The latest Design the Future podcast is a conversation with architect Adele Houghton, who works at the intersection of public health, climate change, and the built environment. She is co-authoring a book, Architectural Epidemiology, which lays out a methodology for designing and operating buildings that respond to the specific environmental and human health needs of people in individual neighborhoods.
Adele has been working in the green building movement for years; early on she was involved in the Green Guide for Health Care. Today, she senses that there is a feeling that we're not making the impact we wanted to. "I think that one part of the problem is that is that we are not prioritizing things enough based on site."
Adele is currently doing research through an AIA Upjohn grant to test her hypothesis that if project teams had data specific to their sites and evidence based strategies, greater alignment between entities would be possible. These metrics, she suggests, would help everyone get more of what they want.
ESG is an area where Adele sees promise. "As those metrics get refined, if the S piece of that were to become rooted in health situational analysis -- understanding your context -- that would really change things," she says. "That context would be the way that you define ESG value in terms of equity and population health outcomes and other measures. Then we could see a huge spike in investment in green and healthy buildings. That, in turn, could make a huge difference, toward meeting the Paris agreement goals and moving toward culture change."
Listen on our site (www.designthefuturepodcast.com/episodes/adele-houghton) or on your favorite podcast platform (consider leaving a review; it helps people find us). As always, much #gratitude to our producers, Clare Becker and Amber Artrip, who are part of this labor of love.
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Kira Gould Hon. AIA
Kira Gould CONNECT
Oakland CA
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