Sustainable Interior Environments, Explained

A Tale of Two Site Visits

Visiting architectural firms is always an interesting proposition. Will the offices be cutting-edge, incorporating the latest building technologies and current design fashion in order to impress potential clients? Or will they be less-than-interesting, drab and utilitarian spaces which cost little to create and even less to maintain? Having worked in offices of both types, I’m always interested to learn which path a particular firm takes.

Cook + Fox

The offices of Cook + Fox, while not particularly showy, are a near-perfect example of a firm which chooses to showcase its strengths in its work environment. Cook + Fox have been at the vanguard of sustainable architectural and interior design for many years, and their LEED Platinum-certified offices – housed in a landmark NYC building which used to be a department store – contain many beautifully-restored elements.

A view of the green roof outside the Cook+Fox offices.

Many of the materials utilized in the offices are sustainable, including the workstations, the surfacing, the carpeting and the paint. There are sustainable technologies built into the HVAC system, and Cook + Fox built a green roof even though they did not receive LEED credit for it. Instead, they simply believed it to be an important addition to the space which all their employees could enjoy equally through a virtual wall of windows.

41 Cooper Square

This newly-built, Morphosis-designed building on the campus of Cooper Union is a glaring example of sustainable design gone horribly awry. While not an architectural office per se, it does house the school’s engineering department. It also contains a myriad of sustainable design elements such as an operable building skin made of perforated and moveable stainless steel panels, radiant heating and cooling ceiling panels, a full-height atrium to improve air flow and provide increased interior daylighting, a green roof, a cogeneration plant and state-of-the-art laboratories. 

A view of the main circulation spire at 41 Cooper Square.

While all of these features may lead to increased energy efficiency and cost savings over the life of the building, they are employed in such a way as to make the interior environment seem cold and uncaring. Although the building was “conceived as a vehicle to foster collaboration and cross-disciplinary dialogue,” the stark monotonous white of its interior and its severe angularity – as well as its seeming lack of these very spaces – serve at cross-purposes. This building may have cost a fortune to construct, but its sustainability is too well-hidden and technological to have a positive impact.

Toward a Design Research Ethics

As a field of practice still in its relative infancy, it is a worthwhile exercise to consider interior design research in light of any and all ethical concerns that such research could produce. In their Practical guide to behavioral research: Tools and techniques (1980), Robert Sommer and Barbara Baker Sommer outline the main tenets of the American Anthropological Association's code of ethics which, in large part, serve as an excellent basis for an inquiry into what a similar code for design research practices should include.

They write, "The code states that anthropological researchers

1. have primary ethical obligations to the people, species, and materials they study and to the people with whom they work.
2. must do everything in their power to ensure that their research does no harm the safety, dignity, or privacy of the people with whom they work
3. must determine in advance whether their hosts or providers of information wish to remain anonymous or receive recognition and make every effort to comply with those wishes.
4. should obtain in advance the informed consent of people being studied, providing information, owning or controlling access to material being studied, or otherwise identified as having interests that may be impacted by the research.
5. who have developed close and enduring relationships with either individual persons providing information or with hosts must adhere to the obligations of openness and informed consent, while carefully and respectfully negotiating the limits of the relationship.
6. although they may gain personally, they must not exploit individuals, groups, animals, or cultural or biological materials." (p. 26)

As someone who has studied anthropology and sociology, there is a straightforwardness and simplicity here which I appreciate. But designers will no doubt encounter additional ethical considerations, especially those designers who practice sustainability and embrace the core concepts of the "Three E's": ecology, economy and equity. Along these lines, I will attempt to rewrite the tenets outlined above to include the wide variety of implications inherent in design research.

A code for design research ethics should include:

1. No harm should come to the physical or mental health, safety, dignity, welfare or privacy of the individuals participating in research.
2. Researchers will not interfere with the stated purpose of a particular built environment or the practices of its occupants.
3. Extreme care should be taken not to negatively affect the attitudes of the users of a space towards either the space itself or those perceived to be in charge of its operation.
4. Informed consent of research participants must be acquired prior to the research.
5. Design research must operate free from the economic support of individuals or companies involved in the various building trades.
6. Researchers must not disrupt or exploit individuals, groups, animals, biological materials, and cultural practices as they relate to the built environment. Such practices will not be unduly influenced or altered by the researchers.
7. Design should be inclusive of all levels of abilities of users of a space from both a functional and sense-based standpoint.

Tweet This

Because I've hit a bit of a wall in my research proposal and need a diversion, how about I summarize another study? According to this one, birds are singing louder today than they did 30 years ago in order to be heard above the din of modern life. "The research found sparrows in San Francisco’s Presidio district changed their tune to soar above the increasing cacophony of car horns and engine rumbles."

So they are not only getting louder, but they are actually changing their songs. Out in nature, if you will, sparrows sing in low, medium and high frequencies -- but, in the city, it's been discovered that they've all but abandoned the low to medium ranges and only use the highest ones, something now officially called the "San Francisco dialect." This is because:

Songs need to be heard, not just because they sound pretty — birds use them to talk to each other, warn away rivals and attract mates. If you go into a bird’s territory and play a song from the same species, they think a rival competitor has invaded its territory. If the rival bird can’t hear the song and vamoose, then it may come to bird fisticuffs. That can lead to injury or death.

Turns out that it's not only humans that are affected by all the noise that has come to dominate our lives in urban centers, and it provides yet another reason to safeguard the areas of our cities which shelter us from all the cacophony. Fortunately sparrows are a resilient bunch, but I fear that humans aren't quite as adaptable.

When Is a White Coat More Than Just a Coat?

In yesterday's Times, there was a rather interesting article about clothes and self-perception which outlined a phenomenon that researchers are calling "enclothed cognition," defined as "the effects of clothing on cognitive processes." In a nutshell, subjects given a white coat to wear which they believe belongs to a doctor will demonstrate a marked increase in their ability to pay attention; however, if they believe the coat belongs to painter, there is no noted increase.

According to the professor at Northwestern who led the study:

It is not enough to see a doctor’s coat hanging in your doorway. The effect occurs only if you actually wear the coat and know its symbolic meaning — that physicians tend to be careful, rigorous and good at paying attention.

The article goes on to describe a growing field called "embodied cognition," of which this study is a part, that believes we think not only with our minds but also our bodies — where "our thought processes are based on physical experiences that set off associated abstract concepts." My thoughts immediately jumped to interior environments, of course, and made me wonder if there is possibly a correlation to be made with sustainability.

If we wear what we think is a doctor's coat and it makes us pay better attention, what if we move into an house which has been built to sustainable standards? When we "wear" sustainable interiors, is there a similar process at work? It made me think immediately of my research proposal, trying to determine if people's knowledge of the sustainability of a space affects their health and wellbeing. This is definitely something I'm going to have to investigate further...

Recycling Plummets Under Bloomberg

Here's some rather disappointing news: in a recent article called Recycling Plummets Under 'Green' Mayor's Watch, it's revealed that "numbers show that the proportion of waste being recycled [in New York City] has been steadily sliding, falling from a high of 19 percent in 2002, to just 15 percent in 2011 — far behind other green-minded cities like Seattle, with a recycling rate of nearly 54 percent; Portland, Oregon, with a rate of nearly 60 percent; and San Francisco, which achieved a record-setting 77 percent diversion rate in 2009."

It costs the city $300 million to ship over three million tons — that's six billion pounds — of waste to landfill every year, though this is down from post-2002 when the mayor suspended glass, metal and plastic recycling in order to "save money" due to a budget crisis. The goal outlined in PlaNYC is to double the amount of waste being recycled by 2017 but, according to the article, a 30% rate would still put us behind a country like Slovenia which manages to divert 37% of its waste through recycling efforts. More certainly needs to be done.

And it's finally happening:

Part of the [new] effort, Sanitation Department officials said, will include installing hundreds of new recycling bins in public spaces across the city, as well as expanding the types of plastics that can be recycled to include items like yogurt and food storage containers, which are currently exempt.

Another part of the effort will be changing the culture of recycling in the city, and I'm wondering what it will take to get everyone from Soundview to Staten Island on board — not to mention all the businesses and offices and stores and everything else. Just as the city has made a concerted effort to get people to stop smoking and watch their consumption of sugary beverages, I think it's going to take a massive PR campaign in order to get the word out. What do you think? How are we going to be able to change people's behavior for the better?