Real Heroes wear Birkenstock shoes

Amory B. Lovins has been characterized as a darkhaired version of Albert Einstein wearing Birkenstock shoes. And a closer look on his profile leaves a quick impression of a well-armoured environmentalist, with no less than 29 books, a big pile of awards and founder of The Rocky Mountain Institute. For over 40 years his been fighting in the name of sustainability, which got him into Time Magazines 2009 list of the World's 100 most Influential People, in the 'Scientist and Thinkers' category. And it warms in the chest of an Architect to hear that AIA - the American Institute of Architects has awarded him as an honorary member. Long live interdisciplinarity!

"Amory Lovins had the solution to the energy problem in 1976. It's taken the rest of us 33 years to catch up" - Time Magazine, 2007

This is why it such a pleasure to hear Mr. Lovins share his many years of experience in 5 great videolectures from Stanford University as part of their Advanced Energy Efficiency theme. Each Lecture is 90 minutes, and each of the them is listed below. The lectures are also free to download as Podcast through iTunes.

1. BUILDINGS , 96 min.  (Slideshow - pdf, 5.5 mb)
2. INDUSTRY, 94 min.  (pdf, 5.9 mb)
3. TRANSPORTATION, 96 min.  (pdf, 4.1 mb)
4. IMPLIMENTATION, 95 min.  (pdf, 4.0 mb)
5. IMPLICATIONS, 90 min.  (pdf, 2.7 mb)

What architects can do to influence demand of sustainable and resource efficient buildings?

"First, make sure they practice integrated design so that big savings cost less than small or no savings, and that overcomes the main market obstacle, which is many developers’ or clients’ assumption that efficiency must be a lot more expensive. In Class A offices for example, we typically find that order-of-magnitude efficiency improvements reduce capital costs 3-5 percent while greatly improving comfort, amenity, and productivity; improving space efficiency reduces costs 5-6 percent, so it’s a very compelling business case for the client, but you can only do that if you know how to design that way.

Secondly, I would urge firms good at that to market their design services with performance-based fees, which the AIA’s legal folks told me some years ago can be accommodated in the normal contract form for services beyond the normal scope. Performance-based fees reward the design professionals for what they save, not what they spend. We tried five experiments with this and it has a very salutary effect on design. The approach I’m describing can work for any program, client, and climate, but it requires an unusual degree of coordination with the other design professionals, the client, the builders, and those who will commission, operate, and occupy the building. This typically requires an intensive trans-disciplinary charrette process.

It cannot be well-achieved by the usual more segmented approach of a sequence of designers tossing their piece over the transom to the next one. It really takes a degree of a whole system of integration that hasn’t been widely practiced since the Victorian era, before we started getting specialized and stove piped. But the rewards are great in the quality of design, the delight of clients, and the future of the world."

Source: AIA interview