Design the Future Podcast

For our latest episode, we (Lindsay Baker and Kira Gould) talked with Upali Nanda, PhD. She is Partner and Executive Vice President at HKS, Inc. As Global Sector Director, Innovation, she oversees HKS’s Research, Advisory, Sustainable Design, and Cities & Communities services. Based in Ann Arbor, Upali has extensive experience leading research projects in design practice with a focus on the impact of design on human health and perception. Upali believes that the big problems will be solved by getting many disciplines together in conversation. One example, the FDA Home as a Health Hub Idea Lab, brought together housing designers, developers, technology developers, investors, healthcare providers, and others. All such work is rooted in Upali’s deep commitment to the integration of research into practice. That commitment has prompted to her to ask deep questions about people and place. “How can we design for humans without knowing how humans are designed?” she asks. “That question got me interested in how humans perceive and behave, and then over time, that evolved into this interest in human health itself.” Listen at https://lnkd.in/giwbzDMn or on your favorite podcast platform. (Please consider leaving a review on Apple or Spotify; it really helps people find us!) Related links Building Brains Coalition launch: https://lnkd.in/dd4PcJyi FDA Home as a Heath Care Hub: https://lnkd.in/gFc2nmdg #WomenInGreen #DesignTheFuture #WomenInSustainability #BrainHealth #ResearchInPractice

For the latest episode of our podcast, we (Lindsay Baker and Kira Gould) talked with the inspiring Shannon Goodman about building reuse and abut building community. Shannon is the Executive Director of the LIFECYCLE BUILDING CENTER in Atlanta, which has redirected nearly 13 million pounds of usable materials away from landfills and generated more than $6 million in community savings. Shannon also serves as Board President for the nonprofit Build Reuse, representing reuse-focused organizations across the U.S. We talked to her about running a nonprofit and about the changes afoot in the AEC field. “We are in the midst of a massive mind shift,” she says. “It's only going to work if people actually see that there is value. We have to stop thinking about these materials as waste. They are resources.” Shannon’s vision for the reuse work is that “the entire process of what we do gets really sexy for people,” she says. “I look forward to a time when people are compelled by the stories they are hearing of what has been saved and reused. They will think, ‘I want a piece of that for my work.’ That is only going to happen if we make it really easy to tell those stories.” Listen at https://lnkd.in/gwm5bFJR or on your favorite podcast platform. (Please consider leaving a review on Apple or Spotify; it really helps people find us!) #BuildingReuseIsClimateAction #BuildReuse #LifecycleBuilding

For our latest episode, we (Lindsay Baker and Kira Gould) bent our pattern a bit and interviewed two people … and it was a joy. Jonsara Ruth is co-founder and Design Director of the Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons School of Design, where she is an Associate Professor and Founding Director of the MFA Interior Design program. Alison Mears is Associate Professor of Architecture, Director and Co-Founder of the Healthy Materials Lab (HML) and Director/Co-Founder of HML EU gGmbH. This year is the HML’s tenth in operation. Alison and Jonsara’s close collaboration has been central to the Lab’s development and to its success in engaging people and changing minds and practices. “Jonsara and I have a lot in common,” Alison says, “including a drive to use our design skills in the service of a higher goal to produce place for people that meet all their needs. We want to raise the bar. And we want to invite people in to do this work.” Jonsara says their partnership works well because they have complementary skill sets and they’ve always been willing to hear one another out: “We value intuition and we respect each other’s experience. We are both committed to always learning and evolving.” Listen at https://lnkd.in/ghmgiTzD or on your favorite podcast platform. (Please consider leaving a review on Apple or Spotify; it really helps people find us!) Alison and Jonsara published the book Material Health: Design Frontiers (Lund Humphries, 2023) exploring the intersectional and complex nature of material health. Learn more about that book here: https://lnkd.in/d7fg2Ez9. They also co-authored the closing chapter of The Regenerative Materials Movement (Living Future / Ecotone, 2024). All y'all podcast listeners can get a 25% discount on the ebook/PDF, which will auto-apply with this link: https://lnkd.in/gsUDMUV9. Parsons School of Design - The New School School of Constructed Environments at Parsons #MaterialsMatter #HealthyPeopleHealthyPlanet #DesignTheWorldWeWant

For our latest episode, we (Lindsay Baker and Kira Gould) spoke with embodied carbon maven Meghan Lewis. She is Program Director at the Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF), where she leads strategy, research, and resource development to advance CLF’s mission to eliminate embodied carbon in buildings, materials, and infrastructure to create a just and thriving future. Meghan joined CLF in 2020 to lead their efforts to inform public policies targeting embodied carbon, from Buy Clean to building codes and beyond. Previous to joining CLF, Meghan was an architect and launched a global supply chain sustainability program at WeWork. We talked to her about embodied carbon (of course), changing practice, the realities of research, and translating knowledge to meaningful policy. “It's important for people to remember that a lot of the progress that has been made was led by states and cities, and will continue to be led by states and cities,” she says. “Progress is not going to stop. Now there is greater opportunity for local action. Think about the groups you are a part of as you think about how to engage with policy in the next four years.” We talked about books, too. Meghan shared how reading science fiction fantasy helps her bring optimism to her work. Listen at https://lnkd.in/g3vfHRAc or on your favorite podcast platform. (Please consider leaving a review on Apple; it helps people find us.) To learn more about CLF’s origins, check out our convo (from our first year!) with Kate Simonen: https://lnkd.in/gzFeUqf.

For our latest episode, we (Lindsay Baker and Kira Gould) finally nabbed some time with Billie Faircloth, FAIA. She’s a design leader and educator who has transformed practice-integrated research and earned a reputation for demonstrating its value, methods, and outcomes. Billie was a partner and research director at the Philadelphia-based practice KieranTimberlake, where she guided the collaborative development of award-winning studies, technology, and architecture. As co-founder and research director of Built Buildings Lab, Faircloth represents the value of existing buildings in the public consciousness, global sustainability practice, and policymaking. She is an an associate professor in the architecture department of Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning and a Senior Faculty Fellow at Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability . We talked to Billie about the value and benefits of shifting platforms and about the richness of working across realms -- practice, policy, and academia. We asked her about the communities of which she is a part. “When I look at the green building industry, I see a whole range of communities engaging in movements,” she says. “They are advocating for decarbonization and energy transition or reducing emissions with embodied carbon, or advocating for supply chain equity or carbon neutral design or regenerative design. I see a movement of movements.” Listen at https://lnkd.in/g_5KaVVq or on your favorite podcast platform. (Please consider leaving a review on Apple; it helps people find us.) #womeningreen Lori Ferriss, AIA, PE Building Transparency

Happy new year, friends and listeners! We can't wait for you to hear from our special guest: Joel Todd. We (Lindsay Baker and Kira Gould) have known Joel for a long time, and she's one of the remarkable humans that you find at the apex of any diagram of progress on sustainability and integrated thinking in the built environment in the US in the past three decades. That's how long Joel has been leading and collaborating and advocating in the field. Most recently she was a U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) Senior Fellow focused on social equity, but she's also a trusted advisor other groups, including International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), Health Product Declaration Collaborative, and more. Her career has focused on green building methods and metrics development; she contributed significantly to LEED’s earliest versions and co-founded the LEED Society Equity Working Group, an effort that brought her the Malcolm Lewis Impact Award. She describes how she came to work in this movement (without a background in a specifically AEC field) and how the people made her stay: “That’s really the key to finding your path, I think: Find people you respect and enjoy working with and then keep learning from them.” Joel has a long view on the arc of progress and some pointed opinions about both the progress so far and what may be ahead. She notes, for example, that the deep knowledge in the industry has had some unintended consequences. She urges the community to “get out of our detailed, speciality comfort zones to have those conversations about the whole and how it all fits together. Otherwise, instead of working synergistically, things are going to start clashing.” Listen at https://lnkd.in/gWHCd4Ye or on your favorite podcast platform. (Please consider leaving a review on Apple; it helps people find us.) #DesignTheFuture #WomenInGreen Living Future

It’s been a minute since our last episode, and we’ve got a great one for you: We (Kira Gould and Lindsay Baker) spoke with the delightful and articulate Efrie Escott. Efrie is the Decarbonization Technical Program Leader for Digital Energy at Schneider Electric. As a licensed architect and life cycle assessment practitioner, her previous experience in reducing carbon in the built environment was as an environmental researcher within the KieranTimberlake Research Group, where she was a core member of the development team for Tally, an award-winning BIM-integrated life cycle assessment tool. We had a lively and intriguing conversation with Efrie about research in the built environment field, Tally, her leap to Schneider Electric, and what kind of impact she is having in that context (including a recently launched internal tool). We also got a little nerdy about ASHRAE standards and others and how they are addressing (and tabulating) whole life carbon. She celebrated the immense gains on technology and knowledge, but she also acknowledged her disappointment that we have not yet hit peak emissions. And she voiced a concern that seems really relevant right now, about how we need to bring more people along in the movement and the industry. “We are doing a great job accelerating the front end, but we need to work on the middle more," she said. "We need to spend more time talking to other people -- not just each other. The science tells us we'll need to sprint the distance of a marathon. This means we need to carry each other, and we need to be intentional about who we are bringing into the work.” Listen at https://lnkd.in/ee_46viP or on your favorite podcast platform. (Please consider leaving a review on Apple; it helps people find us.) #DesignTheFuture #Decarbonization #WomenInGreen Lindsay Baker Living Future ASHRAE

For our latest episode, we (Lindsay Baker and Kira Gould) talked to Myrrh Caplan, MBA, LEED Fellow, who is Senior VP for Sustainability at Skanska and leads the construction company’s national sustainability team. Since joining Skanska as a Project Manager in 2005, Myrrh has helped shape Skanska’s national approach to sustainable building. She established the company’s first national Green Construction program and chaired Skanska’s first National Green Council. Myrrh has advised on hundreds of projects seeking LEED, Living Building Challenge, WELL, Envision, and other certifications.?To say that she is a veteran of the US green building movement is an understatement. We heard from Myrrh about her passion for weaving a positive legacy, and how she brings that to project work and everything else. She speaks about her team as a family that is “in it together” and she is proud of how shared success, to this group of people, “comes before egos.”? She told us about a recent accomplishment, her work on the Associated General Contractors of America Playbook on Decarbonization and Carbon Reporting in construction (https://lnkd.in/dK45j8QR). And we couldn’t resist asking Myrrh to talk about some notable recent projects, including PDX (the new airport in Portland, Ore., designed by ZGF) and the Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station (in New York City, designed by SOM). Listen at https://lnkd.in/gUxYcRb2 or on your favorite podcast platform. (Please consider leaving a review on Apple; it helps people find us.) #DecarbonizingAEC #ClimateActionBuiltEnvironment

#gratitude This is what we (Kira Gould and Lindsay Baker) feel about our podcast's milestone; today we posted our 100th episode. This deserves a special post, we think, because we want to express our gratitude for all those who listen and to all our guests so far ... and to thoes coming up. We are already recording and booking well past that 100th episode, but milestones are a great time for a gratitude pause. To every person who took time to listen, thank you! And we love the feedback on the posts, directly to us, and especially the reviews, which really do help people find us. To every guest since our first episode in the winter of 2020, thank you! Sara Neff (our first guest!), Rosa T. Sheng, FAIA, Sarah Golden, Mary Curtiss, Gail Vittori, Liz Ogbu, AMANDA KAMINSKY, Andrea Traber, Elaine Hsieh, Mara Baum FAIA, eden brukman, Kimberly Dowdell, Carlie Bullock-Jones, LEED Fellow, WELL AP, Marge Anderson, Stacy Smedley, Gail Brager, Erin Meezan, Liz York, FAIA, Judith Heerwagen, Leith Sharp, Jenny Carney, Alyssa P. Lyon, MPM, Mandy Lee, Lucia Athens, Rachel Hodgdon, Katie Swenson, Vivian Loftness, Heather Joy Rosenberg, Anica Landreneau, Adrienne Johnson, PE, Lynn N. Simon, FAIA, LEED Fellow, Whitney Austin Gray, Michelle Amt, FAIA, Jennifer Leitsch, Wanda Dalla Costa, AIA, FRAIC, LEED AP, Daniele Horton, CRE?, Kirsten Ritchie, Renee Lertzman, PhD ... (more in comments) https://lnkd.in/dR23HSD

For our 100th episode (!), we (Kira Gould and Lindsay Baker) talked with Dr. Mae-ling Lokko. She's an Assistant Professor at Yale School of Architecture and Yale's Center for Ecosystems in Architecture (Yale CEA) and the founder of Willow Technologies Ltd., in Accra, Ghana. Mae-ling is an architectural scientist, designer, and educator from Ghana and the Philippines, and her work focuses on the design and integration of biogenic material practices across the agricultural, architectural and textile sectors. This year, she joined the board of the International Living Future Institute. She references the importance of breaking boundaries between silos and communities because, she says, “the materials that we work with surely do.” She is proud of her many collaborations across and between academic, industry, and communities: “We are are advancing top-down and bottom-up approaches to getting these biobased materials not just known but normalized” in the AEC community. Throughout her work, Mae-ling is inspired by the stories of how biobased materials were used over long periods of time in different societies, “which offer us clues for how they could be used today and in the future.” Listen at https://lnkd.in/g8MZbCwi or on your favorite podcast platform. (Please consider leaving a review on Apple; it helps people find us.) #NatureBasedMaterials #BiogenicMaterials #BiobasedMaterials