Living Buildings for a Living Future | Jason McLennan | TEDxBend

how's everyone doing so my name is Jason and I'm a troublemaker other troublemakers here I just want to make sure I came to the right place and I brought my little friend the Stargazer Lily guys like this so we're going to talk about buildings and we're going to talk about flowers a little bit so while I am a troublemaker I'm also an architect and I'm an environmentalist and I've been practicing green architecture before it was cool and I had a lot of times early in my career when people thought that the things I was talking about was crazy and would never take off and no one would ever do this green stuff we tried it in the 70s and it didn't work if you remember those of you that are old enough the 80s and the 90s it wasn't kind to the green building scene but thankfully things began to change LEED came along green buildings started to become a mainstream topic if not a mainstream activity at least a topic and we began to see some green buildings but I began to be Restless I was anxious that the progress wasn't fast enough that sustainability wasn't deep enough that it wasn't authentic that we were minimizing damage but we were falling behind at all the real indicators and trends so as an architect were taught to appreciate design and large buildings with glass and steel but as my career went on I began to be more frustrated with the progress of design and more and more I turned my attention to nature's architecture like this beautiful flower or the curb era that you saw earlier and I started to compare these things in my mind because they were both literally and figuratively routed to place if you think about your home or your office building they're routed to place but unfortunately that's where the comparison tends to end you see a flower has to get all of its energy from the Sun through photosynthesis it has to get all the water that NEADS from the amount of precipitation that it can capture in the root system below it it has to be adapted very specifically to a place it can't pollute the soil and the earth around it or it dies in fact when it's done it becomes nutrients for the next cycle and while it's alive it responds actively to temperature and humidity it opens and closes and tracks the Sun is actually habitat for lots of little critters some that we see and some that we don't and the kicker for me is that they're just so beautiful why can't this be a criteria for our buildings why can't this be the way we design so I began working on this idea a very crazy idea that became known as the Living Building Challenge about a decade ago and I started to think about this idea of how do we produce buildings that are not less bad for the environment but are good for the environment how about buildings that instead of being less likely to give us cancer they can't give us cancer how about buildings that instead of having less climate change impact and using a little bit less fossil fuels use none how about buildings that are instead of being a little more efficient with water get all the water that they need from the sky captured on the roof bring it into the building treat it and use it again why can't we do these things that nature does so I caught a fight this in a 30 page document and like anyone that has a 30 page document I did the next crazy thing as I quit my job I was the youngest partner and a very successful architecture firm people again thought I was very crazy I quit my job I sold my house at a loss I had a you know a young child who's here tonight Aidan and we moved to the west coast and lived in a more expensive place and I joined a nonprofit that had almost no budget and free staff but I was going to launch the Living Building Challenge and people said Jason you're crazy this is too hard leads already too hard they thought how are we going to do living buildings how are we going to do buildings that will never have energy bills or water bills again which is what I was asking how are we going to do buildings that don't have toxic chemicals in them when we don't even know what's in our products and I said I don't know but let's figure this out let's do this and so this idea of the Living Building Challenge began to take root and at first it was like you know a plant with a few seeds out there but lots happened in the last decade and I'm excited to tell you that I've seen the signs of a revolution and architecture that's spreading around the world and I'm really energized by it we're seeing buildings that are radically more efficient that do in fact get all their energy from the Sun all the water from the sky that are free of toxic chemicals that are helping local economies and a host of other issues that we care about that are beautiful we just certify the bullet Center in Seattle how many people here have been to the bullets that are probably a few so if you want to do a solar building the last place you'd think to do it is in Seattle especially a six story Class A office building filled with you know workers and computers and all the trappings of modern office buildings but we've been tracking the performance of this building and we actually generate more energy than we use on an annual basis with the Sun we're net positive there's six stories of composting toilets in this building and no sewer connection we produce nutrients I like to tell people to please come take a crap of my building it's always good for a laugh the building out operates very much like a natural system it has a central nervous system to brain and their sensors throughout the building outside the building the windows automatically open and close shades deploy up and down lights dim and come up the cooling system the heating system actually it has no cooling system it's completely naturally ventilated the heating system comes on as needed and so the building is always trying to find like this flower the best conditions for it to be in so this building for us is really about rethinking everything we work to the city of Seattle to create new ordinances the living building ordinance now happen is happening in Seattle and for me what's amazing about this project is the impact that it's having on people now think about this for a minute we just proved that in a market rate building in the least sunny city in the lower 48 of the United States that's larger than 90% of the buildings in our country except for places like midtown Manhattan that we do not need fossil fuels and it's cash positive and here's where it gets better we have now this slide is already out of date we have just about 9 million square feet of projects like the bullet Center going up around the world people told me that this wasn't possible right don't quit your job don't think big we have a sewage treatment plant this is the most beautiful sewage treatment plant you've ever seen it's powered again by photovoltaics it uses no chemicals to treat the water it doesn't pretty smell because it's an aerobic process the butterflies fly around in the sewage treatment plant it's beautiful it produces nutrients they even do yoga in the sewage treatment plant and encourage you to breathe deeply it's a living building it was a great team that did a living building project in Hawaii a few years ago and they integrated all the technologies into the curriculum they wanted to make sure that for the students this was a new normal the students learned about passive solar and green materials and healthy building about grey water systems they learned about active solar and photovoltaics and wind turbines and this is part of the curriculum and it's in the Big Island of Hawaii if you're interested in checking it out and this is as it should be where our children are in facilities that aren't filled with carcinogens and mutagens that use nature as its operating system like this one there's a story if if you've you know maybe heard me talk about this some of you probably but I'd like to tell this story because this young lady impressed me more than just about anyone that I've ever met I arrived at the building one day to check it out and she offered she was about 15 she offered to give me a tour and she gave me a better technical tour than most architects could because this for her was normal she had been entrusted with the building in fact we went into the building and she proceeded to show me how the whole system worked most of us here are afraid of you know our thermostat at home just admit it and this young lady was not only knowledgeable enough to change the entire HVAC system but she was empowered to do so which was equally impressive and now about a month ago the state of Hawaii is decreed that going forward every building every school building in the state going forward is going to use the Living Building Challenge as its paradigm we are seeing Living Building Challenge projects all over the place different climate zones different building types this is in Pittsburgh incredible project the Phipps conservatory credible project we're seeing existing buildings including homes and historic renovation projects this isn't just about building new this is about everything right we need to retrofit the buildings we have to be living buildings and this is a hundred-year-old Net Zero project in Ann Arbor we're seeing incredible new research centers for sustainability coming online that are living building projects Chesapeake Bay Foundation I'm just showing you a few if we had another six hours I could show you more we have living buildings popping up in Australia that are very exciting in Canada where I'm from originally now this is where I wish my kids could go to date daycare right this is a living building project just outside Vancouver Canada that is incredible down in Mexico we've got several projects emerging in Mexico and this is a house project and they have their own wetland sewage treatment plant as well that you see here ballet de Bravo it's called it's very cool down in New Zealand one of the most inspiring projects that I've seen and it's been an honor to be attached to it anyway as the new Parliament for the two hoy people in the North Island and New Zealand and when they had an opportunity to build this new facility to bring the whole try together to help restore their culture they knew they had to do a living building here in Bend we have a living building house we've started to scale this up we're starting to work with different communities around the country around the world on how we take these principles to scale how we think about whole districts and produce living communities last year we launched the Living Community Challenge officially we're very excited as we're working with many communities now on figuring out how do we do this how do we plan over the next few decades to move to living cities that's very exciting and we can imagine a time this image is kind of a fun one now this isn't this hasn't happened yet but imagine we got rid of nuclear energy and coal and and had cities that were completely powered by the Sun this is the future that we need we need it quickly right we need this quickly and then finally we've moved on to trying to figure out how we make this change with products the big barrier that we have is we still don't know what's in the things we buy the things we put in our homes the things we put in our offices we don't know if they will make us sick we don't know the hidden impacts upstream and downstream the impacts usually on poor communities of the things we make in the things we buy so this same thought process of asking the question we don't want to be less bad we want to figure out what good looks like and just a month ago we launched the living product challenge and now we're working with companies all over to begin to think about how do we do this how do we create products where the manufacturing processes are powered completely by the Sun where they don't produce waste right where they work within the water balance of their place where they support local economies that are equitable products that are not just thrown away but truly good it's going to be a tough one this one but it's what we need to do and our hope is that we can create together a living future and this is what we're really trying to do I work for an organization called the Living Future Institute and I'm hoping that all of you will become our members now and with that I want to thank everyone here and just think about next time you're doing your project whether it's a home remodel whether it's a new office building that you can in fact do a living building it's becoming real it's scaling the revolution is almost here thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 95,060

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Design, Architecture, Change, Community, Energy, Environment, Pollution

Id: gSMecC6pcGo

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Tue May 26 2015