Interview: Matt Aalfs, AIA, Founder & Partner, BuildingWork

Meet our Founder, Matt Aalfs .

In this #InterviewSeries, we sat down with Matt to discuss his background in #architecture, how #environmentallyresponsible #design has progressed over the years, and what BuildingWork is doing to address the architecture industry’s biggest challenges.

Please give us a quick snapshot of your education + work experience.

My interests have always been broad, so I took a somewhat indirect path to architecture. I was an intellectually curious young person, and while in high school, I attended Humboldt State University and took courses in advanced math, history, and philosophy. I then went to the University of California Santa Cruz for college, which at the time (the mid/late 1980s), was an exciting and engaging place to be. At UCSC I studied almost everything – literature, environmentalism, politics, and U.S. history, among others, and finished with a degree in studio art.?

It was not until a few years after college that I considered pursuing architecture – I was drawn to the interdisciplinary nature of it, to the idea that one could blend the humanities, science, and craft into a field of work. In 1993 I enrolled in the Bachelor of Architecture program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, which set my focus on becoming an architect. I left CCA after a year to work for a very talented residential architect in northern California, Kash Boodjeh, where I received invaluable mentoring and on-the-job training. I attended the University of Washington, studied intensively in Rome, and received a Master of Architecture in 1999. After graduation I was hired at Weinstein AU, where I worked for more than 16 years. During this period I learned so much about design, detailing, and the practice of architecture from Ed Weinstein and other excellent architects and collaborators.

?Since founding BuildingWork in 2016, I’ve learned more about organizational leadership - management, finance, marketing, and strategy. I’ve also been able to steer the ideas and vision for projects – and to pursue work and design outcomes that I believe have meaning and a positive impact on the world.

What are your favorite parts and most significant challenges in designing in the PNW??

I love our appreciation in this region for craft, materials, and construction. This comes from our natural environment and rich history of making things here. Our climate allows us to consider daylight and water – how to let daylight into a building and how to take water out of it.

I don’t know that there are specific or particular challenges to this region – construction costs are high of course, but that’s true of many places in the US. This is a great place to practice architecture.

How do you approach and consider sustainability in the work you’re doing at BuildingWork??

I prefer to think of environmentally responsible design rather than sustainability, which has lost some meaning because of overuse. The climate crisis is the central challenge of our generation and for future generations,? and environmentally responsible design is essential to everything we do. Architects have a significant role to play since buildings consume more than half of the energy in the US. So we must take a more holistic view and a more responsible attitude to our work. A critical piece is that we must reuse existing buildings. We simply cannot build our way through the climate crisis through demolition and new construction.

How do you feel sustainability is progressing in the market and among professionals in your field? Do you feel like it’s meaningfully progressing??

It depends on what market – but the answer is probably ‘no’ or that it is not progressing enough.?

Which of your projects do you consider an excellent example of sustainable high-performance design?

All of our projects that start by saving, re-imagining, and re-purposing existing buildings are good examples of sustainable, high-performance design.

Our adaptive reuse and transformation of the 130-year-old Metropole Building in downtown Seattle takes this many steps further with a LEED Platinum design and an Energy Use Index (EUI) of 18, about half the energy use of a new code-compliant office building.

Our new La Conner Swinomish Library uses mass timber (CLT) for about 90% of the building structure and was delivered on a very tight budget. This project taught us a lot about mass timber as a sustainable design strategy, and we are now designing a new public library in Lake Stevens that uses mass timber to reduce the project's carbon footprint significantly and as a site-sensitivity response.?

What is needed to move the mainstream toward sustainable buildings?

For one, a greater sense of responsibility for future generations and non-human life and systems. Another is a shift away from short-term profit generation as the reason for making buildings.

What are the sustainability indicators BuildingWork measures when working on a project?

Of course, we pursue LEED certification whenever our project circumstances allow. But that’s just the baseline. We think about embodied carbon and energy, where materials come from, and how they are extracted, produced, and transported. We think about site response, building orientation, daylight, weather, and wind. We consider occupant health, wellness, and how people feel emotionally and psychologically when they experience the building.

What are your favorite resources to reference when designing with justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in mind? (Ex: Manuals, certifications, indexes, media outlets)?

That’s an interesting question. Internally, we bring a lot of intention to equity – we push ourselves to ensure that we compensate our staff well and without bias. In architecture firms, professional development and leadership are a function of roles on projects. This means that when we assign people to projects we can help them advance their careers, so we are intentional about that.

I think knowing that we all have much to learn is essential. We live in a society founded on systems of exclusion and oppression - native genocide, slavery, and patriarchy - and the remnants of these systems are embedded in our culture in various ways. I remind myself that if someone from an underrepresented group feels uncomfortable in a given situation, that person might be experiencing racism or sexism in one of its many forms – and others in the room need to be aware and respond.

What are some of the biggest lessons in your career and education?

The first thing that comes to mind is that everything we do as architects is about communication. We don’t build buildings – we communicate how buildings should be built. This is a very complex process of ideas, goals, decisions, interpersonal relationships, graphic representation, negotiation, and integrated sequences of actions, all steps that most essentially rely on communication.

The second thing is that as architects, we are always in a state of learning – the learning is continuous, rigorous, and evolving – making this profession so interesting and rewarding.

Looking to learn more about Matt’s work? Explore more of Buildingwork’s projects here.