ROSSETTI Architecture Shares On its Sustainability Practices
SBN Detroit spoke with Paulina Reyes, a registered architect, and designer at ROSSETTI who leads the ROSSETTI Sustainability Lab. In addition to her current role at ROSSETTI, Reyes possesses a dedicated background in design-based research, community outreach, and the development of pedagogical efforts connecting cultural programming with the tools of architecture and urbanism. She acted as Project Designer-Manager for Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, leading architectural and urban projects across the US-Mexico border, including fieldwork, and cross-border internship programming. Sustainability has remained a focus of her work as a previous Design Fellow with the University of Michigan and Fulbright recipient in which she developed research on water sustainability in the context of self-governance and low-income public housing in Mexico City. The ROSSETTI Sustainability Action Plan calls for embracing and integrating sustainability practices in every facet of their work, believing that prioritizing sustainability is not just a mantra; it offers a vision forward in a rapidly changing world as a means to educate, innovate, and push their work farther than ever before. Q: Please share the sustainability practices and work ROSSETTI has in place. A: Sustainability has been a feature of our work for some time. We have several past LEED projects that demonstrate the impact of sustainable design. Louis Armstrong Stadium, for example, is the world’s first naturally ventilated stadium, certified as LEED Silver, and it also won the AIA Detroit Building Award with recognition for sustainability. The UCLA Health Training Center, the training facility for the Los Angeles Lakers, achieved LEED Platinum through innovative use of solar mitigation strategies, including vertical shading that doubles as signage and a PV solar array that reduces energy consumption by 30%. The particular inflection of sustainability through sports work is an interesting one, as sports projects by nature are large civic projects that reach huge numbers of people, and hinge specifically on supporting the performance of elite athletes, their health, and well-being. At ROSSETTI, we are interested in furthering this connection with sports and sustainability in addition to our work at large. Q: What are your short-term and long-term goals when it comes to sustainability? A: One short-term goal is to simply shift awareness and culture around environmental impact. Even just being conversant in the basic tenets of sustainability can help designers and clients alike think differently about our approach and how we define value for a project. Like many others, we have long-term goals to address and reduce emissions in a big way. Most of our clients these days have ambitious goals and mission statements around reducing or even eliminating emissions within the next few decades. Given that this is easily within the lifespan of our projects, this requires that we address emissions (both operational and embodied) as drivers in our design process from the beginning. GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions are the primary source of global climate change and present an easily quantifiable metric for benchmarking and evaluating success. I would like to see ROSSETTI’s projects take on the challenge of benchmarking, measuring, and reducing emissions in all of our projects moving forward. Q: What is the Sustainability Lab? A: Initially launched in March 2021, the ROSSETTI Sustainability Lab is represented by an interdisciplinary array of staff members from across our office, from design to marketing to project management. We meet on a biweekly basis to discuss ongoing initiatives, and outreach to others in the field. A core group of our members works on advancing various sustainability efforts in the office. We also have a lively Zoom group chat! Q: How do your sustainability practices come into play when choosing vendors? A: We prefer to work with vendors that prioritize sustainability in their products. We work with reps like Susan Hall (Eco Surroundings) who only represent sustainable materials like Plyboo, Durat, Baux, DuraPalm, and more. Luckily, a lot of industries, particularly for interior finishes like carpet or porcelain tile are already headed in that direction. We are consistently meeting with vendors to see what’s new and identify projects that can support our client’s sustainability goals, including LEED certification. Q: What about material choices? A: As a principle, we look to specify materials that are responsible, durable, and locally sourced. Some examples include Interface Carpet, Unika Vaev (acoustic materials), and Fireclay, which is made in the USA with zero waste and mindful manufacturing. We also work with Haworth, who does a lot of recycling/reuse of material and recently earned zero waste to landfill status and just launched a more rapidly biodegradable textile. We try to avoid materials that off-gas or contain harmful chemicals like VOCs (volatile organic compounds), including epoxy or vinyl. Specifying more sustainable materials can also support other goals for clients, for example, more durable finishes or furniture that don’t need replacement as often, or local materials which reduce lead time. Q: Beyond vendors and material choices – what else do you look at? A: When it comes to materials, whether interior finishes or building structure, embodied carbon is also an extremely important metric and one which we are looking more into. There currently exist many avenues for measuring embodied carbon, software like EC3 or Tally, or environmental product declarations (EPDs) for specific products or industries. Beyond that, water use, energy use, and waste production are also key metrics for evaluating the sustainability of our projects. Q: ROSSETTI believes that sustainability is key to client success – please elaborate. A: Sustainability, beyond being a social imperative, is quite simply put, good for business. Sustainable buildings offer a host of financial benefits to clients: operational savings, higher sale or rental value, lower asset risk, and insurance premiums. To give an example, the PV solar array installed on the LEED Platinum Los Angeles Lakers practice facility not only offsets 12.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide annually but saves the Lakers $38,000 a year in operational costs. There is also obviously a broader value proposition to sustainability that includes human health and well-being, community value, and experiential opportunities to
