Having followed Robin Guenther’s work for some time, when Fast Company named this FAIA and LEED AP one of “The World’s 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012,” I was delighted, but not surprised. The sustainable healthcare design leader at Perkins + Will is known as a strong and persistent advocate for human- and planetary health. Her crusade to increase her own knowledge about our material world gives her the authority of someone with genuine concern for her fellow creatures and long-term experience in the complex filed of health care design. Her advice to the magazine’s readers about the materials we live with every day, is dramatic in its simplicity:

“If they don’t tell you what’s in it, you probably don’t want what’s in it.”

“Consult your nose—if it stinks, don’t use it.”

“Use carbohydrate-based materials when you can.”

With this in mind, I asked Robin to talk about the Health Products Disclosure (HPD) initiative, and how it may change our material world for the better. Read her realistic, but optimistic observations on everything from HPD’s short and long term influence on the built environment, to the power of the design community in creating positive change in the marketplace, and more.

Susan S. Szenasy:  You have been an eloquent advocate for patients (in fact anyone who works or visits) in the healthcare segment for as long as I can remember. Your ammo has been finding the least toxic, most healthy products available for the interiors you design. In view of your long and inspiring campaign for healthy interiors, what does the formation of HPD signal to you?

Robin Guenther: The HPD represents a major milestone in the advocacy for safer and healthier building materials.  For the first time, we will have access to important, accurate information on the contents of building materials – “a nutrition label,” so to speak, that we can use to inform our specifications. As the HPD information is used to build Pharos, the Healthy Building Network comparative tool, it will accelerate the possibility of independent comparisons of products, another important aspect of this quest. Read more…

As head of the Health Product Declaration (HPD) Collaborative, Peter C. Syrett comes to the project with a robust track record  that includes his work at Perkins + Will. Five years ago that firm released its Precautionary List, based on nearly a decade of research of potentially toxic materials specified by the architecture and interior design professionals who shape our built environment, inside and outside. Today, Syrett is chairman of the HPD board and has recently launched a new firm, rePlaceUrban Studio, with his partner Philip Palmgren who lead the urban design practice in the New York office of Perkins + Will. “As a practice we aim to build social, ecological, and economic capital in each of our endeavors,” promises Syrett. “We strive to create a healthier urban future;” their new website will be up and running on March 18th. Here he gives some thoughtful answers to questions about what HPD is doing and how it’s going about making our built environment healthier for all who live and work in it.

Susan S. Szenasy: You were part of the group at Perkins + Will that came up with the firm’s Precautionary List of building and furnishings materials known to be dangerous to human health. Can you explain the genesis of that program and what you all hoped would happen as a result of the firm’s free sharing of the information you collected?

Peter C. Syrett: I believe the transformation of the building material market into one that supports human and ecological health will occur in three phases. The first phase is awareness; the Precautionary List is apart of this phase. The Precautionary List grew out of nine years of research on material health.  When we released it in 2009 it was intended to be an open resource on substances of concern in building materials, with the intent of provoking action in the design community.

We are now in the second phase, which is about the curation and dissemination of information. In this phase awareness continues to grow through greater access to information while the quality of the information and its specificity improves. The HPD is the main tool of this phase.

The last phase is innovation. In this phase the market begins to react to the knowledge gained in the earlier two phases. Tools like the HPD will still need to exist in this last stage because we always need a means to get concise information about a product’s content and its associated health issues. That is why the Precautionary List was so important; it got people to look at the built environment in a different way. It is like reading, once you learn to read you can’t look at a word and not read it. My hope is that designers, owners, builders, now look at a material and can’t help think what is in it because of the Precautionary List.

SSS: Now you are chairman of the HPD Board (and working at a new firm). Can you talk about your plans in going forward with HPD and what your goals are? Is there a timeline for action?

PCS: Last fall at GreenBuild we released the first version of the HPD.  Until then all our efforts were focused upon creating the HPD and gathering a core group of earlier supporters and enlightened manufacturers for the pilot program. Now that HPD Standard is out we need to quickly build the organizational structure to increase the number of HPDs.  We see this as a multi-pronged effort. Foremost, we must increase demand for HPDs.  Fortunately, this is already happening.  Just last week Cannon Design sent out a letter to manufacturers requesting HPDs “for products used in our buildings be publicly provided” and by January 1, 2015,  “only products with product content transparency will be allowed in our library and selected for inclusion on projects.” We will work hard to make sure that Cannon Design’s insistence on HPDs becomes the norm in the building industry.

We are also setting up a universal approach for the adoption by rating systems, certifying organizations, purchasing groups, and other parties that wish to use the HPDs as a disclosure standard. This is a complex effort, but is essential to making HPDs a part of standard practice.

Most importantly, we are looking at ways to help manufacturers to provide HPDs for their products. Creating a HPD, even for the most basic product, takes a huge amount of effort.  Partnering with the manufacturing community is essential for the success of the HPD. To that end, we will be reaching out to members of the manufacturing community that have NOT embraced the use of HPDs to get their input on what we need to do to make the HPD work for them.   This will allow us to better refine the HPD for its next update.

Ultimately, we hope that use of HPDs exponentially increases in the next few years. We are going to do everything possible to make this a reality. Read more…

In my previous blog, The Built Environment v 3.0, I observed how the profession of architecture is undergoing a fundamental transformation. The last 100 years of increasing specialization, which has disempowered practitioners and dwindled our scope of influence, has run its course. We are now in a time of reversal, thanks to digital ubiquity, a generation raised in it, and a profusion of processing power harnessed by tools that can drive exploration, parametric analysis, and robotics.

Radical new tools are almost always followed by tectonic shifts in thinking. So it follows that entrenched behaviors perpetuate until someone unlocks new ideas that, in the right circumstances, catch the popular imagination and ultimately seed new ground that creates a “new normal”. This, to me, describes what is happening in architecture today. We are living in a time of great opportunity for our profession, and we need to act accordingly.

In late 2010, I asked my partners for permission to craft the agenda for one of our semi-annual, firm-wide gatherings of design leaders. This became the Perkins+Will Innovation Summit, designed to explore ways of amplifying our creative thought leadership in a global context by building our awareness of people in linked businesses, those who have pioneered new paths in a shifting landscape of practice. Our inspiring speakers set the tone for our explorations:

Read more…

Last Spring I enrolled in a sustainable construction development class thinking it would be nice to know a thing or two about healthy building material alternatives. Despite the section of my bookcase now dedicated to green manuals and alternative materials catalogs, I have learned an important lesson that most building professionals, concerned with health and sustainability, have learned before me: there is no such thing as “a thing or two.” It’s more like a few thousand things, most of them with crazy scientific names ending with “-ene” or “-ide.” You can spend hours just figuring out what type of paint to invest in (or, should that be wallpaper instead?) to minimize the VOCs used, and that’s even before the dreaded “egg shell white, or linen white?” debate.

Even for design professionals with some experience in building healthy, the challenge can seem like a time consuming labyrinth of dictionary definitions and a frustrating exercise in weighing lesser evils.

For most of us, including those just beginning our professional lives, lessons on sustainability thinking can culminate in a confusing upward climb towards a healthy environment. But, thanks to Perkins + Will’s “Precautionary List”, understanding chemical compositions in the design world has become easier. The list was created by the architecture firm, with the understanding that it is up to every individual to apply the precautionary principle when it comes to the health of humans, other living beings, and the environment. Even if there’s only a chance of a material containing something harmful, why use it? Read more…