"LEED"ers in Value Engineering

In America, the words LEED and Green Globes are certificates given to projects that have enough money to be sustainable. Although this is great encouragement for people to be sustainable, (and sometimes the only way we can get clients to agree to some of the sustainable things we want to do) a lot of times it just becomes a big “to-do” list that we have to go through and make sure we are checking off the right amount of items. This certification process sometimes is more of a hassle for designers because instead of doing what is the best for design we have to make sure we are getting the right amount of points in certain categories.

I really enjoyed the reading by Till this week about the idea of Scarcity and how many designers try to approach sustainability by just using less. Till argues that scarcity is in two parts:

“Scarcity thus has a twofold constitution: first as an actual limit on resources; and then as a socially constructed condition that results in the uneven distribution of resources. Neither kind of scarcity is going away any time soon. As long as global economic growth remains a guiding assumption of the global market, resources will inevitably dwindle, and as long as the market remains the dominant force in politics, the development and distribution of resources will become ever more uneven. And so I am arguing that in the coming age of scarcity, the focus of the designer needs to shift away from simply using less, as under the rule of austerity, to understanding the constitution of scarcity — where and why and how resources are lacking — and grappling with this in a creative manner.”

What I came to truly appreciate about the article was his approach to scarcity as an opportunity instead of the doomsday part of projects. “In contrast to the regimes of austerity, which are ever more reductive, the territory of processes and networks opened up by scarcity is far more conducive to creative intervention. It is here that scarcity — which can seem at first a bleak prospect — can become the inspiration and context for constructive and transformative action.”

Because the world’s resources are depleting and we have responsibility to the environment as people who are responsible for building things in the environment, we need to rethink sustainability in terms that truly make sense and will truly make an impact to the environment. If not for the sake of the environment, but for the sake of future generations.

After working 3 years at an architecture firm there was always the same cycle: schematic design drawings, design development drawings, and construction documentation drawings. Because the firm I worked at mostly did Design Bid Build, there was always an uneasy feeling going into the bidding process and a majority of the time, after the bidding process was over there, was the “value engineering” part of the project which basically meant the architects had to go through and decide what parts of the project could be removed to make it cheaper. To combat this a lot of times going into the bidding process, we would have bid alternatives accounted for so that the owners could see a sum broken down as if preparing for the worst before the bidding even began. This always struck me as odd, and I know the construction market can fluctuate quite rapidly depending on a wide variety of things, but it always seemed like a bummer that after we thought the design was done we had to remove things from the design.

I quickly came to hate the term “value engineering” because it was this monster that hid under the bed and only appeared when you really didn’t want it to show up. I think that if we use Till’s approach and start to truly think about “value engineering” and the idea of scarcity from the conceptual phase of the project perhaps we can avoid this ironic “surprise” that we know is waiting for us. Obviously, thinking about scarcity from the beginning can only be more sustainable for the environment, but why don’t we do it for ourselves as well. Who knows we might be able to do more than we think we can if we truly think about scarcity as a thought process and not just removing things at the end of a project. I will leave you with this quote:

“Scarcity asks us to do things differently rather than to do the same thing with less, then the discourse of sustainability is shifted from measuring and technically refining the object to understanding the object within a wider and more complex set of dynamics.”