 2 or 3 years ago and decided to design a green building would only now be getting it done.

Does this mean there will there be a surge of additional green buildings emerging in the near future?

Yes, I think so - one way you can see this is to look at the number of LEED platinum buildings that are being completed.  Their numbers are increasing at a pace that’s accelerating, not just in a linear way.

As the industry introduces newer solutions of ever increasing technical complexity, it seems that there is a risk of rising costs hindering the adoption of new practices.  What’s your take on this?

It’s like the high tech industry.  If something’s brand spanking new it costs a lot more money, and everything’s brand spanking new right now.  There was a very small group of architects and engineers who were doing this years ago, but the vast majority of the building industry is just figuring this stuff out.  The manufacturers aren’t there yet and everybody’s scrambling to get up to speed.  Right now that’s one of the things that really slows down adoption.  People are saying, “I see that this is the right thing to do, but it costs a lot of money, and I don’t have a lot of money.”  Once a product has been out there for years it won’t be selling at a premium anymore because it’s standard.  We’re just starting to see this with certain types of products.

So you see decreasing costs helping to speed adoption?

Yeah, there will probably always be a premium for the cutting edge stuff just like for the fastest computer chips.  But many technologies will become the standard instead of the exception and as the volume of stuff in that category increases then I think it will be easier to do green buildings

A good example is electronic ballast light fixtures.  There was a time when those cost hundreds of dollars for one ballast.  They would never pay back from an energy standpoint, so no one was using them.  Now if you want the old type of ballast you have to pay more money plus it’s less efficient plus there are environmental issues, so no one wants to touch it.

Do you see the move towards green building as an “evolution” or a “revolution” for the industry?

I’m thinking it’s a revolution because it’s not an incremental change.  For most firms it will be a significant departure from the way that they are used to designing buildings.  It’s not just about knowing the materials or knowing how to do the calculations.

The concept of integrated design comes up a lot when you’re talking about green buildings.  What it means is that architects and engineers need to really closely understand the interplay between different pieces of the design.  In many cases the architect does his thing and essentially throws a set of drawings at the electrical engineer and says, “Here, put your system into my building.”  To achieve the most efficient results what you want to do is sit down with all the players and have a discussion where you ask, “If I do this, what does it mean for you?”

The tradition in the building industry is for one group of firms to team up on a design and throw it at another group of firms as a pile of paper.  Then they go custom build it on a one-off basis.  If you think about the car industry, they would never do this.  They have methods of mass production that are more efficient and ultimately result in better quality.  I think we’re on the cusp of that, and it’s a revolution because it’s going to change the relationships between the players. 

Traditionally the designers complete a design and then they police the guys who are building it to make sure they don’t cheat.  The contracts and legal systems are all written that way and there’s a whole infrastructure built up around that way of doing projects.  The first step away from this was the Design-Build approach.  Instead of taking a completed design and giving it to the contractor with the lowest bid, they put together the team up front so the builders are working with the designers from the beginning.  In this way designers have access to the kind of knowledge about things like what works in practice and what materials have long lead times that traditionally belonged to the contractors.  And that’s a real change, that’s revolutionary.

Do you have an example of some of the challenges to making this sort of integrated approach work?

Here in our new San Jose building we’re trying to be a net zero energy building.  The best way to do that where we are is with photovoltaics, which are expensive, and the roof area is limited.   The most efficient way to be zero energy is to make it so you don’t need a lot of electricity in the first place.  First the building has to go all electric, which is an interface between electrical engineering and mechanical engineering and second it needs to sip power not gulp power. 

One step we took was to put skylights in so we can keep the lights turned off.  The problem with skylights is that they’re essentially windows in the ceiling and will never be as thermally insulating as a traditional ceiling.  If you have too many skylights you let heat enter or escape the building, but with too few skylights you don’t get enough light.  The window is an architectural thing but how light spreads through the space is a daylighting and electrical thing and how heat moves within the space is a mechanical thing.  It becomes a dance between the architect, the electrical engineer and the mechanical engineer to try to find the best balance.

From your experience designing buildings what technologies or tools do you think are missing, what technologies would allow you to do the things you wish you could do?

The first is integration in the way we draw and analyze buildings.  Variations on an existing software called Building Information Modeling (BIM) have been around for 25 years, but it’s finally getting to the point where people are using it to design buildings.  BIM allows you to truly design a building in 3D, so instead of just a line that represents a door it has a model of the door with manufacturer’s data attached to it.

This is the first step in the right direction, but the sophisticated analytical programs still exist as a lot of totally independent packages that each do one special thing.  Normally people do it piecemeal by drawing a design on the computer and then taking the information and manually putting it into a different program to perform calculations.  A program that would tie all those things together and immediately give you feedback on what works would be tremendously valuable.

The other really big area for improvement in my mind is photovoltaics.  That’s the main way of generating energy locally, but PV is just hugely expensive.  Right now the only reason you can do it is because the federal government is giving you tax breaks and the state is giving you incentives to make it reasonable.  Eventually it needs to be reasonable without all that stuff.  If you can come out with a way to make photovoltaics much, much cheaper they don’t need to be more efficient.  Who cares if I need to put up an extra 2,000 ft2 of PV if it’s a tenth of the price?  Then suddenly as long as I have some roof area I can completely cover it.  Meeting that challenge will be part volume and part innovation in materials and manufacturing methods.  It’ll be like computer chips – they used to be hugely expensive and slow, then as time went on they got faster and cheaper.  If a similar technology curve happens for renewable energy then suddenly the whole dynamic will change.

So do you think the real opportunity is for cheaper PV to cover larger areas rather than expensive but aesthetically pleasing building-integrated PV?

Well, you’re talking about them as if they’re mutually exclusive.  What if you could paint a building and stick two wires on the side?  What if PV was integrated into the roofing membrane or the laminated glass that you’re going to put in anyway?  If you can do it the real answer is to make it better and cheaper.  The high tech industry has done it, so there’s no reason why the building industry can’t do it as well.  I think that’s where Silicon Valley could potentially play a significant role in making that change because there’s clearly a huge interest growing in green buildings. 

Biography
David Kaneda is Founder and Principal at IDeAs: Integrated Design Associates, Inc.  David's experience includes over two decades working in the building industry in North America and Europe. He is the founder of IDeAs and a professional engineer, a licensed architect, an award winning lighting designer and MBA. His responsibilities include strategic planning, sustainability research, peer review, conceptual design and interdisciplinary coordination.  To learn more about IDeAs visit: www.ideasi.com