[Music]
[Applause]
we need to move faster fundamentally
we’ve got to get much much faster and I
really mean about moving beyond
sustainable design and moving towards a
responsible world now I know we live in
a world where environmental awareness is
probably greater than it’s ever been in
modern times we’ve got renewable
technology that we’re using more and
more we have electric vehicles and
hybrid vehicles that were using all the
time and in buildings that’s that’s what
I do I helped design high-performance
buildings we’re building them
better than we ever have today but
that’s not always been the case I
remember growing up I’m a child of the
80s so I remember growing up in the 80s
and 90s and we were not nearly as
socially aware or environmentally aware
as we are today you had things like we
had and we still do Earth Day right that
was the that was the one time of year we
all kind of rallied around and really
celebrated the world and we had I
remember this we recycling right
everybody takes this for granted but I
remember being in grade school and
recycling came about and we had
recycling on our house right that was
new that was that was that was the
forefront of it but at the same time we
had coal power plants right in the US
and the UK in the 80s and 90s the
majority of our power was coal 50 to 60
percent of our power was coal which is
the dirtiest dirtiest way to produce
power and the cars that we drove there
were gas guzzlers right we were more
concerned about performance than that
efficiency and the narrative at that
time was very much around why
fundamentally we knew weren’t we weren’t
doing the right thing we knew it as a
society we knew it and there was this
narrative that always talked about well
future generations will help figure this
out future technology will help figure
this out and as a young kid do you think
future right this is the Jetsons this is
200 years from now this isn’t this isn’t
this isn’t in my lifetime but it is it’s
us it’s it’s it’s
of us were sitting here and it’s our
responsibility it’s our generation it’s
the Gen Xers it’s the millenials it’s
the baby boomers it’s all of us all of
us are the ones that are responsible but
there are some significant challenges
that we face time one of them but
population growth is another so we’re
sitting at about seven-and-a-half
billion people right now and that’s just
growing the rate of population growth is
decreasing but we’re still increasing
the effective load on the planet so the
more people we have the more resources
we need the bigger the cities we have so
when we combine that population growth
with rapid urbanization it creates
challenges but it also creates
opportunities so right now we have about
three and a half billion people in the
world that live in cities
we’re gonna add another 2.4 in the next
thirty three years so we’re gonna have
about six billion people living in
cities that’s we’ve got to build cities
at a faster rate than we’ve ever done in
known to man and that’s a massive
opportunity when we’re looking at
responsible design going forward that’s
that’s a clean slate we know we need to
build such a massive amount of
infrastructure and buildings that we
have the opportunity to move beyond
sustainability towards responsible
design and the time component comes in
with the Paris agreement so last year
195 world leaders came together and this
is unprecedented came together and
ratified action against climate change
and so it it all boils down to really
the number two the number two and that’s
significant because these world leaders
have committed their governments and
their economies to limiting the average
temperature annual average temperature
to two degrees above pre-industrial
times and so that what that means is
that number sort of starts you know
1800s the temperature average
temperature along the year just kind of
bumped along a little bit higher a
little bit lower there was volcanic
activity to go a little higher but we’re
moving at a increased rate and that to
degree cap is is is a key and two
degrees is is what was ratified but with
a goal of 1.5
and where are we today it’s we’re
halfway there
last year the annual average increase
above that pre-industrial time was 0.99
degrees I’m just gonna call that a
degree so we’re halfway there
if we’re talking about that two degree
mark we’re halfway there if we’re
talking about that 1.5 degree mark which
is the aspiration we’re two-thirds of
the way there and so what is what does
this actually mean in terms of time and
development what it means is effectively
the buildings that were designing need
to be carbon zero so so no global
greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 that’s
13 years from now that’s not a very long
time and by 2050 effectively all the
buildings that we currently have and
that’s that’s millions of buildings
around the world effectively need to go
to carbon neutral so we could we could
start to bring carbon back in line the
story’s not great right now effectively
75 percent of what we build is
conventional so we all most countries
and most jurisdictions have an energy
code and most development is just
getting over that line and that’s
economic driven that’s just trying to
get the buildings built about 25 percent
fall into that category of green or
high-performance and that’s that’s a
majority of what I do then less than a
percent fall into sustainable which is
that that middle ground that’s where we
need to be in 13 years or restorative or
regenerative now if we think that in 13
years everything needs to shift to the
center and in 33 years everything needs
to shift to the center the reality is
it’s going to be a balance right we’re
looking for that that bell curve so we
need to move to a point where we can
make restorative and regenerative design
and construction more economically
feasible across the board in order for
us to move forward and fundamentally we
need to get there through collaboration
right there’s not a single person that
can design a building straight through
and every job I’ve ever been on it’s
it’s been a collaborative working
environment but we need to speed that up
we need we need to go we actually need
to go quicker we’ve got it we’ve got a
clock ticking and if we look at other
industries they’re they’re similar in
their needs to collaborate so the
aviation industry
we went from a wooden paper airplane in
1903 with with a 12 second flight time
to supersonic jet and with the Concorde
in 1969 to the most fuel-efficient
long-range passenger plane in 2009 and
that wasn’t done without collaboration
and actually a single a single goal
right so that so there’s this coalition
around a common goal for all the teams
all the technical all the marketing all
that has to has to coalesce around that
common goal the same is true for
telecommunications so in the mid-80s I
didn’t have the opportunity have a big
brick phone I don’t know if any of you
guys did but I sure had one of the candy
bar phones of the 90s and I bet most
everybody in this room now has has that
small computer in your in your pocket or
purse or your bag that we still call the
phone and again the advancement of that
was was rapid especially from from the
90s to 2007 the advancement of that was
so so quick and that’s something that we
can learn from as a built environment
design but the other side of that is the
ability to prototype in prototype
quickly and what we do a poor job at is
rapidly prototyping we can learn we can
learn from other industries and we could
learn about how to generate lots of
ideas how to generate lots of prototypes
build physical models build build them
to destroy tests so we can we can test
concepts all the way through so we’re
not taking a project all the way through
but we’re we’re taking that in the in
the prototype now I don’t want to say
that we we don’t go through this process
at all so architects if there any
architects in the crowd we definitely we
prototype every project we’re testing
we’re testing massing and orientation
and we’re looking at how the building
fits on this site engineers do the same
thing we’re looking at our systems
design integrated to the architecture
we’re looking at passive technologies
against each other and we’re prototyping
those as well but largely
not wholly but largely we’re doing that
in isolation so we’re working in these
little little silos and then we come
together and this is a very old-school
method of decoupled design so ages and
ages ago we’re getting better as a
society architects used to design the
building you know make it make it look
beautiful make it habitable pass it over
to somebody like myself that that would
put heating and cooling into it and then
you know pass that on to the contractors
and they would build it and people would
move in so it was this very kind of step
change a decoupled method and we’ve been
we’ve been learning and in the UK we’re
moving more towards that integrated
design every every year but we need to
try to figure out how that that
prototype that prototype cycle happens
together in a collaborative cohesive way
because right now it’s it’s not on a
universal stage now I’ve definitely had
experiences where I’ve worked in this
where we get together and there’s a lot
of effort and energy that are put into
that early stage and I don’t know why
anybody wouldn’t want to work like this
it’s the most engaging and fun way to
work you’re testing all sorts of ideas
you’re throwing the craziest ideas out
and seeing if they work and they just
might and some of them do but if you
don’t get to this point where you’re
actually allowed to are encouraged to
test and iterate we’re just going
through that same process of design
design design pull together build and
habit let’s do it again the thing that’s
really different between our industry
and the likes of let’s take the phone
for example is every single building
that we design and build is virtually a
prototype right we don’t build them and
then mass-produced them we don’t we
don’t design a building and then build
tens or hundreds or thousands of or
millions of the same the same building
that’s not how it works so our process
is much different and you can imagine
when somebody’s building the next
smartphone version 8 the minute they
release that they don’t start version 9
the next day they’ve been working on
nine and they’ve been working on 10 and
they’re using their past experiences in
that prototype methodology and that
continuous learning to continue to grow
for next year’s release in the year
after
fundamentally what we’re missing in our
industry and what we’ve got to try to
figure out is how we can create this
this continuous loop of of learning
because right now we get a team together
we understand the problem it moves
through the design process even if
that’s a prototype version we get to the
point where we deliver a design
contractor builds it and that team that
team dissipates it goes its separate way
and part of that’s wonderful right so
all those all those lessons that are
learned get dispersed amongst the
community but the hard thing is that it
also gets dispersed and diluted and so
that group that might have had a really
great idea that in two or three or four
more prototype iterations what it really
would have really locked on to a way to
do it
quicker or cheaper or whatever has just
dispersed and they don’t have that
ability to feedback in and learn and we
fundamentally don’t have a space for
that the universities are doing research
we have organizations within the UK that
also do research but as private sector
we don’t have a community we don’t have
a collective that allows us and this is
part of part of what I’m here to talk
about it try to figure out how how we
and you can all figure out how we do
this I’ve not figured it out yet and
I’ve been talking about the technical
team but the reality is we’re only a
small portion of it all of us are in
buildings we spend we live work sleep we
spend 90% of our time and buildings
that’s that’s that’s the that’s the
figure so if you think about that we
live I think I read it’s now 80 81 years
we spend about 70 years of our lives and
buildings that’s we spend a lot of time
in buildings and so we’re all active
participants right we choose where we go
we choose how we choose where we live we
choose where we go to school we choose
all these things right but we but what
we don’t fundamentally do is choose
around sustainable credentials of a
building why is that we’re all we’re all
living in buildings we’re all part of it
we all know that that we read the papers
we know that we live in this world
that’s more
mentally where so from us from a
stakeholder alignment we all need to
take responsibility but then there’s
there’s even the wider group right so so
I’ve no doubt we have leaders from local
and central government we’ve got folks
at work for 50 100 companies sure we
have folks here that that work for funds
that that are in development and so we
need to we need to all come together
around that common that common goal it’s
not just the developers it’s not just
the design team that that’s
responsibility because it goes much
wider than that we can design technical
buildings that get us there but if they
don’t work out economically and they
don’t work out socially then they’re not
responsible and something when we talk
about accelerating I’ve talked about
that prototyping methodology and the
technical side and we can do we need to
figure that out and we will as a
technical group but we also have to
figure out how we make these things work
because right now that the NOC is that
green buildings cost a bit more and by
and large they probably do so while we
try to figure out how to make these
technical buildings more cost-effective
more universal we also need the other
half of the stakeholder group to try to
help figure out actually how can we make
the the business models work such that
it doesn’t have to be straight line
right now because if we wait that long
we’re just with the clock’s ticking we
got 13 years right now if we wait till
10 years to get to that or nine years we
might miss the boat so I’m going to
leave you guys with a bit of a challenge
so we all know that it’s all a
responsibility we all know that the goal
is two degrees max right so we’re all in
agreement there I just want everybody
here to leave today and try to figure
out what you can specifically do in your
job and your in in your personal life
that helps us maintain two degrees thank
you
[Music]
[Applause]
[Applause]
we need to move faster fundamentally
we’ve got to get much much faster and I
really mean about moving beyond
sustainable design and moving towards a
responsible world now I know we live in
a world where environmental awareness is
probably greater than it’s ever been in
modern times we’ve got renewable
technology that we’re using more and
more we have electric vehicles and
hybrid vehicles that were using all the
time and in buildings that’s that’s what
I do I helped design high-performance
buildings we’re building them
better than we ever have today but
that’s not always been the case I
remember growing up I’m a child of the
80s so I remember growing up in the 80s
and 90s and we were not nearly as
socially aware or environmentally aware
as we are today you had things like we
had and we still do Earth Day right that
was the that was the one time of year we
all kind of rallied around and really
celebrated the world and we had I
remember this we recycling right
everybody takes this for granted but I
remember being in grade school and
recycling came about and we had
recycling on our house right that was
new that was that was that was the
forefront of it but at the same time we
had coal power plants right in the US
and the UK in the 80s and 90s the
majority of our power was coal 50 to 60
percent of our power was coal which is
the dirtiest dirtiest way to produce
power and the cars that we drove there
were gas guzzlers right we were more
concerned about performance than that
efficiency and the narrative at that
time was very much around why
fundamentally we knew weren’t we weren’t
doing the right thing we knew it as a
society we knew it and there was this
narrative that always talked about well
future generations will help figure this
out future technology will help figure
this out and as a young kid do you think
future right this is the Jetsons this is
200 years from now this isn’t this isn’t
this isn’t in my lifetime but it is it’s
us it’s it’s it’s
of us were sitting here and it’s our
responsibility it’s our generation it’s
the Gen Xers it’s the millenials it’s
the baby boomers it’s all of us all of
us are the ones that are responsible but
there are some significant challenges
that we face time one of them but
population growth is another so we’re
sitting at about seven-and-a-half
billion people right now and that’s just
growing the rate of population growth is
decreasing but we’re still increasing
the effective load on the planet so the
more people we have the more resources
we need the bigger the cities we have so
when we combine that population growth
with rapid urbanization it creates
challenges but it also creates
opportunities so right now we have about
three and a half billion people in the
world that live in cities
we’re gonna add another 2.4 in the next
thirty three years so we’re gonna have
about six billion people living in
cities that’s we’ve got to build cities
at a faster rate than we’ve ever done in
known to man and that’s a massive
opportunity when we’re looking at
responsible design going forward that’s
that’s a clean slate we know we need to
build such a massive amount of
infrastructure and buildings that we
have the opportunity to move beyond
sustainability towards responsible
design and the time component comes in
with the Paris agreement so last year
195 world leaders came together and this
is unprecedented came together and
ratified action against climate change
and so it it all boils down to really
the number two the number two and that’s
significant because these world leaders
have committed their governments and
their economies to limiting the average
temperature annual average temperature
to two degrees above pre-industrial
times and so that what that means is
that number sort of starts you know
1800s the temperature average
temperature along the year just kind of
bumped along a little bit higher a
little bit lower there was volcanic
activity to go a little higher but we’re
moving at a increased rate and that to
degree cap is is is a key and two
degrees is is what was ratified but with
a goal of 1.5
and where are we today it’s we’re
halfway there
last year the annual average increase
above that pre-industrial time was 0.99
degrees I’m just gonna call that a
degree so we’re halfway there
if we’re talking about that two degree
mark we’re halfway there if we’re
talking about that 1.5 degree mark which
is the aspiration we’re two-thirds of
the way there and so what is what does
this actually mean in terms of time and
development what it means is effectively
the buildings that were designing need
to be carbon zero so so no global
greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 that’s
13 years from now that’s not a very long
time and by 2050 effectively all the
buildings that we currently have and
that’s that’s millions of buildings
around the world effectively need to go
to carbon neutral so we could we could
start to bring carbon back in line the
story’s not great right now effectively
75 percent of what we build is
conventional so we all most countries
and most jurisdictions have an energy
code and most development is just
getting over that line and that’s
economic driven that’s just trying to
get the buildings built about 25 percent
fall into that category of green or
high-performance and that’s that’s a
majority of what I do then less than a
percent fall into sustainable which is
that that middle ground that’s where we
need to be in 13 years or restorative or
regenerative now if we think that in 13
years everything needs to shift to the
center and in 33 years everything needs
to shift to the center the reality is
it’s going to be a balance right we’re
looking for that that bell curve so we
need to move to a point where we can
make restorative and regenerative design
and construction more economically
feasible across the board in order for
us to move forward and fundamentally we
need to get there through collaboration
right there’s not a single person that
can design a building straight through
and every job I’ve ever been on it’s
it’s been a collaborative working
environment but we need to speed that up
we need we need to go we actually need
to go quicker we’ve got it we’ve got a
clock ticking and if we look at other
industries they’re they’re similar in
their needs to collaborate so the
aviation industry
we went from a wooden paper airplane in
1903 with with a 12 second flight time
to supersonic jet and with the Concorde
in 1969 to the most fuel-efficient
long-range passenger plane in 2009 and
that wasn’t done without collaboration
and actually a single a single goal
right so that so there’s this coalition
around a common goal for all the teams
all the technical all the marketing all
that has to has to coalesce around that
common goal the same is true for
telecommunications so in the mid-80s I
didn’t have the opportunity have a big
brick phone I don’t know if any of you
guys did but I sure had one of the candy
bar phones of the 90s and I bet most
everybody in this room now has has that
small computer in your in your pocket or
purse or your bag that we still call the
phone and again the advancement of that
was was rapid especially from from the
90s to 2007 the advancement of that was
so so quick and that’s something that we
can learn from as a built environment
design but the other side of that is the
ability to prototype in prototype
quickly and what we do a poor job at is
rapidly prototyping we can learn we can
learn from other industries and we could
learn about how to generate lots of
ideas how to generate lots of prototypes
build physical models build build them
to destroy tests so we can we can test
concepts all the way through so we’re
not taking a project all the way through
but we’re we’re taking that in the in
the prototype now I don’t want to say
that we we don’t go through this process
at all so architects if there any
architects in the crowd we definitely we
prototype every project we’re testing
we’re testing massing and orientation
and we’re looking at how the building
fits on this site engineers do the same
thing we’re looking at our systems
design integrated to the architecture
we’re looking at passive technologies
against each other and we’re prototyping
those as well but largely
not wholly but largely we’re doing that
in isolation so we’re working in these
little little silos and then we come
together and this is a very old-school
method of decoupled design so ages and
ages ago we’re getting better as a
society architects used to design the
building you know make it make it look
beautiful make it habitable pass it over
to somebody like myself that that would
put heating and cooling into it and then
you know pass that on to the contractors
and they would build it and people would
move in so it was this very kind of step
change a decoupled method and we’ve been
we’ve been learning and in the UK we’re
moving more towards that integrated
design every every year but we need to
try to figure out how that that
prototype that prototype cycle happens
together in a collaborative cohesive way
because right now it’s it’s not on a
universal stage now I’ve definitely had
experiences where I’ve worked in this
where we get together and there’s a lot
of effort and energy that are put into
that early stage and I don’t know why
anybody wouldn’t want to work like this
it’s the most engaging and fun way to
work you’re testing all sorts of ideas
you’re throwing the craziest ideas out
and seeing if they work and they just
might and some of them do but if you
don’t get to this point where you’re
actually allowed to are encouraged to
test and iterate we’re just going
through that same process of design
design design pull together build and
habit let’s do it again the thing that’s
really different between our industry
and the likes of let’s take the phone
for example is every single building
that we design and build is virtually a
prototype right we don’t build them and
then mass-produced them we don’t we
don’t design a building and then build
tens or hundreds or thousands of or
millions of the same the same building
that’s not how it works so our process
is much different and you can imagine
when somebody’s building the next
smartphone version 8 the minute they
release that they don’t start version 9
the next day they’ve been working on
nine and they’ve been working on 10 and
they’re using their past experiences in
that prototype methodology and that
continuous learning to continue to grow
for next year’s release in the year
after
fundamentally what we’re missing in our
industry and what we’ve got to try to
figure out is how we can create this
this continuous loop of of learning
because right now we get a team together
we understand the problem it moves
through the design process even if
that’s a prototype version we get to the
point where we deliver a design
contractor builds it and that team that
team dissipates it goes its separate way
and part of that’s wonderful right so
all those all those lessons that are
learned get dispersed amongst the
community but the hard thing is that it
also gets dispersed and diluted and so
that group that might have had a really
great idea that in two or three or four
more prototype iterations what it really
would have really locked on to a way to
do it
quicker or cheaper or whatever has just
dispersed and they don’t have that
ability to feedback in and learn and we
fundamentally don’t have a space for
that the universities are doing research
we have organizations within the UK that
also do research but as private sector
we don’t have a community we don’t have
a collective that allows us and this is
part of part of what I’m here to talk
about it try to figure out how how we
and you can all figure out how we do
this I’ve not figured it out yet and
I’ve been talking about the technical
team but the reality is we’re only a
small portion of it all of us are in
buildings we spend we live work sleep we
spend 90% of our time and buildings
that’s that’s that’s the that’s the
figure so if you think about that we
live I think I read it’s now 80 81 years
we spend about 70 years of our lives and
buildings that’s we spend a lot of time
in buildings and so we’re all active
participants right we choose where we go
we choose how we choose where we live we
choose where we go to school we choose
all these things right but we but what
we don’t fundamentally do is choose
around sustainable credentials of a
building why is that we’re all we’re all
living in buildings we’re all part of it
we all know that that we read the papers
we know that we live in this world
that’s more
mentally where so from us from a
stakeholder alignment we all need to
take responsibility but then there’s
there’s even the wider group right so so
I’ve no doubt we have leaders from local
and central government we’ve got folks
at work for 50 100 companies sure we
have folks here that that work for funds
that that are in development and so we
need to we need to all come together
around that common that common goal it’s
not just the developers it’s not just
the design team that that’s
responsibility because it goes much
wider than that we can design technical
buildings that get us there but if they
don’t work out economically and they
don’t work out socially then they’re not
responsible and something when we talk
about accelerating I’ve talked about
that prototyping methodology and the
technical side and we can do we need to
figure that out and we will as a
technical group but we also have to
figure out how we make these things work
because right now that the NOC is that
green buildings cost a bit more and by
and large they probably do so while we
try to figure out how to make these
technical buildings more cost-effective
more universal we also need the other
half of the stakeholder group to try to
help figure out actually how can we make
the the business models work such that
it doesn’t have to be straight line
right now because if we wait that long
we’re just with the clock’s ticking we
got 13 years right now if we wait till
10 years to get to that or nine years we
might miss the boat so I’m going to
leave you guys with a bit of a challenge
so we all know that it’s all a
responsibility we all know that the goal
is two degrees max right so we’re all in
agreement there I just want everybody
here to leave today and try to figure
out what you can specifically do in your
job and your in in your personal life
that helps us maintain two degrees thank
you
[Music]
[Applause]
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