Future Ready Features: Places and Spaces Edition

Faced with the challenges of climate change and society’s evolving needs, we need to rethink our buildings and cities.

Power play: energy audits drive progress

Like us — and mostly because of us — buildings require a significant amount of energy to get through the day (and night). In fact, buildings are responsible for 40 percent of our total U.S. energy consumption.

They also account for 35 percent of our nation’s carbon emissions, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. So, to reach national and worldwide emission reduction targets, it stands to reason that decarbonizing our building stock will be critical. But to do that, we must first understand how an existing building performs under all that demand, and how it can be improved.

An energy audit is one way to assess current usage and set benchmarks that facilitate efforts toward improved energy use. A useful tool if you are in the business of enhancing energy efficiency or decarbonizing buildings…like we are.

Here are five key considerations to get you started.

Let there be art...and light

“Sometimes overlooked, often misread, public art is a sign of life.” — Patricia C. Phillips, art historian.

The built environment is more than just buildings and infrastructure. Intentional spaces that encourage community gathering, such as parks and plazas, are also classified in this way, and often introduce opportunities to engage with others and our surroundings in meaningful ways. They can provide opportunities for respite and rejuvenation and support social resilience.

When paired with public art — or community art, if you prefer — these spaces can be elevated to inspire reflection, inspiration and education. Art in built spaces can create a greater sense of identity and understanding of who we are, where we come from and where we’re going.

Toss in a little lighting (or a lot!) and the effect can be transformational.

Take a walk through just such an environment in NYC that illuminates the impact artistic expression, and celebration, can have in an urban setting.

Air-ing on the side of resilience in healthcare

A single-word idea rose to prominence in healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic and still hangs in the air — both literally and figuratively — in that sector today: resilience.

In a hospital’s leadership and staff thinking, in methods of operating and planning for the future and, at least as prominently, in its approach to facility ventilation, a proactive approach to resilience is key to thriving in healthcare’s evolving landscape. And while the healthcare system today is concerned with a variety of measures to enhance its overall sustainability, including building adaptation and decarbonization, maintaining clean and well-ventilated air remains fundamental to that goal.

It may seem like an obvious idea: design a ventilation system to remove airborne contaminants and maintain overall indoor air quality. Simple. Or, not so much. When accounting for the age of hospital buildings (many over 100 years old), system longevity, lifecycle cost and changing needs of patients — oh, and interruptions or shocks to the system from little things like COVID — the answer is a bit more complex.

Fortunately, we have some answers, and the right questions to ask to get to them.

Safe space for dangerous study

The safety of humankind isn’t in a day’s work for most of us. But at biocontainment labs around the world, teams of scientists oversee just that. There are approximately 50 Biosafety Level (BSL) 4 labs around the world, where the world’s most dangerous pathogens are studied.

Without biocontainment facilities, infectious diseases couldn’t be studied, vaccines wouldn’t be developed and public health science couldn’t advance to tackle emerging pathogens. It’s an intense job, but somebody’s got to do it.

Now, you might be wondering how these scientists stay safe while interacting with deadly diseases such as coronavirus, Zika or Ebola. Or how on Earth NASA will be able to safely study samples from Mars.

Well, you’re in luck.

We have some insights into these unique labs – including NASA’s Mars Sample Receiving Facility – and what it takes to create the world’s safest places.