What is sustainability?

Sustainability, to me, means a long-term evaluation of every decision made without compromise to future generations. It's an evaluation of every material you use and the trade-off. Should I use a better material to insulate my structure to reduce the operational energies? There are two types of energies, as far as I'm concerned, in a building. There's what's called embodied energy, the energy it takes to make materials and then transport those materials to the site. Then there are operational energies, the energies to run all the appliances, keep the space at a comfort level, operate windows, vents, fans, everything else. You have to balance between those two different energies. Right now, in a typical building, about 10% of the energy used over the life of the building is embodied energy and 90% is in the operation. If you wanted to really reduce energy consumption in the U.S., you would reduce as much operational energy as you could in a structure.

How do the various rating systems treat embodied and operational energy?

The Architecture 2030 Challenge focuses on operational energy as well as embodied energy. Mayor Richard Daley has adopted the challenge, and asked AIA Chicago to educate our members on how to help achieve this goal. The Green Globes™ system also focuses on both energies. It's a Canadian outfit, but we’re starting to see the standard in the U.S. Many users of popular rating systems tend to focus more on the 10%—or embodied energy—since those credits are easier or less expensive to achieve. As with all guidelines there are issues that need to be resolved, such as how to measure performance and where to focus our resources to tackle the issue of energy consumption and waste.

How do USG's ceiling panels fit in with sustainability?

With products you can't assess the sustainable design of the space, but they really play more into the green product category. If you analyze it from a life cycle assessment, they're very durable products that last for the life of the project, as well as improve the quality of the indoor environment through high light reflectance, sound absorption and fire protection. And most important, we have reformulated some products to have no VOCs and no formaldehyde emissions, which is not an easy task.

It appears that USG is involved in bringing the architect together with the manufacturer to help improve the sustainability of a project.

What's happened is there has been a change in the way architects design buildings, to the point where I think this “integrated design concept,” or “integrated profession,” has taken the correct path—the integration of the mechanical engineer from the start of the design is key in order to make a more functional building, one that's less operational-energy intensive. I think that there has been a shift away from isolation. Other disciplines also need to be involved.

Factors like daylighting...

I did a breakdown of the types of operational energies in an office building, and the highest amount of energy used is lighting, followed by computers and appliances, followed by heating and air conditioning. So in designing an office building, the first thing you would want to focus on would be lighting, to reduce the operational energies. In fact, studies on schools have shown an impressive improvement in test scores at schools with the most daylighting. On the other hand, in residential, heating and air conditioning is over 40% of the requirements of their operational energies. A retail building might be totally different, maybe between those two. So first, you have to understand the type of construction you're working on, and then put together your integrated team to solve the reduction of those operational energies.

Where would an architect go to get integrated solutions?

They already have a team of different professionals from different disciplines; the problem is, historically, the architect wouldn't talk to them until their specific phase of the project was ready. The solution is to bring them into the design development early on, in the phase of the working drawings, or even the sketches, rather than wait until you're into the working drawings. You want to bring them up into the schematic phase.

Would the same be true of the products you use?

No doubt about it. Now, a representative of all the different manufacturers' materials needs to be involved from the beginning. It's important to be part of the whole scheme from an operational, health safety and indoor environmental quality standpoint. Everything is more integrated now—it's not just "let's build a box and decide what we're going to do with it later."

Can you talk a little about indoor air quality?

I look at it simply as everything that affects the comfort and productivity of the occupants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that humans now spend about 90% of their life indoors, and that pollutant levels indoors are often higher than those outside. Are off-gassing of VOCs, including formaldehyde, causing health hazards to the occupants? Can you stay in that space for eight hours a day? Indoor air quality is a very important factor.