Since 2015, The Young Architects Forum has helped lead the national conversation on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives in architecture. In the 1Q 2019 YAF CONNECTION Magazine, the progress that has been made, discover emerging leaders in EDI programs and practices, and explore where the profession goes from here. Payette Architect Jennifer Hardy shares how our firm, the 2019 AIA Architecture Firm Award recipient, is striving to become a more diverse and inclusive workforce that addresses great architectural challenges, such as climate change.
People don’t change just because they’re educated and motivated; they change because the cultures that they are a part of begin to call them to new behaviors.
Howard Ross in “Reinventing Diversity”
In the article, Jennifer describes how our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) task force is working towards a more diverse profession, as we believe the more varied the people are who participate in the design process and in the culture of our firm, the more varied and better the work will be.
Our practice also prioritizes the fusion of design and performance, believing that beautiful buildings perform beautifully. We bring this perspective to all of our work, which has led to award-winning projects such as the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex at Northeastern University which not only received the Harleston Parker Medal for most beautiful building in Boston but also achieved LEED Gold Certification and 78% energy use reduction compared to the 2030 baseline.
A key driver of these behaviors at Payette is the feedback loop between the research and development work led by ENGINE and design integration. We invest in data-driven research and open-source tool creation, to enable designers to dynamically evaluate formal ideas and performance implication. Diverse user feedback, beyond our own firm, refines the tools and makes them more robust vehicles for integrated performance and design, while also empowering and evaluating others in the profession with us, toward a more equitable and sustainable future.
Read the article to learn on how you as a designer, no matter your level of experience, can adopt new behaviors to make our communities more dignified and humane places to live.
Opening later this year, the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, MA is an essay in the tuning of building façades for performance. The aluminum sunshades that veil the building began as a concept tested by scoring Bristol paper. The team utilized tools from all modalities: paper models, CNC-mills, parametric studies, solar analysis, wind and water simulations and full-scale mock-ups to inform the design and drive energy use down. The ultra-high performance building is tracking a 61% reduction in energy use compared to the 2030 baseline.
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