Vivian Loftness

Robert Rice

The first question we wanted to talk to you about is that, you know, this summer we've seen a lot of compounding disasters due to climate change: the pandemic, floods, fires, heat waves, cold snaps, ecosystem failure. What do you think that architects, especially young architects should do right now to help protect society from its immediate effects?

Vivian Loftness

That's a pretty broad question. Number one, they have to understand how we are creating carbon and what we can do to uncreate, and essentially absorb, carbon. There’s a huge challenge for just getting all of your thought processes about the biggest contribution to carbon. It is of course energy use, and not just in the building but also in getting to and from buildings. This includes transportation and building energy use; but once you figure out how to make really super efficient buildings, then the next thing becomes the embodied carbon. All the materials are manufactured usually with very high energy and very transportation intensive products. We then very loosely just start speccing this much concrete and a whole bunch of steel and we don't even think about the fact that we're literally just burning up raw materials and carbon.

So there are a lot of conferences, architectural workshops, and organizations (like building green out of Vermont), that are constantly building databases. The big firms all literally track the carbon footprint of materials, and there's a new carbon calculator at the University of Washington, The Tree Calculator, that's now becoming a norm. Every time you deliver a project and in addition to trying to get LEED silver or LEED Gold, you soon might have to show your carbon footprint. Clients are going to start asking for that and I think young graduates are going to be asked to do the heavy lifting, which is, can you go into that software and enter all the data, figure out what it means, and plot it for us? Older designers just aren't as skilled at using the software or making graphic representation. So, I have a feeling you're gonna find yourself immersed in carbon calculation at firms.

Robert Rice

Yeah that worries me a little bit because even having gone through something like Nina's zero energy housing class, we didn't do any carbon calculation. I don't know how to do that yet, I have to go seek it out on my own.

Vivian Loftness

Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, ultimately we should be tuning our courses. We're doing a lot of energy but we don't do a lot of materials and embodied energy. When you start to do that, you start to get into end databases about materials in there and our carbon footprint.

Robert Rice

With this question, I think we usually talk about the climate crisis as a far off problem, and yet we're seeing the effects right now. I mean, in Portland when that heat wave came through, almost nobody had air conditioning, and that became a huge problem. Similarly, when the polar vortex hit Texas, the energy infrastructure wasn't able to handle the cold, and that failed too. So our infrastructure, our buildings, and our society has to prepare for these things right now.

Vivian Loftness

We're taught that people have set these 2030 and 2050 goals- it makes you think it's not tomorrow. The crises that are occurring all around us show that it's now, and we can't wait until the last minute for these goals. I'm intrigued by the number of cities and states and countries that are setting different goals, for different things, with time horizons on it. Like, by 2025, all new buildings will be electric in the state of California.Almost everybody who talks about carbon neutral by 2050 is talking about what we have to achieve by 2025, not waiting until 2050.

Now the other thing you mentioned which I think is important is the relationship of architecture to infrastructure. We've always assumed that infrastructure decisions are made by engineers and building decisions are made by architects. That has really hampered us because the big money is infrastructure and there's way more money in transportation and power infrastructure than there is in the buildings themselves. Our inability to be actively engaged in infrastructure planning has literally made for bad design and bad urban design.

Robert Rice

Yeah, I worry that sometimes when we're in Studio, we have tunnel vision worrying about our building in our portfolio rather than how it will fit into the larger scale of the community and world. Calculating energy and worrying about all these things is sort of like code. ‘This is the thing I have to do, but I don't like it’; so how do people get excited about solving this immediate problem?

Vivian Loftness

It's a big question. People think it's a chore - anything that has numbers, quantitative, they just say ‘oh I don't want to do this. That's certainly a problem that we have with the amount of brainpower that students have in architecture. The other problem is that even the faculty say, look, they're going to get that responsibility as soon as they join practice so we don't need to teach that in school. They're basically leaning on practice to teach you a lot of what are considered pedantic skills and non-generative skills instead of teaching you to do them now.

I have two arguments against that. Number one is they're incredibly generative - those numbers actually drive different shapes to land and buildings, different surface textures, and different functional layouts. Buildings that are very low energy squeeze the footprint of conditioned space to then allow for outdoor rooms to become part of the culture. Once you go through enough numbers, you start designing generative and differently to get the energy loads down.

It’s a problem with us - thinking that anything quantitative is not generative and not teaching that stuff. We need to teach intuitive thought through calculations, so that you can be a good designer; the profession needs you to come with that skill set. They need you to fill out gaps - nobody over the age of 40 at a practice would have ever talked about carbon in school at all, much less calculated carbon. So they're basically waiting for the next generation or two. It does elevate your position in the firm pretty quickly as you all of a sudden become the voice of creative ideas that are also low carbon. It gives you a presence in a team, you're actually sort of coaching, which I think is hugely beneficial for young practitioners.

Robert Rice

I was thinking we'd move on to question about the IPCC six report. So, this summer, the UN released the IPCC six report which is basically raising a five-alarm fire on the ongoing effects of the climate crisis. We know that buildings are part of the problem, how do you think that buildings can be part of the solution?

Vivian Loftness

Okay, I'm working on this right now. I serve on a National Academy Committee, trying to essentially decarbonize the US by 2050 with actions by 2030. The committee is 20 people strong but I'm the only person on buildings. And the reason I'm the only person on buildings is that the pie charts that show the carbon problem show the electricity sector as the largest wedge. They're saying the biggest carbon problem is power generation but they forget that 70% of the power generation in electricity goes into buildings.

So what do we have to do to make a difference? I mean, number one, we have to cut the carbon footprint of building [through] operational energy. You need codes and standards for that. If you told every architect and every home developer that a building cannot consume more than X number of kWh/sq ft or BTU/sq ft, the architects and engineers know how to do it and will do it. If there's no code demand, the developers are not going to do it because it costs more money. Cutting the demand on new construction is a big deal, and existing buildings are a lot tougher. Somebody has to invest in those buildings. McKinsey did a study of, if you were trying to buy your way out of the climate crisis, what would you invest in? It turns out that buildings are the cheapest investment to save the most carbon. There is no infrastructure for throwing money at buildings and no way that you could be sure you're going to get a good outcome. We have to be ready to provide quality service for that money.

Robert Rice

This is the thing that strikes me about this problem: it's also a huge logistical thing. Because we know how to do better buildings at this point, the question is ‘how do we get all of them to do better really quickly?’ Like you said, we don't really have an infrastructure for getting every building in a city upgraded.

Vivian Loftness

Well one of the things that is happening and shows up in a lot of public policy statements, including the Biden infrastructure plan, is that they're going to absolutely electrify existing buildings. So, they will throw money at buildings to put in new heat pump technology for hot water and heating. They will probably update equipment and buildings as they move to electrification.

So I don't know if the architects or community is going to get in the middle of that or if it's just gonna end up being utilities’ and manufacturers’ running around saying, ‘I'll put in a brand new boiler for you and you pay me this amount, the government will pay me this amount.’ I think architects are going to have to get involved and really change the enclosure, the wrapper, on the building or rethink the amount of conditioned space in the building and how space is used.

One of the things that I think is going to be dramatic is renewable energy. It is not well matched to the way we use electricity [now]. So that's where I think we could be extremely proactive - talking about buildings becoming a partner. And they call this grid efficient buildings, GB, where it's essentially using the building as the battery - finding ways to pre cool, to store, or to modulate so that you're using energy when it's available and not using energy when it's not available.

And in addition to that, we can use buildings as a support structure for renewables for PV. We can put photovoltaics on buildings, and be part of the grid so that the building sector and the architects around the country can start being partners with utilities. We've never done that.

Sharon Fung
I feel like there's a fine line between performative activism, and actually doing something. As architects we're doing something, versus joining a club where maybe they just say ‘Let's plant a tree.’

Robert Rice

Yeah, I'm kind of reminded of Greta Thunberg's recent speech where she’s calling a lot of the jargon behind government actions just ‘blah blah blah.’ You know politicians are saying things to satisfy their voters, but not actually doing anything yet, because they're not being pressed to do it.

Vivian Loftness

I actually think you can pressure the leadership on campus, I think student activism can make a difference in what our leaders on campus are willing to invest in.

The school was an early adopter of 100% renewable electricity. That was a really good move for a couple of reasons. I mean, number one, the market was not strong for renewables, So, Carnegie Mellon as an early adopter for 100% on campus, created help to leapfrog new demands to expand the number of photovoltaic and wind farm options. Carnegie Mellon was also an early adopter of LEED silver, and this was at a time when LEED was still, you know, a few buildings here and there, and Carnegie Mellon said, all new buildings and all major renovations on this campus will be LEED silver. It's not stringent enough, but it's pretty easy for an organization to say we will not build anything that doesn't meet LEED silver and it forces the architects and the engineers and the contractors and the providers to achieve good things. So, those were good steps. Those are all 15 years ago. So now what have we done since then?

Robert Rice

Well, one thing we were going to ask about is they're building a new dorm across Forbes by the East Campus garage. We heard that they rejected a proposal for geothermal heating.

Vivian Loftness

Well rejected might be a little over-stating that. The architect for that project is a Boston based architect. And when they came to present their semi final drawings, they said, ‘You know, this building is perfectly configured and situated to be a carbon neutral dorm meaning that we can, we can generate enough electricity on site to make the loads. But we would need, number one, the resources to put PV on the roof. And we need geothermal heat pumps for our heating system, because we can use that electricity directly to provide the heat.

And they said ‘you know it would increase the first cost of the project’ and the answer was, ‘we're not ready for that.’ Our budget is what it is, period. I was in the room when the architects said this out loud, which is why I know that the architect had a design that we could have adopted and said let's go carbon neutral. The response was ‘it's a little bit more than we're ready for.’ I protested I said, ‘Look guys, this is an academic campus we're talking about design for the future, to students, both in engineering and architecture, we've got to be designing for the future, we need to use these opportunities to test out, even if it's got some flaws, we need to know that.’ And we plan to own this building for the next 100 years so literally whatever investment we're putting in here is going to pay back before the technology fails, way before the technology fails.

But I wasn't able to convince the larger committee, there were two Board of Trustees members there. I was hoping that one of them would take it up to the administration so the administration could make it over decision. And They're the trustees responsible for our physical campus, and I thought well, they’ll bring it to the provost and of course they didn't, so I felt I missed a window where I could have maybe influenced them.

Robert Rice

One of the things we were worried about is that when the school administration says they care about a certain problem, if they turn down a solution to it, it's almost like: why should we believe them when they say they care about the climate crisis? Especially If they can do something right now and they just decided it wasn't worth the money.

Vivian Loftness

You know, I think the two big barriers are that, number one is first cost. We're a pretty lean University, we don't have, we're you know as a top 25 University we probably have the smallest endowment, one because we're not a very old university compared to the powerhouses. They've been around for 300 years and we've been around for 100. [But] boy, they'll find the money if students say there's just not enough gym space. I mean, we need to have much better gym and workout spaces and somehow they find the money to build new gyms and workout spaces even though it's a tight ship. There seems to be flexibility for things that come at them, over student requests or a crisis. I think there's an opportunity here to make it much more obvious that we care a lot about this, and the physical environment is not the biggest piece of our budget.

The second concern though is risk. Our campus is risk averse when it comes to physical facilities. We don't want to do anything that would be potentially a maintenance problem or would provide less adequate conditions for student life. So, Nina is working hard on trying to get them to install a water catchment system to take our rainwater and then use that rainwater, not only for all of our landscape irrigation but also for our cooling towers, taking us out of using potable water from a central processing plant for things that doesn't need a water, and she's been working on this for probably six years. Oh my god. it's not even a cash flow issue, it's a technological risk issue. ‘What if the system doesn't work?’ What if it clogs the cooling towers and then we have to invest in new ones or what if it's noisy or it fails or what if it's lumpy on the landscape?’ So, they just don't want the risk.

Robert Rice

I think young people especially, we see this from the other end. We don't think about what will happen if this new technology fails, we think about what will happen when the current technology will no longer work - when that's no longer tenable. And so I really feel like we'd rather try the new thing, and see if it works, rather than go with the old thing that we know eventually won’t.

Vivian Loftness

So, if you start to think of the campus as a living laboratory, for students to be part of finding the answer. So you guys, if you're going to help - you're going to tell them we are willing to be part of the risk, because we want to save the planet. We're interested in being part of the risk, tell us about the risk, ask us if we're willing to take the risk. Let's look at the economic and the sort of quality of life risks that are associated with this. And because we want to be a lab, we want to be a living lab, to be part of our educational mission. I think you guys could get it to happen. And the faculty could just shout at them, and they just say: ‘well, just a few fringe faculty.’

Robert Rice

Another on campus building thing that we heard about was that Donner is falling apart, and there are plans to tear it down. What do you think they should build there to replace it?

Vivian Loftness

So the plan at the moment is to build something probably twice if not three times bigger. It would be both taller and it would have wings that come out into our triangle.

Robert Rice

Now what's that going to do to the lighting in Donner Ditch?

Vivian Loftness

Well I'm worried about not only that donner triangle which is a play area, not just for kids but also for others you know so it's a retreat, it's an oasis, we need it - we need our green spaces. I'm also worried about the fact that it will be tall on what they call the East West walkway. Right so Reznik or West Wing will have an equal building on the other side and I think that's going to make that a very cavernous and dark and windy place. So I'm not happy about this. The extent of that dorm I think it could take more height. But what they're doing right now is they're going back to the city to get approval for an updated master plan. So whenever I voiced my concerns about what they're doing in the donor triangle they say: ‘this is our maximum build out, not our intended build out’ but of course it's once it's on the drawings, somebody is going to say: ‘oh yeah let's just build everything we can’, and I don't think we should be building that tall in that space. Now what should that dorm be? It would be great if it was the carbon neutral - if not a carbon plus dorm - that we literally did say we're going to design a dorm that I would think should be the Passivhaus standards, which would be what New York City has now set for all multifamily. I would love it if they would take a more strident stance than just, let's get a LEED silver.

Robert Rice

LEED feels very frustrating. I think to me and a lot of my classmates, it feels like one of those things that's just ‘blah blah blah’ like Greta Thunberg said. You can get around doing the hard work by doing the small things like bike racks or bus passes or something, which seem to skirt around the problem rather than actually solving it.

Vivian Loftness

It's not - LEED is not enough. Having said that, it's not lip service. It is a struggle to hit LEED silver. They always have to go for a few hard, hard things, and many of our projects are LEED Gold, so that means the design team and engineering team are reaching further. Carbon neutral would be a much bigger goal. LEED is way more than energy and carbon: LEED is also indoor environmental quality LEED is also water conservation, which doesn't show up in a carbon neutral discourse. It's also material conservation so it's looking at ways in which you use materials that can be replenished instead of using materials that never, never can be rebuilt. So I think LEED Gold should be our minimum. I think we should set carbon goals for all of our buildings, and I think for new dorms, we should be doing, really, you know, Carbon Positive buildings.

Robert Rice

We have one final question for you which is, do you have any recommendations for projects or firms that students could look up to for inspiration?

Vivian Loftness

Oh sure. Oh, there are lots, I mean I, I have to say I think the profession is ahead of education look at the architects that have done living buildings. Super energy efficient buildings, super so we should maybe do a living building for our dorm instead of just a carbon plus we live in. So if you looked at all the firms that have done living buildings you would immediately have a list of pretty amazing firms. This just gives you a way to look up firms in the city that you want to go live in. Kieran Timberlake in Philadelphia, and BBj in in Seattle marathon in San Francisco SmithGroup in DC, amazing, amazing work. when you take even those super big firms like Gensler and, and SLM and they will have green teams in those firms that are just dynamite, just amazing. It doesn't mean everything in that firm is going to be dynamite. So you want to get on the green team. Maybe you guys can tell me, do you have a sense that working in a big firm is an evil thing to do and you only want to work in a small firm?

Robert Rice

I don’t think students consider large firms ‘evil’, but I think they have a little bit of cynicism or nihilism when it comes to working in this profession because they feel like maybe we're past the point where we can do something. Which I try to fight back against personally because I think there are things we can do.

Vivian Loftness

Oh yeah, there's a lot. Every building makes a difference, and I go to a lot of major conferences, both to speak and to listen and I listened to a lot of architectural design leaders from around the country about what they are doing to address everything from climate change to resiliency to quality of life to equity. And it's impressive. I mean public housing, leading architects in public housing are doing amazing projects. So you can make a difference at every level. There are firms that I just think very highly of - Lake Flato, out of San Antonio, amazing work just beautiful projects. And they're, they're a small team relatively, I mean under 100. Bohlin Cywinsky Jackson here is probably now 150 people, but they have three or four offices. Kieran Timberlake is a midsize firm, I think there must be about 200 to 250, but you know when you start to get to the big firms and BBJ, and Mithun and SmithGroup. Those are big and the superbigs as I said, like Gensler and they have internal teams that are [amazing]. So, I would look always for the green team inside of any firm.

Robert Rice

Well this has been a great interview, we’re so glad you agreed to sit down with us. Thank you so much!

inter • punct

interaction
INTENTION

interregnum
DEMOLITION
RECONSTRUCTION

interro bang !+?

conversations

inter • mission

newsletter

experiments

inter • view — 2016

para • meter — 2014

quarantine blog

instagram

bookshelf

info

Vivian Loftness

inter • punct interactionINTENTION interregnumDEMOLITIONRECONSTRUCTION

interro bang !+?

inter • punct

interaction
INTENTION

interregnum
DEMOLITION
RECONSTRUCTION