Embracing Change: Starting a Sustainable Architecture Firm Amid a Pandemic
Things don’t always go as planned. Sometimes, life drags us by the collar as we placidly lie down, watching the ground slide beneath us. The Pandemic seems to have done this to the entire planet, for a moment, and we’ve ended up in places we didn’t intend to be. I landed here, starting my own firm amid stay-at-home orders, mask mandates, and a massive economic down-turn. This was not the plan.
Despite the erratic detour we all find ourselves in, I must say: I’m happy to be here. Taking on the mystery and challenge of starting a new business is exciting and humbling; it’s a welcome break from the work I’ve done for the past 7 years. It’s also a hopeful time and a chance to reconsider how we do business in the architecture world. What are our priorities? What does it mean to practice architecture in a global society? In a pandemic? In a world of intense climate change?
The last one’s a doozy. We Architects have taken our time responding to the ever-growing, ever-present threat of global climate change. We’ve known about the effects of adding carbon dioxide to the air since 1896, when Svante Arrhenius calculated that doubling the molecule’s concentration in the atmosphere could cause temperature changes of 5-6 degrees Celsius. Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin advanced the science just thee years later, setting the base for what was then known as ‘The Greenhouse Effect.’ By the 1960’s, President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee warned the administration that the continual use of fossil fuels may ‘have significant effects on climate.’ Standford’s research described society as engaging in a ‘vast geophysical experiment with [their] environment, the earth.’ We’ve known for a long time that current practices don’t work, that they increase carbon in our air, and yet we are staring down the year 2050, the deadline for serious change in order to avoid the biggest ecological disaster in human history.
So I’m going to do things differently. Projects at ADG will always start with materials that are Red-List Free - free of toxic chemicals that leech into our air, free of cancer-causing components. We’re going to put the environment at the top of our priorities, because it’s in everyone’s best interest to preserve our planet. We’re going to bring these practices to everyone, not just to big projects. Every step counts, no matter how small the project. I know this will take patience and practice; that’s why cultivation is part of my process. And it will be hard and frustrating and full of failures along the way, but stand by an old saying: ‘Worthy goals are rarely easily achieved.’