It doesn\u2019t feel green. The Eero Saarinen Womb chairs in the lobby, the sparkling terrazzo floors under your feet, the crisp white paint on the walls, glass everywhere\u2014and more glass. Here in the new Washington, D.C., headquarters of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), corporate pomp is at high tide. If not for the oversize logo carved into wood at the entrance like a medallion, the office could easily be mistaken for the cool recesses of a fashion magazine.<\/p>\n
Of course, Vogue<\/i> wouldn\u2019t have 500-year-old salvaged timber as wall decor. Nor would it have lighting that consumes just less than half a watt per square foot. And it would most definitely not have, on an otherwise bare wall behind a cubicle pod in the middle of the office, a soy-inked outline of an oak tree made up entirely of inspirational quotes. (One leaf, falling from a branch, reads: \u201c\u2018To move the world, we must first move ourselves\u2019 \u2014\u00adSocrates.\u201d) The space, for all its studied sleekness, retains plenty of the USGBC\u2019s cheery, green soul.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a $9 million aesthetic, and it tells you everything you need to know about where the green-building movement is today and where it\u2019s headed. Since its inception 16 years ago, the USGBC has become, rather sweepingly, the preeminent dispenser of sustainable-design mores; its chief commodity, the Lead\u00adership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building-certification program, is the \u201cbenchmark of green,\u201d as Bill Walsh, executive dir\u00adec\u00adtor of the Healthy Building Network, says. Dicey times have forced some nonprofits to downsize, others to shutter altogether, but the council is expanding at such a clip that it ou\u00adt-grew its old 25,000-square-foot office two and a half years after the paint had dried. The new headquarters, housed in an undistinguished 1975 office building on L Street, ushers in a fresh era of discretionary architecture, in which renovated commercial interiors supplant from-the-ground-up construction\u2014the ultimate act of recycling. More important, the project is the first slated for LEED Plat\u00adinum certification under the USGBC\u2019s strict new rating system, despite being three times larger\u2014and decidedly slicker\u2014than its predecessor. It\u2019s a testament to the organization\u2019s fortitude and the resonance of its mission. If LEED is indeed the benchmark of green, and surely it is, then the council\u2019s tailored digs signal a shift in green building itself.<\/p>\n
Such an undertaking demanded the greatest mark of maturity: playing nice with others. Gone is the age of the starchitect, the her\u00adoic megalomaniac, conducting a glass-and-steel symphony of his own composition. He\u2019s been tossed in the dustbin alongside the masters of the universe, the relics of a profli\u00adgate (if nonsingular) era. Taking the lead, sus\u00adtainable design has made a fetish of effic\u00adiency, preferring a team of specialists to a solitary genius. The USGBC gathered an en\u00adsem\u00adble of green-building sages, with the architect Kendall Wilson, of D.C.\u2019s Envision Design, holding the baton. Marrying their ideas, they transformed a couple of gutted floors into a thoroughly sustainable workplace\u2014a demonstration not just of the sophistication of green building today but of a fresh way of practicing architecture. \u201cWhat\u2019s unique about this project is that it really was an integrated design process,\u201d Wilson says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t happen a lot because the architect\u2019s pride is a bit at stake, you know? It requires an architectural team that\u2019s willing to drop that and say, \u2018Let\u2019s figure out the best way to do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson marches about the office, futzing constantly. It\u2019s early April and D.C.\u2019s unfathomably gorgeous cherry blossoms embower the streets. Wilson is on the fifth floor of 2101 L Street in the downtown business district, grum\u00adbling. The Eames chairs are in the wrong place. Someone moved the ottomans. And what is a black projector doing in this white, white conference room? \u201cThere\u2019s a limit to what you can control,\u201d he says, a little exasperated. He could be anywhere from 35 to 55 (he\u2019s 52), and in his pressed slate suit, he could easily pass for a K Street sharper. In fact, Wilson is the ne plus ultra of sustainable non\u00adprofit interiors, having designed for the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Wild\u00adlife Fund, and Conser\u00advation International. \u201cIt\u2019s like having a kid,\u201d he goes on, averting his eyes from a misplaced molded-plywood seat, \u201cand telling him, \u2018Don\u2019t go out and party.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Ten years ago, there weren\u2019t many eco-friendly Eames chairs to fret over. Wilson opened Envision Design in 1999 with Diana Horvat, his business partner. Their inaugural project was Greenpeace\u2019s headquarters\u2014a tricky assignment at a time when green building was more an idea than an industry. Wilson recalls the group\u2019s message to him: \u201cWe give a lot of people a lot of shit. So they\u2019re going to be pointing back at us, saying, \u2018Why didn\u2019t you do this in your own office?\u2019\u201d Though he\u2019d never tackled a sustainable commercial interior, and in terms of materials, pickings were pretty slim, he managed to track down enough green swag to silence the antagonists. Awash in cra\u00ady\u00adon colors, the place had plenty of spunk, if not much elegance, perhaps a result of the recycled yogurt containers used for countertops.<\/p>\n
Since then, green building has rapidly evolved. Seen through the monocle of the Amer\u00adican Institute of Architects\u2019 Top Ten Green Projects awards, started in 1997, a sort of ugly-duckling narrative unfolds. The first winners were nature centers and rehabs, with the oc\u00adca\u00ad\u00ads\u00adi\u00adonal school; when they weren\u2019t grossly und\u00ader\u00addesigned, they were rank studies in brown. Fast forward to 2009: an airy affordable-housing complex with rooftop photovoltaic cells in San Jose, California, shares the platform with a transparent office building in Seattle that looks as though it were torn from a reel of Jacques Tati\u2019s Play Time<\/i>. \u201cEarly award winners had a closer kinship to the solar buildings of the seventies than they did to good modern design,\u201d says Henry Siegel, former chair of the AIA Committee on the Environment, which administers the award. \u201cThat\u2019s completely disappeared. Now it\u2019s, How can you do a strong contemporary design that integrates these metrics rather than tacks them on as hardware?\u201d<\/p>\n
Like any social movement, green building owes its rise to a calculus of factors: policy changes in which states and cities adopted rig\u00adorous building codes; manufacturing ad-vances that spawned recyclable carpets and Greenguard-certified furniture; and a public that finally decided to give a hoot, thanks to majordomos like Al Gore and Ed Mazria. The USGBC has been a major actor. LEED was formed in 1999 to give the construction indus\u00adtry a rewards system of sorts for building green. In 2005, a little more than a thousand projects were registering annually; by 2008, the figure had ballooned to nearly 9,000. It wasn\u2019t the world\u2019s first green-building index (that honor goes to the U.K.\u2019s Building Research Establishment Environ\u00admental Assess\u00adment Method), and it certainly isn\u2019t perfect (architects kvetch about it the way drivers bemoan the DMV), but it remains the only one to engage the business realm, and for this reason it has hurtled past the competition, handing down design standards like Mosaic law. \u201cLEED really upped the ante for green building,\u201d Siegel says. \u201cEveryone complains about LEED, but there\u2019s no debate that it has been transforming in terms of demand.\u201d So it was only natural that the USGBC\u2019s office would stand as a monument to the very movement the group helped advance.<\/p>\n
USGBC\u2019s president, Rick Fedrizzi, had an uncomplicated vision. He wanted classic mod\u00adern furniture, light everywhere, and crispness. And it had to be corporate\u2014very corporate. Not such an odd request when you consider the organization\u2019s enterprising provenance. A germ of an idea in the early \u201990s, it was intended to help manufacturers cut costs on federal building projects through energy efficiency. It was briefly called the U.S. Green Manufacturers Council. (The \u201cU.S.\u201d qualifier was intended to give it a link, however misleading, to the public sphere, which explains why the USGBC is still frequently mistaken for a government agency.) To broaden its appeal, the organization launched as the U.S. Green Building Council, opening its membership to stakeholders across the building in\u00add\u00adustry, from environmental groups to energy com\u00ad\u00adpanies. Businesses, though, have remained its favored patrons, and from the beginning, the emphasis was on \u201cpresenting a corporate image,\u201d David Gottfried, a cofounder, recalls. \u201cThere was no question that Ken was the designer for us,\u201d Fedrizzi says. (The USGBC also interviewed HOK, the Smith Group, Gensler, and Perkins + Will.) \u201cHe has a very sophisticated look. And he\u2019s really effective at communicating what we\u2019re about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson came to think about the space as a series of \u201cenvironmental stories\u201d\u2014episodes of sustainability that, taken together, would illustrate a moral about virtuous design. He brings up Hot, Flat, and Crowded<\/i>, the New York Times<\/i> columnist Thomas Friedman\u2019s latest save-the-world treatise on global warming. \u201cHis whole thing is thousands of tiny things,\u201d Wilson says. \u201cThat\u2019s like this project.\u201d Put another way, to design a truly sustainable interior, it takes a village\u2014or at least a team of building wonks willing to check their self-regard.<\/p>\n
They started with the site. The USGBC wanted an existing structure both to save cash and because, as Fedrizzi says, \u201cthere\u2019s something inherently right about recycling an old building.\u201d Wilson\u2019s wife, Sally, a real estate consultant who serves as the global director of environmental strategy for the mega\u00adcorp CB Richard Ellis, negotiated a \u201cgreen lease,\u201d a document that allows the space to live up to LEED standards. A low-slung edi\u00adfice that had been gutted and renovated in 2007, it wasn\u2019t the group\u2019s first choice, but the price was right and the location ideal. It is less than half a mile of the organization\u2019s old Perkins + Will\u2013designed offices and of Envision Design, so everything from the planning phase to the move itself was walkable. A bonus, according to one USGBC staffer: \u201cEveryone knows the place to go for happy hour already.\u201d<\/p>\n
Early on, Wilson marshaled the mechanical engineers, GHT Limited, eager to include them in design charrettes. He had been grappling with how to flatten the building\u2019s inherent hierarchy (occasioned by envy-producing floor-to-ceiling glass) and considered pushing desks about eight feet from the perimeter so that everyone got a window and no one got a window\u2014a small act of workplace socialism. The engineers then floated an idea: Why not make peripheral areas colder in the winter and hotter in the summer? \u201cThe most energy-intensive space to heat and cool is the perimeter,\u201d says Paul O\u2019Brien, president of GHT. \u201cWhy are we conditioning this space if no one is sitting there?\u201d The temperature disparities would barely rate a shiver or a bead of sweat, and they would slash the overall energy consumption by 5 percent per degree. Thus, the office\u2019s \u201ceco-corridor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lighting the place proved daunting, with great potential for energy savings and failure in equal measure. \u201cWe tried to wring out every watt,\u201d Wilson says. \u201cWe\u2019d get people from USGBC\u2014Brendan Owens [vice president of LEED technical development] \u2014and go through, credit by credit, asking \u2018What are we going to do?\u2019 We get to lighting, and Brendan says, \u2018We need to cut our lighting in half.\u2019 And Rod\u201d\u2014Letonja, the project architect\u2014\u201cand I are looking at each other thinking, I can see it now. We\u2019ll be walking through the space, showing it off, and it\u2019ll look like a cave. How the hell are we ever going to be able to do this?\u201d<\/p>\n
They recruited the sustainable-lighting con\u00adsultants Clanton & Associates, late of LEED projects for Oberlin College and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, where they emphasized visual comfort at every turn. Together, they tossed about ideas for reducing electrical lighting without making employees feel like they were holed up in Tut\u2019s tomb. They settled on Convia, a universal-control system from Herman Miller that senses natural light and occupancy levels and adjusts ceiling fluorescents (and even temperature) accordingly. An occupied cubicle on a sunny day will see little artificial light; at night, it\u2019ll have plenty. Light-colored carpet along the eco-corridor further brightens the space, and when the sun grows too sharp, automatic shades from MechoShade roll down. As a result, the lighting consumes about half a watt per square foot, which is 52 percent below the baseline of the American Society of Heating, Refrig\u00aderating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers and more than meets LEED\u2019s new requirements.<\/p>\n
Not that every collaboration worked perfectly. \u201cFrom a design standpoint, the USGBC looked at the office as being very experimental,\u201d Wilson says, speaking generally. \u201cThey\u2019re the USGBC. They have to show leadership, so we needed to try things out. Some might work, some might not.\u201d Consider the environmental prints posted on various office cubicles. Wilson coordinated with the biophilia expert Judith Heerwagen and the graphics consultants Shaw Jelveh Design to break up a boundless sea of desks with photographs of wood, honeycomb, flowers, and clouds\u2014the kind you might find at IKEA. But they\u2019re being scaled back after employees complained about feeling walled in or put off by the imagery. (One person was particularly offended by a rather biomorphic conch shell.)<\/p>\n
The true sex appeal, of course, is in the furnishings and the finishes\u2014the details that make 2101 L Street the temple of green design Fedrizzi so lusted after. Step off the elevator and hang a left, and panels of 200- to 500-year-old gumwood recovered from the Tennessee River dress the walls. The accent recurs in the lobby, behind a pair of orange (Greenguard-certified) Womb chairs, on the USGBC medallion, which is pressed behind an open stairwell. Take another left into the anteroom (still white), and the wood repeats again, dividing glassy conference rooms that face east over central D.C. The only other decor here is a set of candy-colored Italian wool ottomans arranged haphazardly for casual seating. The ottomans, Wilson says, were \u201ca moment of weakness\u201d\u2014the rare flourish that doesn\u2019t have an environmental story. Or maybe it\u2019s part of the broader story Wilson and the USGBC are trying to tell: green design doesn\u2019t have to be oblivious to aesthetics.<\/p>\n
For employees, adjusting to the formal decor of 2101 L Street hasn\u2019t been easy. The USGBC might want to project an image of sober-minded maturity, but around the cubicles, even 30 is old. The USGBC and Shaw Jelveh worked to inject some personality into the place, arranging variegated images of LEED projects in a conference room; elsewhere, a world map pinpoints the organization\u2019s chapters. But the quote wall is perhaps the most faithful barometer of office culture. Submitted by the council\u2019s 196 employees, the quotes are taken from Jesus Christ (\u201cWhatever thy hand findest to do, do it with all thy heart\u201d) and his secular equivalent (\u201c\u2018Do, or do not. There is no try.\u2019 \u2014Yoda\u201d). They are from the author of The Green Collar Economy (\u201cIt\u2019s time to stop borrowing and start building \u2026\u201d) and the mouth of a sworn enemy (\u201c\u2018The job is ours and the job must be done. If not by us, who? If not now, when?\u2019\u201d \u2014Ronald Reagan\u201d). There are seven from Mahatma Gandhi; six from Frank Lloyd Wright; five each from Barack Obama, Ralph Waldo Emer\u00adson, and E. E. Cummings; four from John Muir; and three from Dr. Seuss. Other offices have mountain retreats and trust falls. The USGBC has its quote wall. \u201cWe are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,\u201d goes one quote from Oscar Wilde, caught in a rare instance of sounding more like Sacheen Littlefeather.<\/p>\n
Which prompts the question: Does a corporate look suit an organization whose employees find inspiration in Van Jones? Or is that disconnect precisely the point? As much as the aesthetic seems to belie the institution\u2019s character, it\u2019s in lockstep with its mission\u2014to spread green building far and wide. Corporations are among the last frontiers and, by dint of their size, the ideal candidates to usher in change. With its new office, the USGBC is turning itself into a billboard for the idea that green business practices extend beyond a few recycling bins and a company-sponsored Earth Day picnic; they penetrate all corners of office life, from carpeting and desk lamps to the very process by which the space is designed. Efficiency and collaboration are the new watchwords, ideas that both green activists and corporate suits can embrace. \u201cWe\u2019re putting together technologies that are already in existence but have never been quite assembled in this way,\u201d Wilson says. \u201cWe\u2019re not a hundred percent sure how everything is going to turn out, but we want to be able to tell this story to all kinds of people.\u201d The lesson is right there on the wall: \u201cTo move the world, we must first move ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After designing offices for some of the leading environmental groups in the country, Envision Design takes on its biggest challenge yet: creating a new headquarters for the U.S. Green Building Council that puts the organization\u2019s ideas\u2014and ideals\u2014into action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":157,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"featured_image_focal_point":[],"legacy_WP_ID":null},"tags":[],"metro_tax_domain":[76],"metro_tax_topic":[13,19],"metro_tax_program":[],"metro_issue":[],"internal_flag":[],"class_list":["post-57013","metro_project","type-metro_project","status-publish","hentry","metro_tax_domain-workplace","metro_tax_topic-architecture","metro_tax_topic-sustainability"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n