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42 / BUILDING DIALOGUE / DECEMBER 2017
B eauty in design inter-
twines with continually
transforming market
interests. Communities, and
the building industry, refocus
regularly, incorporating new op-
portunities and challenges fac-
ing local and global populations
as well as emerging technologies
and evolving aesthetic preferenc-
es. While the quest to create beauty
in our environment remains con-
stant, we repeatedly redefine our
perception of it, along with how it’s
achieved.
For decades we debated defini-
tions of “sustainable design,” nev-
er agreeing on the nuances. Most
recently we transferred this focus
to “health.” In this refinement lies
a powerful opportunity for com-
plex beauty: architecture designed
to promote human health across
all scales, from individual through
community to global. Architecture
for life.
Growth of populations, cities and
human demands are shaping our
planet, recalibrating and redefin-
ing our relationship to it as quickly
as it transforms. There is no limit
to imaginative visions of how our
earth will look, and support life, in
decades to come. This change will
be our legacy, and it is up to us to
choose if it will be beautiful.
How do we do this, choose beauty, support life?
Human health for life. One pathway includes de-
signing for human health, never losing sight of in-
extricable ties connecting scales. The only reason-
able solution prioritizes all of them, considering
every being impacted by a project, through direct
experience of the architecture or direct experience
of the global transformation that the architecture
drives. A project’s impact extends beyond its occu-
pants, or future generations, or people elsewhere
in the world; it falls upon every living being: each,
and all, alive today and in years to come.
Carbon dioxide offers a simple example. Most
often discussed as a greenhouse gas tied to global
warming, impacts at the individual scale gained
attention in 2014 when the Harvard TH Chan
School of Public Health, SUNY Upstate Medical
University and Syracuse University released their
rigorously conducted “COGfx” study. Their research
showed substantial declines in human cognitive
performance as carbon dioxide levels increased
within building interior spaces. No problem; we
can easily remedy this through increased outdoor
air ventilation, flushing carbon dioxide.
But the problem gains significance when we
consider that, for thousands of years, atmospher-
ic levels of carbon dioxide remained below 300
parts per million. Between 1958 – when the Nation-
al Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration first
tracked atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide in
Mauna Loa – and 2016, mean levels rose from 315
to 403 ppm. They continue to climb, exponential-
ly faster as populations grow and energy demands
increase, toward levels now quantifiably known to
impact human cognitive function. Higher-think-
ing capacity as well as productivity are threatened,
potentially this century, possibly even within de-
cades, worldwide.
This is one poignant example of many. This year
the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and
Health, representative of more than 50 percent of
U.S. medical professionals, documented regionally
specific individual health impacts resultant from
climate change, observed through direct patient
experience. Besides extreme weather events, they
highlighted infections borne by pests, tainted wa-
ter, foods and agriculture along with wildfires, air
quality and extreme temperatures. All emerged
Christy Collins,
AIA, LEED AP
BD+C
Director of
Sustainabil-
ity, Davis
Partner-
ship Ar-
chitects
ELEMENTS Sustainable Design
Frank Ooms
The interior photo captures the stair, green wall, biophilic indoor/
outdoor spatial connection and warm materials.