Resilient Design: Not as mainstream as we’d like

As part of its monthly tracking how the architectural firms are faring, in its latest survey the American Institute of Architects queried members about their resilient design practices.

Since “resilient design” is a concept that’s not yet the kind of household word that “sustainability” has become, we’re encouraged at the number of architecture shops that report having done projects that involved resilient design (about a quarter of them) — but at the same time, the numbers indicate that resilient design has a ways to go before it is a mainstream practice in the building trade — since fewer than one out of five firms think that 25% or more of their projects will entail resilient design five years from now. Institutional firms were reported as most likely to be doing resilient design.

Here’s the key portion of the AIA’s report dealing with resilient design:

This month’s special practice question asked survey panelists about their firm’s work on projects with characteristics of resilient design, defined as “using a holistic approach that includes (but is not limited to) design that improves the project’s ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events.” Just over one quarter of responding firms (25.7%) indicated that they have worked on projects with characteristics of resilient design over the past five years, although that share approached one third of firms (31.4%) for those with an institutional specialization.

Responding firms indicate that the client types most likely to have undertaken, or inquired about, projects with characteristics of resilient design were single-family residential, followed by K-12 education. Government/civic clients (e.g. post offices, federal office buildings), office, and healthcare clients were also cited frequently.

When asked to estimate the share of projects at their firm with characteristics of resilient design five years in the future, nearly one third of firms (32.1%) anticipated that they would account for less than 1% of firm projects, by dollar volume. Fewer than one in five firms (18.3%) expect that these projects will account for 25% or more of their firm’s projects in five years.

Image: Resilient House by Sustainable.TO Architects

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One thought on “Resilient Design: Not as mainstream as we’d like”

Renee Azerbegi says:

November 2, 2014 at 4:22 pm

A lot of firms say they are using resilient design principles, but it would help if AIA developed a standard on what resilient design really is, how to apply these principles in a meaning full way. Otherwise lots of architects and engineers are using the term without much definition around it, kind of like the term green building before LEED helped to establish a framework around what defines a green building. The building industry needs a standard around resilient design. Maybe there is already something out there?

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David W. Orr, Ph.D

David W. Orr is Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies & Politics, Emeritus. He also served as “Counselor to the President” of Oberlin College for ten years. He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change and the Long Emergency (Yale, 2016) and Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009) and co-editor of three others. He has authored over 220 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications. In the past twenty-five years he has served as a board member or adviser to ten foundations and on the Boards of many organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute, Bioneers, and the Aldo Leopold Foundation.

He is currently a Trustee of the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, Children and Nature Network, and the WorldWatch Institute. He has been awarded nine honorary degrees and a dozen other awards including a Lyndhurst Prize, a National Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, leadership awards from the U.S. Green Building Council (2014) and from Second Nature (2012), and a lifetime achievement award from Green Energy Ohio and the North American Association for Environmental Education. He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He headed the effort to design, fund, and build the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building of the past thirty years,” as “one of thirty milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy, and as one of “52 game-changing buildings of the past 170 years” by the editors of Building Design +Construction in January, 2016. He was instrumental in the design and funding of the Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center. He is the founder of the Oberlin Project and a founder of the journal Solutions. His current work is on the state of American democracy.