US architect’s take on sustainability, housing crisis, LA fires, and AI in architecture

Sustainability is very important, but in architecture, it can come secondary to stakeholders who are more concerned with costs and return on investment, says Jessica Saravia, the technical director of DMAC Architecture & Interiors based in Chicago, Illinois in the US.

When it comes to the building performance aspect of things, Saravia says her colleagues who are working in sustainability are really pushing the envelope in terms of super-insulated buildings such as passive house or thinking outside the box. With everything going electric, everybody's trying to move away from gas-powered buildings for obvious reasons. However, data centres, she says, “suck up so much energy it's like a small town in this one little building”, and wonders how the 2030 commitment to be carbon neutral for the American Institute of Architects will be met, considering the amount of energy these data centres are going to need going forward year on year.

Housing crisis in the US

Saravia believes the US has a long history of not dealing very well with the housing crisis. Housing projects have been “fantastically failures”, she says. “How do you move from being at the end of the problem and trying to patch the holes in the dam as it's breaking to getting upstream of the problem?”  

One solution is to use the building stock from vacant office space resulting from people not going back to work after the pandemic. By housing unhoused people in the US in these buildings, it would cost so much less than all of the problems that you deal with downstream, she explains.

Climate change, LA fires and building codes

Commenting on the recent fires in Los Angeles, Saravia says it’s a city of single-family houses sprawling out into the hills and in the event of a fire, it quickly spreads and wipes out everything; therefore, it’s a problem that architecture by itself cannot solve.

Referring to Australia’s fire codes, she emphasised the need for more stringent building codes in LA, similar to how South Florida has localised building codes around hurricanes, especially for exterior enclosures on the building. Additionally, there needs to be zoning and planning codes, and a movement towards more density instead of low rise single family housing, which doesn't fare well in a fire.

“If you're in an area that we know gets these specific wind patterns, these specific dangers, then we have to start thinking about zoning codes and urban planning that hold development from those areas to make it safer in the long term,” she explains. “If we just keep building in areas that we know are prone to fire, it's still going to be a repeat problem. I don't think architecture can solve it all by itself,” Saravia reiterated.

Improving building performance

There have been a lot of improvements in building performance in the US in terms of increased accessibility to learning and understanding building envelopes, building systems and sustainability, says Saravia. There are firms, for instance, that work on ‘envelope engineering’, which relates to building air tightness and finding the best way to insulate and protect buildings for durability and longevity.

“That's all part of sustainability too, right? It's not sustainable if your building burns down every five years, or if you build a beautiful building with all the heat pumps and everything's electric, but it doesn't last the next storm or the next fire.”

Building resilience, Saravia says, is not just about your building being sustainable but also being thoughtful enough to respect where you are, protecting you from the environment and withstanding the next snow, hurricane or fire.

AI in architecture and construction

Rather than using AI to design buildings, the technology should serve as a problem-solver. “The design part of it is not what we need AI for. I think we could all do that. I think what we need AI for is the tedious stuff,” says Saravia.

For instance, AI could be used to determine the best way to insulate in each area of the country, or create iterative energy models that can tell you immediately that “if you orient your building this way, use this type of insulation and this mechanical system, this is the most energy efficient building”.

DMAC’s approach to design

Between flashy renderings and ultra shiny architecture, there's something lost because it doesn't have any reality to it. “Renderings do not count if you don't execute it. You have to get it right in the field and that is a really hard thing to do,” she observes.

As a firm doing a lot of hospitality work, DMAC takes a different approach to design, ensuring they don’t do the same thing over and over again. The practice manufactures products in-house, has a design-build arm, and is really invested in construction.

For more, go to our podcast with Jessica Saravia here: https://www.architectureanddesign.com.au/editorial/podcast/episode-237-us-architect-jessica-saravia-on-design-trends-sustainability-fireproofing-homes-and-ai-in-the-trump-era