By: Karishma Joshi, Landscape Designer
Out of the eight planets in our solar system, Earth is the only habitable one, due to its rich, natural ecosystems and plethora of resources. But in today’s era, these ecosystems have been threatened due to years of human interference and resource depletion. Although these effects have been enormously reflected in climate change, and it will take eons to neutralize the damages done, designing for sustainability is our way of mitigating the damage and minimizing impacts.
As landscape design and planning professionals, we often combine artistic flair, technical expertise, and project management skills to create beautiful, functional, and sustainable spaces. These landscapes, urban spaces and regional developments enhance the lives of individuals and communities. However, quite often, words like “sustainable,” “functional,” and “resilient” are so overused that sometimes I ask myself, “Are we even considering what these words entail?”
In addition to being creative designers, we also hold the baton of manifesting the concepts of sustainability into spaces we design. We have the perfect opportunity to take a step towards this good cause of being futuristic in safeguarding the planet and its rich resources that make life possible. Here’s a peek into the approach we take at RVi to implement sustainable design.
Understand what sustainability really is.
Understanding sustainability is the first step in taking any efforts to achieve it. When you think of sustainability, what comes to mind? More trees? Less waste? Recycling? Though all these thoughts are quite close to the concept, sustainability is all about how thoughtfully we make use of natural resources, and what impact we make on the natural ecosystems by using these resources. Sustainability is about finding solutions that don’t impede on the ability for future generations to have the same, if not better, quality of life as we do.
Actively practice a sustainability mindset
Ensuring a sustainable design begins with the way you think. The idea of sustainability should be integrated with design-thinking. Simple steps can start making a big difference. In RVi’s Austin office, we have been using a waste composter that takes care of the day-to-day food waste created from leftovers. We then use the compost for our gardens and patios. Another step that we have taken is to request our vendors to provide food in ecofriendly packaging during lunch-and-learns and presentations. These minor adjustments have been helping us get into the sustainable mindset that guides further decisions.
Consistently apply and evaluate sustainable strategies and solutions.
Once we start thinking on these lines, it will be easier to vouch for and apply sustainable strategies and solutions in our design projects. At RVi, while we aim to design for the future, we have also taken an effort to start measuring our project design performance, benchmarking projects that are doing well, and assessing where we can improve.
A project at its inception might have a great design approach in its initial phases and conceptual developments. But it is important to document whether the design strategies came into fruition or if we need to deviate and make any alteration. What were the factors that contributed to the changes? Most likely affordability, return of investments, project costs, and short-term monetary benefits, for example, are the meteoroids that usually fall on a schematic plan that leads to value engineering. It is essential to weigh in different parameters and strike a golden mean. Evaluation helps us to generate an evidence-based design approach. Our aim is to measure our design performance, which will help us to gather evidence in formulating design strategies. During the design development of a plaza and splash pad in Georgetown, TX, though budget constraints did not allow us to make use of permeable pavers or sophisticated green infrastructure strategies, we made a conscious effort in choosing colored concrete with high Solar Reflectance Index (SRI) values to help with reduction in urban heat island effect and provided ample shade on exposed surfaces.
Implement our Design Performance Metric
RVi has developed its design performance metric to be applied to completed and ongoing projects to help us make better informed design decisions. When this was first proposed, the big question was, why another metric? Can we not use existing calculators, performance guides, or certifications like SITES and LEED?
The simple answer is that every project cannot be weighted and evaluated with these guides and certifications due to cost implications. Even if we decided to apply these guides in day-to-day designs, these metrics are quite academic in nature and do not give a single start point. We needed a simplified version that could be applied to most of our project types, ranging from master-planned communities to parks and open spaces to hospitality and retail infrastructure. With all the challenges that we saw in applying existing literature to projects, we came up with the RVi Design Performance Metric (DPM), which focuses on environmental impact, site design and connectivity, and construction impact.
The RVi DPM helps us to document the area of habitat preserved, the area of open space conserved, vegetative cover on site, site permeability, walkways, bike ways and connectivity, use of recycled materials, and the number of trees planted. The metric is simple to measure and promises us a starting point to evaluate our design and strive to improve. We have conducted pilot experiments to document data along a broad spectrum of project including a 2,000-acre master planned community in the Hill Country of Texas, and a 5.5-acre urban infill affordable housing project in Austin. Research and observations have been helpful as we work on design guidelines for community master plans and park development.
The RVi DPM is one of our many steps toward a design for sustainability, and we are confident that the data we collect will be a good starting point to set new goals and reach new horizons as landscape design and planning professionals.
