Category: Climate Action

Bio-based Building: an introduction with HOK SF’s Sustainability Experts

Sustainability is so rich. Not only has her partnership with the building industry led to earth-friendly advances in design products. But as we get to know her better, we realize the wealth of her contributions toward design thinking. Last month, HOK SF’s sustainable team members helped Climate Crawlers understand the types and applications of bio building. The well-attended January 2025 Climate Crawl featured HOK’s Katie Bowman, Ritika Dhamija, and Brian Jenchek. The team described and explored sustainable design through various projects and a variety of scales. The discussion began with the “Battle of the Bios,” an exploration of integrating life into design. The team then shared examples of how these principles can be applied in practice.

The Bios

There are several types of “Bio” design, each with a slightly different focus. Since every program is different, this diversity of approaches provides sustainable-minded designers with a robust toolbox. What are the bios and how do they differ?

Bioclimatic design creates architecture that responds to the environment’s regional climate. For example, hot climates can reduce interior heat with thicker walls and smaller windows, and snowy locales do better with steep-pitched roofs.

Biomorphic design directly incorporates forms from nature, for example honeycomb-inspired cabinet handles.

Biophilic design brings Nature into the space through elements like natural light, views, and even sounds. In accordance with Nature, Katie noted that humans innately prefer open environments with scattered trees and water features, reminiscent of the savannah. Regenerative interiors were presented as improving air quality using plants and specific materials like mushroom-based mycelium. Also employed in biophilia are Natural Analogues, such as natural forms and patterns or minimally processed materials.

Biomaterials, such as Neri Oxman’s silkworm bubble at MIT, combine naturally occurring phenomena (such as the upward spinning motion of silkworms and direction, duration, and intensity of heat) with technology (such as robotics) to create new structures or materials.

Biomimicry is defined design that learns from nature’s systems. The Eastgate Center in Zimbabweemulates the design of ant hill to create 100% passive cooling in a country only 1313 miles from the equator.

Biometrics, the analysis of human behavior in and physical response to designed spaces, uses measurement devices like wearables as a valuable tool for input.

Bringing Bio to Life

The HOK team shared three projects. Each program’s specifics made it a perfect partner to its bio companion.

The first project shared by HOK SF was AstraZeneca in South San Francisco, which aimed to create a biophilic life science environment despite limited access to outdoor space. The sustainable design drew from local plants, and incorporated DNA-inspired motifs to connect the interior to its surroundings. This design included integrating literal nature through plants, natural analogs via wood, and open stairwells filled with light and abstracted botanical patterns inspired by plant ingredients in AstraZeneca products.

Moving to a larger scale, the Stanford Center for Academic Medicine (Stanford CAM) aimed to integrate nature into a scientific space using biomimicry principles. Inspired by the coast live oak’s cooling canopy, the design sought to consolidate the campus with collaborative spaces connected to the outdoors. The plan incorporated passive ventilation and seasonal “summer, spring, and winter gardens” to provide accessible outdoor workspaces throughout the year. Project sustainability goals included improvements to well-being, water quality, soil, climate, air quality and surrounding biodiversity compared to a standard campus environment.

Finally, the Moffett Field/Berkeley Space Center project was shared as an example of the largest scale sustainable design, focused on creating an innovation district at the NASA Ames site with UC Berkeley as an anchor tenant. This initiative seeks to modernize NASA’s research capabilities. The project intends to attract companies in the autonomous vehicle and aerospace sectors by offering unique research facilities and federal airspace. A key strategy involves establishing flexible research cores, and specialized equipment to encourage collaboration among scientists, researchers, and entrepreneurs. Because the future of science is ever evolving, building design instead centers on user experience and utilizes passive solar, wind flow, view connectivity and biodiversity. Specific tree species which naturally and safely respirate toxins were chosen to remediate the soil.

A Presentation on the Success and Challenges of Tally and EC3 – an Interior Material Carbon Calculator

RMW’s objective for every interior project is to consider the health and wellness of our clients and most importantly the impact we have on the planet when building these beautiful interior spaces. Every project we strive to learn from our past projects and build in a more efficient climate conscious way. It is an arduous task to calculate and quantify our climate impact for each project, completely on our own.

Through much trial and error, our team found Tally, a carbon calculator tool. This tool can use our project information from Revit and give us a rough measurement of our climate impact. Tally is not a perfect tool and comes with its own challenges. We found it is a great tool for comparing design options in the beginning phases of a project. To really delve into specific interior materials, we found we needed to combine the use of Tally with EC3. EC3 is another program that connects with Tally and allows us to take the design to a DD level and compare specific products and their climate impact. We are currently working with a repeat client on a new interior buildout. With the use of Tally and EC3, we can compare our past projects with this new one. We can compare the specific materials used in the past projects with the new materials we want to use. This allows us to see if we improved our climate impact and how we can reduce even more. We hope to continue using these tools to evaluate our design and material choices throughout the design process for every project.

Early Phase Integrated Carbon (EPIC)

EHDD’s approach to sustainability has evolved over the firm’s 75-year history, from an early emphasis on “appropriate design” to designing some of the first net zero projects to our current focus on climate positive design.  Since we launched the open access Early Phase Integrated Carbon (EPIC) assessment last summer, we’ve also been thinking beyond our own practice. Now, our low-carbon design tools are used by over 1,800 architects, engineers, real estate professionals, and designers across the country.

Our recent work has focused on giving interior designers a greater opportunity to participate in climate action. Opt.In (a tool to opt in to climate action by optimizing interiors) will offer designers a hot spot map to understand and lower the carbon emissions related to their design by exploring the effects of reuse, material efficiency, and product selection. Currently under development, we expect an open access version of Opt.In to be released sometime in 2023.