Setting our Sustainability Vision
Author
Juliette Grummon-Beale
Scott Edwards Architecture is excited to announce that we just completed our firm’s 2023 Sustainability Visioning. The intent of this process was to set clear direction for holistically integrating sustainability into each of our projects in a way that is impactful and inspirational for our project teams and clients. The outcome of the visioning process is foundational to how SEA will approach design—we defined our firm’s sustainability core values, developed a series of guiding principles, and set goals for the next three years.
At the heart of our core values is commitment—we are dedicated to being consistent, accountable, honest, and transparent to our firm’s vision of a “future in which design responds to people, centers communities, supports the surrounding environment, and respects the planet.” To this end, this fall we are piloting a sustainability workflow that will eventually be implemented for all SEA projects. The workflow includes a goal setting workshop followed by benchmarking, advocating for, and tracking key sustainability metrics throughout design, an intuitive addition to the collaborative way we approach our work. Alongside commitment, our other identified core values include holistic, integrated, community, approachable, equity, and learning.
The guiding principles we developed during visioning coherently represent these core values and provide direction for decision-making. One of our guiding principles, “Meet and Lead,” enlists teams to collaboratively partner with our clients to understand their values and goals. From this foundation, we then lead by bringing tailored sustainability recommendations to our clients that guide projects toward a more regenerative future. SEA’s other four guiding principles include Sustainable People First, Sustainable Design Forward, Considerate Resource Management, and Transparency. We illustrate these principles and what they mean to our sustainability efforts using the graphic below.
In five years, SEA aims to be a firm recognized for our sustainability efforts. To get us there, our visioning process prioritized creating goals for reducing projects’ operational and embodied carbon emissions, exercising responsible material selection, designing for occupant health and wellbeing, and improving our own office operations. We’ve set up workgroups for each of these areas focused on translating the goals into actionable steps and developing processes and tools. By identifying these “champions,” we anticipate streamlined adoption and integration.
We found through this process that our project teams already applied many of the ideas explored above, we just needed a more defined structure and a cohesive sustainability language to aid design processes and staff communication. The process also served in setting an inspirational vision that we believe will be motivating for SEA, generate excitement from our colleagues and consultants, and strengthen client interest and investment in sustainable building. We look forward to integrating these values, principles, and processes to make strong designs focused on a sustainable future.
