Adaptive Reuse, Sustainability, & Employee Wellness
VCBO's Commitment to Sustainability Through Design and Practice
VCBO’s office in downtown Salt Lake City, across the street from Trolley Square, is located in the historic barn that used to house the horses and mules that pulled Salt Lake’s public street cars between 1872 and 1888. VCBO acquired the building in the 1980s — over a century after its construction — and has been there ever since. From its original wooden beams and brick walls to the distinct yellow lettering down its front, it’s become an essential and beloved building to the people who work here.?
Over the decades, VCBO has gone through multiple renovations to modernize the former stable, expand the available space, and make it more sustainable and eco-friendly. Increasing sustainability has been an incremental process of adaptive reuse, with upgrades implemented as time and other resources allowed.?
VCBO’s office sustainability initiatives, spearheaded by leadership, the Green Team, and individual employees, set an example for how we can steadily achieve a more sustainable future. Our teams take this same approach with our clients, doing our best to find ways to reduce, adapt, and design for sustainability.?
As we have made upgrades and renovations throughout the years, we’ve also found a surprising link between sustainability and employee wellness and satisfaction. Decisions to move toward a more environmentally friendly building have also positively impacted our employees’ physical and mental well-being.
From increased comfort to heightened unity and workplace satisfaction, sustainability initiatives had far-reaching benefits that impacted our ability as a firm to collaborate, be productive, and ultimately increase profitability.?
We carried this knowledge as we began a new office-wide renovation last December, driven by the need for more space for our growing number of employees to work and collaborate.
The renovation was also a good opportunity to revisit sustainability and see where we could improve. As we celebrate sustainability this month, we’re excited to share the steps our firm is taking to improve both the sustainability of our business practices and the positive impact it has had on our employees.?
Sustainability Through Thoughtful Design
The ongoing VCBO office renovation will result in new desks, meeting rooms, breakout spaces, and an updated break area. A major focus of the renovation was a new office configuration that utilizes space more efficiently and new workspaces. These new spaces feature standing desks for every employee. Thanks to the new furniture and a carefully designed layout, the office building is able to fit more employees in the same amount of space while making the office more comfortable and less crowded for everyone.?
Initially, VCBO had three main options to consider:
The third option, while also being the most economical, used the fewest resources and would result in the smallest impact on the environment. Adaptive reuse, instead of just building more and building bigger, has allowed the VCBO team to meet their space needs, improve comfort, and provide a modern office where its employees can work.?
Old furniture was given away for employees to use or was recycled. We also preserved as much as possible — keeping the carpet and some of the original furniture. The renovation will continue building-wide sustainability initiatives that began in earlier years by updating lighting, improving insulation and HVAC zones for more efficient temperature control, and integrating more recycling stations.?
However, this renovation is just one step in VCBO’s office sustainability journey, which began decades prior, and many of these renovations are only feasible because of the steps that have come before to improve sustainability as we work and learn more.
A Journey of Sustainability Improvements
VCBO’s focus on office sustainability is headed by our Green Team. Founded in 2014, it is a committee of employees who volunteer to spearhead environmentally conscious initiatives. They’ve captured below some key milestones:?
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Energy & Lighting Upgrades
In 2018, Salt Lake City awarded VCBO the Elevate Buildings Award for Most Improved EnergyStar Score , with an increased score of 86, up from 77. This decrease in energy consumption resulted mainly from lighting upgrades that replaced old lights with LED lighting and an automatic hibernation setting applied to the office’s desktop computers. VCBO also joined Rocky Mountain Power’s Blue Sky Renewable Energy Program , which elected VCBO to power the office with renewable energy sources.?
In addition to reducing energy consumption, the new lights made the office a more pleasant place to work by reducing eye strain, improving the work environment, and even making it easier for our interior designers to test color and materials samples.?
Providing laptops to all employees in 2021 contributed to a further reduction in energy use. However, laptops also had the benefit of increasing flexibility for our employees by enabling them to work outside the office. Whether it means employees were more easily able to stay home while feeling sick or caring for a family member, or not having to come back and forth from the office when they have an appointment, this seemingly simple change both improved the work-life balance of our employees and decreased energy consumption and pollution from commuting.
Incorporating Nature
VCBO’s green journey also includes its own research. Between 2020 and 2022, a firm Associate and Green Team member, Nancy McKendrick, began a study to test whether adding plants to the office improved the air quality. The result: “You would need a lot more plants to make a significant difference in the air quality,” Nancy said of her experiment, “but there were other benefits I hadn’t anticipated.”
The greenery around the office has a positive effect on mental health and productivity. While the environmental impact was small, this experiment displays the importance that access to nature plays in our well-being. This is one reason why VCBO often advocates for biophilic architecture, buildings that sustain the natural environment, and architecture that harmonizes with its surroundings.
Sustainability From a Holistic Standpoint
Improving the sustainability of our building and making small efforts toward being more environmentally conscious has been a step-by-step effort over the last few decades. VCBO’s philosophy with our own office remodels mirrors the approach we bring to our projects and clients as well.
“We follow best practices based on the most recent research and technology,” said VCBO Associate and Green Team member, Dannon Rampton. “That means we’re choosing the more sustainable option by default. But it’s always the client’s ultimate decision when it comes to sustainability. We encourage them to choose what is the most sustainable, but we recognize that there are sometimes budget and/or time constraints.”
As we’ve made improvements, we’ve seen the effect on the office as a whole. While some efforts have taken time and money, others are as simple as placing recycling stations throughout the building.
We continue to strive for sustainability and emphasize it as one of our key services as an architectural firm . As we do our small part, we hope to help create spaces where people can thrive in harmony with their environment.
About the Contributors
The VCBO Green Team is comprised of employees who volunteer their time to spearhead sustainability initiatives and champion VCBO's efforts toward a more eco-friendly future. The Green Team committee members volunteer their time in the community and have taken part in many of the initiatives discussed in this article.