Passing the Torch to New Leaders

Episode Transcript

Terry Phelan: Welcome to the Living Shelter podcast, where we explore ways to create healthy, energy-efficient, and joyful places to live. I’m your host, Terry Phelan, a Pacific Northwest native, and an architect with over 30 years experience designing with a focus on sustainable options. I’m delighted to be presenting this podcast series as the Director of Sustainable Practice at Board & Vellum, an integrated design firm based in Seattle. Living Shelter’s goal is to help you expand your green knowledge toolkit, so together we can help build a resilient future that includes comfortable and sustainable places for everyone to live.

Right now, you are tuning into our final episode. Wow, it still feels a bit strange to say it out loud! As I mentioned in our previous episode, I will be retiring at the end of the year, and with that, so will the Living Shelter podcast.

For this final, two-episode season, I am joined in the studio by Jeff Pelletier, Founder and Managing Principal of Board & Vellum. In Episode 1, we discussed the evolution of sustainable practices in the architecture and design industry over the course of my 30+ year career. Today, we’re going to talk about where we see it going next, in particular, through the lens of Board & Vellum.

Hi Jeff, thank you for joining me again.

Jeff Pelletier: Hi, Terry, good to see you!

Terry Phelan: If you missed last week’s episode, of course, we hope you’ll go back and listen. But to reiterate, our approach to these two episodes is to share hosting duties in a sense. In the first episode Jeff was the “asker” of questions, letting me take a turn at being the guest for a change. But in this episode, I am back to my usual hosting duties: I’ll ask the questions, and we’ll get to hear a lot from Jeff about where he envisions Board & Vellum going from here in terms of sustainable practice, as I pass the torch and move on to new experiences in my retirement.

Jeff Pelletier: Congratulations, by the way. I know we digress a little by bringing this up, but it’s such a big event, I feel like I have to say a little something. At the very least, a big thank you for all you have shared with us in your time here at Board & Vellum, and a big “cheers” for all the exciting new things to come for you! It’s been just wonderful having you here.

Terry Phelan: Well, thanks. It’s been such an honor and blessing to be here. This is the first time I’ve worked for somebody else for over 30 years, and I am very impressed with the way this firm is run and the things that you’ve been able to do. I’ve been filled with emotions recently, you know, excited and a bit sad, and you know it’s all bittersweet. But, I am so inspired by what is new, and as it gets closer and closer, I’m starting to get more of that feeling of anticipation for the exciting and inspiring new journeys and challenges I’ll take on in my next chapter, starting with a big trip in January, which we don’t need to go into here, but it’s like, that’s where my mind is.

Jeff Pelletier: Oh, that’s so awesome. And, I remember when we met up, we talked about joining forces, and one of the things was that I was so excited by your goal to take Living Shelter and have it be sustainable and have it be in a way like, when we talk about a building, we talk about it lasting for a long time, and you wanted to make sure what you’ve built over so many years, keeps going. We’re excited to help with that.

Terry Phelan: So let’s remind our listeners — besides these two episodes, Season 2 of the Living Shelter Podcast also has two companion blog posts, which are now published to the B&V Blog at boardandvellum.com/blog.

One of my favorite insights from the blog posts was this idea that the term “sustainable design” might be losing its impact, and the consideration of updating the term to “responsible design.” What do you think about that, Jeff?

Jeff Pelletier: I think it’s a really interesting idea. “It’s just semantics,”some people will say, but how we message things is really impactful and inextricable from the success or failure of ideas. Semantics, frankly, do matter. If the term “sustainable” is losing some of its oomph, then it’s not helping us. The one thing I do worry about, though, and I think we should be careful with, is that some people might interpret the term “responsible design” to imply that if they aren’t making those choices, they are being irresponsible. Whether or not that is actually true, we don’t need to lean on shaming people to encourage choices that will help both them and others in the short and long term.

Terry Phelan: That’s a great point. We don’t want to shame anyone. And, it’s really a perfect segue into the second blog post, “The Tradeoffs” — it’s not an all or nothing game. We can’t let perfection get in the way of progress!

Jeff Pelletier: Aw, truth, truth. That is one of the most important things to remember with all of this. This is something I have seen time and again in my years working as an architect. People know they want to have a sustainable (or responsible) project. They really, often times, passionately, want to do the right thing, to set an example… but then it can be so defeating when you’re getting to the details of a project, you’re invested, you’re designing, you’re getting into the real, reality of it all, and that dream starts to be challenged by the nuances of not just what things cost, but how all the pieces have to come together.

There are so many other things that matter to the story when you are designing. Say it’s a home you’re remodeling. Maybe you’ve got great family memories in the living room space and you can’t bear to tear it down, but that means you’ve got these old antique windows and thin walls there that are super drafty, but they have a beautiful plaster finish on the interior. At first glance, sure, that’s a pretty big issue when it comes to sustainability. But it’s not the whole picture.

Putting family memories aside for a moment (and, you know, not lightly; they are so important to any project, these are emotional processes), but you have to remember the idea of the tradeoffs. By not tearing down that section of the house you are not sending all that material to the landfill. By not building it new, you are not taking on all the impacts of all of those new materials, in manufacturing and in transport, in construction waste and labor, et cetera.

Once you decide that you are keeping it — which is in itself a sustainable option — there are other paths forward that can help make it just a little bit better from the perspective of having it be sustainable. Maybe it’s that we’re designing a way to add extra insulation to the walls from the exterior. Maybe we’re workshopping with some of the craftspeople on the job to figure out a way to seal up some of those air leaks in the windows. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than it was, and it is progress. It’s responsible.

Terry Phelan: Exactly. Sometimes the most sustainable building is one you are reusing.

Jeff Pelletier: Yes, I say this all the time. And, as we talked about in that blog post, we are all about meeting people where they are. You come to us and you want a super deep green, passive house with all the fixings? You got it, I’m here for you. No problem, happy to help. You come to us and you have some ideas but mostly you want to do the best you can within the parameters you have? Also, no problem. We want to know what is really important to you. For some clients, say, single-family ones, it might be that their biggest concern is indoor air quality and making sure the materials in their home aren’t actually causing them long-term harm. It’s frankly about health and wellness in that case. Or, for someone else it might be about the cost of energy and they want to be able to heat and cool their home effortlessly year-round without breaking the bank.

Terry Phelan: Yeah.

Jeff Pelletier: Not to forget, too — we have commercial, multifamily, and civic clients as well. All those groups have their own motivators for the choices they make in terms of being sustainable, or responsible, or resilient. Resilience is another great word to describe it. When you are investing into the design and development of a property, it’s quite often in your own best interest to make it resilient.

Terry Phelan: Yeah, I love the word resilience a lot. So much changes, so fast in our world. I mean, looking back over my career, sometimes it felt like things were moving at a snail’s pace. But even when that was true at times, we have made such immense progress now, and as new technologies emerge and evolve, the pace at which things are changing is escalating. Resilience also means being able to not just survive but also thrive as things change around us, like more intense weather events, fire seasons and sea levels rising. So, being able to be resilient, be adaptable, is really essential.

In fact, there is so much happening and evolving, that it really highlights how there is so much value in having an architect to help sort through all the options. You know we’re trained in, and excel at, zooming in and out between the big picture and small details, until it all meshes in balance.

Jeff Pelletier: Exactly. We meet you where you are, and we leverage the design process and the whole experience of our team to iterate and collaborate to hone in on the right balance for each project. There really is no one-size-fits-all.

Terry Phelan: Could you help people understand how we as professionals keep up with the ever-evolving rules and regulations?

Jeff Pelletier: Well, we’re exhausted. That’s the first thing.

Jeff Pelletier: As architects and designers, we never stop learning. It’s baked into our license. And I don’t mean that in the trite way it’s sometimes said. Quite literally — to maintain our licenses to practice, we are constantly learning new things, incorporating them into our practice. From new codes, new materials, new best practices, there is a constant evolution of new developments that help us continue to move the needle of not only sustainable practice, but of design as a whole.

Terry Phelan: You know, I recently read in the New York Times, “Climate change is the ultimate long-term problem in a world consumed by short-term crises.”

Jeff Pelletier: I read that, too, and that quote is so on point. Climate change is a long-term problem, yes. And it’s here.

Terry Phelan: Yeah.

Jeff Pelletier: But, design is a long-term solution. Design and designing spaces, buildings, landscapes, what-have-you, design itself is a practice that is inextricable from the long-term. Designing for the short-term is short-sighted… bad design, even. I don’t (entirely) mean to toot our own horns as architects, but we’re uniquely trained to excel at solving complicated, long term problems. It’s just simply what we do. We see the big picture and we obsess over the details. You need an architect in your camp to solve the really tough issues we face.

Terry Phelan: You can find those two blog posts, “The New Normal” and “The Tradeoffs,” published to the B&V Blog, and we’ll provide direct links to them from the Living Shelter podcast episodes pages on the Board & Vellum website, as well. For those of you listening, find us at boardandvellum.com/podcasts, and the B&V Blog at boardandvellum.com/blog.

Terry Phelan: You’re listening to the Living Shelter podcast. I’m your host, Terry Phelan, and I’m joined in the studio by Jeff Pelletier, Founder and Managing Principal of Board & Vellum, an architecture and design firm in Seattle. Board & Vellum’s multidisciplinary teams design projects for clients in the single-family, multifamily, commercial, and civic sectors.

Jeff, we’ve talked a little now, both here and in the companion blog posts, about Board & Vellum’s practice around sustainable — or responsible — design. How do your values, personally, shape the vision of the firm?

Jeff Pelletier: That’a question I think about frequently. I’ll start with the fact that I always try to say to my kids and anyone, to just be a good person. We all know what that means. And it means different things to different people, but be a good person.

Terry Phelan: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Pelletier: And so when I started B&V, I wasn’t interested in a singular vision from one architect… that architect, I guess, being me. I knew that I loved to collaborate and that we could do better design as a group. And I really believed in the power of collaboration as a goal. It helped shape in me a value of being a really good neighbor. Which, I think, is a term I come back to a lot. You know, if your neighbor needs something, you go over and you help them out. And part of being a really good neighbor, frankly, is helping to take care of the world we live in. It’s that simple. And really when I think about sustainability, and how we’re shaping the next chapter of Board & Vellum, it’s about being a good neighbor.

Terry Phelan: I love that. How about getting into more specifics: the AIA 2030 Commitment? For those of you that are unfamiliar, the AIA 2030 Commitment is a collective of architecture, engineering, and construction firms that have pledged to take part in the Architecture 2030 Challenge, which aims for net zero emissions in all new buildings and major renovations by the year 2030. Board & Vellum signed onto the pledge, and more and more design firms are signing on, as well. So, what can you share with us, Jeff, about the efforts Board & Vellum is taking to approach this challenge?

Jeff Pelletier: Well, I’ll say that I was a little, um, nervous for this question!

Jeff Pelletier: If you recall, when this was happening, there was a lot internal discussions about it.

Terry Phelan: Yeah.

Jeff Pelletier: One of my other values is, Do what you say you’re going to do. And the 2030 Challenge is a big challenge.

Terry Phelan: It’s huge.

Jeff Pelletier: There’s a lot of big stuff in there, and frankly, I remember thinking, “How are we going to do this? How can we, as a firm of our size, really commit to this? There are bigger firms out there with a lot of resources, and we’re not that.”

However, what I like about the pledge is that it is an organized plan to take forward-thinking steps. I’m a big proponent of staying organized and planning things out. Anyone who works here knows my extreme love of Excel spreadsheets, and writing strategic plans. Really, it’s true, I read book like that all the time. But, again, I also say all that time that we should do the things we say we are going to do. And so when I was looking through the 2030 Challenge, rather, the commitment, and it was a tough sell for me initially, frankly, because I thought, “I’m not sure we can do all this.” I mean these are some big asks. How do we convince all of our clients to do these things? What if they say no and we’re out of business and people lose their jobs? How sustainable is that?

We had so many meetings, Terry, as you recall, around this and we took long time to figure out how do we get our head wrapped around this and these commitments. In the end, through, what really finally made it click in my head was the same advice we’re giving to our clients. You know, you have to move forward. And that the 2030 Commitment is an aspirational goal, an aspirational challenge to move ahead, and if we just plan on what we knew we could do, it’s likely we wouldn’t make much progress. And that’s not what we do as architects and as leaders.

So we, internally, have been re-crafting how we communicate with our clients around sustainability and we’ve been taking a detailed and hard look at our own internal processes, as well. On top of that, we’ve been big in advocacy. We know that so many of the changes that happen in terms of projects are because of codes. If you look at a code-compliant project right now, it is so much more sustainable that probably a sustainably-designed project 20 years ago. And so, code is a really big piece of this and we are big advocates for changing it.

Terry Phelan: It’s been really inspiring for me to see these commitments made here at Board & Vellum before I retire. I mean, Living Shelter Architects had the mindset that this was the right thing to do, but we did not have the resources to make it happen. And, here, those resources, while you say we’re not a big firm, you’re a big firm in my eyes. Much bigger than I ever had goals of becoming, and so I am so proud of what has happened since I’ve joined here and the passion and the knowing that there are so many great people here on the team to carry it forward.

Jeff Pelletier: You’ve really helped elevate that conversation. One of the important pieces to me, we talked about this too, because we made the choice to do projects that were not sustainable only. And I think part of our conversation, which was different than how Living Shelter was formed, and your own passion, was that people were going to do projects regardless. And so how do we make those projects more sustainable. ‘Cause they’re gonna happen anyway.

Terry Phelan: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Pelletier: And so, it’s been wonderful to partner with you so you can elevate what we do. You can change the conversation around, pushing us more, and getting our really talented team to find ways that we can elevate the game. Because it is… it’s about a million small steps, not just one big one. I think that’s really, really key.

And this firm is bigger than one person or one vision, it’s a whole team. You’ve shared so much of your experience and guidance with us these last two years. You’ve mentored the team. And that is one of the things that is so important in all of this — mentorship, and sharing or passing down the knowledge so this effort keeps going, makes it really sustainable actually.

Terry Phelan: Yeah, yeah. We’ve talked a little about where Board & Vellum is today, and Jeff, your commitment to sustainability, and some of the commitments that have been made here in the last couple of years. I’m curious, if you could dream, what the design community can do over, say, the next 50 years, where do you see things going? What do you think is possible?

Jeff Pelletier: I have a couple thoughts on that one. One of the biggest pieces is, we talked the last episode about sustainability starting in the ‘60s really, and in the ‘70s, around the sense of, sort of, a counterculture movement to get back to the earth. And it was not quite a fringe movement, but it wasn’t mainstream.

Terry Phelan: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Pelletier: And it’s been wonderful to see if move to the mainstream. And, obviously, what’s happening with climate change right now, it’s very visible, that’s going to bring it to the forefront. But what’s been happening with this, as it moves to the mainstream, people don’t want to be in a dark place all the time, and they want hope. And we’re suddenly seeing the effects of technological change catch up, and we can do such exciting things with solar panels. The cost of them has decreased so exponentially that they are, in many cases, cheaper ways to create energy than other sources that already exist. And so they become not just a sustainable choice, but the right choice, the logical choice to do when you actually want energy. So there’s so many great things that are happening, and the conversation around how to be sustainable is no longer fringe, it’s, “Of course I’m going to do this, this is a a great thing to do.” And so we a foundation here, which is a far more hospitable place to practice what we practice. So that’s one piece.

Terry Phelan: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Pelletier: The second piece — I’m going to drop this kind of buzz word that I’ve been really obsessed with recently — is this idea of “solar punk.”

Jeff Pelletier: You know what I’m talking about. You should all google it, it’s really cool. It’s… I’m a nerd, and so it’s definitely in that, sort of, nerd realm. And I’m not sure if we’re going to have giant floating turbines around, or whatnot, but solar punk, essentially, is this sense of a hopeful future where we are living sustainably, and not with some crazy, science fiction stuff, but with real stuff that’s happening now, and is continuing to evolve. And if you look at any renderings of big cities right now, or new towers, they’re dripping with vegetation. We’re seeing super efficient buildings happen and that they’re desirable, that’s where people want to live. And so, whether it’s a multifamily project we’re designing, or it’s civic, or a house certainly, there’s a sense that doing a sustainable project is a hopeful embrace of the future. That things are not going to be so horrible, that climate is going to change, but it’s going to be livable. We will allow ourselves to live in it, and we can thrive there. It’s going to require some innovation, certainly, it’s going to require different technologies around building science. It’s going to require an advancement in understanding of how buildings work. But we’ve made so much progress on that. Even my experience with passive house, we can do so much more now, with modeling a building, understanding where the dew point is, how to make sure we don’t have rotting buildings anymore.

Terry Phelan: Yeah. The black mold of the 1990s!

Jeff Pelletier: Ugh, that was so awful and that’s just not a thing anymore with a capable builder. Buildings are getting better. Massachusetts has a new program around Passive House multifamily buildings, and we’ve seen an exponential increase in the number of buildings being built. And now we’re gonna have not just more great Passive House buildings, where people get to experience clear air, comfortable temperatures… we’re going to have a lot of builders who know how to build really good buildings well.

Terry Phelan: Yeah.

Jeff Pelletier: And they’re gonna tell their clients that this is the best thing to do. And it’s going to spread. And so we’re at this cusp of embracing what’s happening. Climate change is real. We’re gonna have smoke, we’re gonna have heat. But, we’re gonna have really great air filtration systems that allow us to breathe in our homes. We’re going to have really well insulated homes that keep us comfortable. And so there’s this sense of, yeah, some stuff is going to happen, but we are talented, we are skilled, and we are joyful about the future, and that gets me excited.

Terry Phelan: Well that’s a great place, especially, to be able to reflect on that, with young people because I don’t have children myself, but talking to people with kids, they kids have a hard time thinking about what their life might be like. And if can advance the positive, optimistic thoughts, it really opens up the possibility for young people to find a way to get there.

Jeff Pelletier: An interesting thing you bring up with kids… when we had children — we made a very conscious choice to have children — and it had been part of the conversation at the time, do you want to bring kids into this world, it’s going to be so dark. And for us, it was, and, to be fair, I am a hopeful person, I’ve always, sort of, been hopeful. But I wanted to bring kids into the world that we’re going to help change the world. That, you know, I think I have pretty good values, and, you know, the world needs more people like me.

Jeff Pelletier: Which is maybe the most “Jeff” thing I’ve ever said! But, um, I don’t mean that in a conceited way, it’s that we should be hopeful, we should look ahead and create a world that is an awesome place to be.

Terry Phelan: Mmm-hmm. You know, the term “solar punk” reminds me of book that I need to re-read because I‘m forgetting the details about it, but Ecotopia. It’s a very good jumping off point for the solar punk mindset.

Jeff Pelletier: It really is. It’s a hopeful time right now, in this world right now, if you can believe it. If you look at the great things happening right now, it’s going to encourage all of you, and I highly recommend it.

Terry Phelan: Well, it has been my pleasure, and as I said, I’m very proud to have been able to contribute and be part of all this.

Jeff Pelletier: I cannot thank you enough.

Terry Phelan: Thank you, Jeff, for joining me today to send off the Living Shelter podcast, and a big thank you for all you do here at Board & Vellum.

Jeff Pelletier: It’s been my absolute pleasure. And thank you for kicking me in the butt all along and elevating what we do here. It’s so appreciated.

Terry Phelan: And thank you also to everyone listening in, it has been a pleasure and an honor to have you all here as listeners on this journey with me.

The Living Shelter podcast is a project of Board & Vellum, a multidisciplinary design firm practicing architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture for residential, commercial and civic projects.

From our studio in Seattle, I’m your host Terry Phelan, signing off. Take care everybody!