If you ask Carl Elefante ‘80 which of New York’s most iconic skyscrapers—the 94-year-old Empire State Building or the 11-year-old Freedom Tower—is more climate-friendly, the answer might surprise you.
Both have LEED-Gold certification, the energy-efficient exemplar bestowed on a building. But because of the Empire State Building’s stone façade, it has staying power, said Elefante—when the Freedom Tower’s glass façade reaches the end of its useful life, it will be torn off and thrown into a landfill.
“There’s not even a way to recycle the glass,” said Elefante. “Too many of today’s so-called sustainable buildings are in fact tomorrow’s waste disposal and carbon pollution burdens.”
As principal emeritus at the global design firm Quinn Evans, a senior fellow for Architecture 2030 and former president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), Elefante has committed his career to studying and advocating for the sustainable restoration and reuse of buildings on a global scale. His new book, “Going for Zero: Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future”, released in April by Island Press, taps into his career of sustainable practice to offer design professionals a blueprint for building a carbon-free future.
He wrote the book–which has been a “labor of love”–because the industry is in what he calls a “relevance revolution”: a more urgent, holistic and necessary role that architects, engineers, planners and preservationists must play in addressing 21st century challenges, while also setting the stage for an increasingly urbanized world.
In “Going for Zero,” Elefante challenges the traditional mindset of professionals shaping cities–which will house 70% of the world’s population by 2050—and offers a new charge of "reintegration and healing.” From the environmental crisis and social injustice to the future of urban development and “new” building tech, Elefante offers a path forward for our cities, and ourselves.
“With 6,000 years of urban habitation to draw on, many answers have existed that are better than the answers that we accept today,” he said. “So, let's work together on rediscovering them.”
Below, Elefante offers five takeaways that architects, engineers, urban planners and preservationists should consider when it comes to creating a healthier and greener built environment:
Rethink how we teach architecture (especially its history).
Elefante believes that architecture curriculum must elevate discourse on the best ways to design, construct and operate buildings for the world’s current climate crisis–challenges that today’s students will address throughout their careers.
This might change how the pedagogy approaches architectural history. Educators have much to learn from the techniques of pre-modern builders, he said, such as climate-adapted design and investigating built heritage as energy solutions, rather than aesthetics styles.
"Students know that the world is asking them to do something different," Elefante said. "We're not doing enough to train them to be ready for the world that is going to be their responsibility to shape."
Build local.
Designers can create a more sustainable future by considering the regional materials available in the locations they’re building in, similar to what pre-modern builders did, Elefante shared.
"Every single building used to be built out of materials in that region," he said. "You didn't have a choice, and people figured out a way to build out of everything that was around them."
It’s a practice worth revisiting, Elefante said. Sourcing locally not only helps the local economy, it reduces embodied carbon (the emissions created through manufacturing, transportation and construction) and avoids the all-too-frequent social and economic injustices hidden within global supply chains. For example, timber harvesting has the highest rate of forced labor of any building material.
Design should work with, rather than against, the environment.
Architects should design and construct buildings to perform well in their specific environments, which is a concept that old buildings embodied and “new buildings forgot,” according to Elefante.
“Back before we just addicted buildings to fossil fuels, we tried to make them climate smart,” Elefante said. “We tried to literally shape them to work in the places where they were.”
Elefante shared how Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, who lived around 2,000 years ago, emphasized the importance of considering the environment of a site, such as its soil, location and natural landscape, before building.
“Vitruvius’s ‘The Ten Books on Architecture’ included a chapter on how to capture the good breezes and avoid the bad breezes,” Elefante said. “At the time, architects believed that good breezes brought health and bad breezes brought disease.”
Ancient health superstitions aside, emulating traditional practices has seen a resurgence in 21st century architecture, with designers considering the building’s orientation to the sun and other climatic and environmental factors.
“The greenest building is one that is already built.”
According to data referenced in “Going for Zero,” construction and demolition waste in the United States is double the weight of all municipal solid waste combined. From his experience as a historic preservation architect, most of the buildings he worked on were threatened by demolition.
Designers, he says, must consider the multiple uses their buildings will have over time. It’s a concept that not only reimagines a building’s function, it can revitalize neighborhoods and boost economies.
"Buildings with ‘good bones,’ good access to daylight and ventilation and that are formed to their microclimate, are also the most adaptable and flexible buildings," Elefante said, suggesting that buildings should be designed to be restored, adapted and reused.
Architects should "practice with purpose."
Showing the way forward are architecture firms that are "practicing with purpose," Elefante said, collaborating with clients and their communities to solve societal issues. “Going for Zero” includes the stories of award-winning designers across America and from around the world taking on homelessness, affordable housing, poverty and other forms of social and economic injustice through design.
“For all those who work together in shaping the built environment, ‘Going for Zero’s’ central message is that today’s challenge and opportunity is to apply our passion and skillsets in laying the foundations for humanity’s urban future,” he said.