Lawrence Group Principal, Javier Esteban, was recently interviewed for AIA Architect.
Extreme weather is happening with greater frequency and intensity. Of the 45 years the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has tracked weather and climate disasters with damages reaching or surpassing $1 billion (adjusted for inflation), the 10 years with the highest event number all fall after 2010.
For architects, attention to a site’s climatic threats is crucial. “My number one [priority] is life safety,” says Javier Esteban, AIA, principal at KWK Architects, a Lawrence Group company. “Resiliency and how a building responds to different climate conditions and emergency situations should be an integral part of design.”
The industry is standardizing these practices in more formal ways, too: The just-released LEED Version 5 includes a prerequisite requiring projects to conduct a Property Resilience Assessment (PRA) to inform sustainable and resilient building design.
Like the innovative solutions that emerged from mainstream adoption of sustainable design principles, Esteban says, resilience does not relegate architecture to “an ugly concrete box.” Three case studies illustrate the possibilities.
Continue reading this article: Designing for disaster: How architects are building a resilient future | The American Institute of Architects