Design for Change—Framework for Design Excellence

If you can do only one (or a few) thing(s):

• ZERO CARBON: Design buildings that are ready for and adaptable to future uses, energy sources, and technologies.
• RESILIENT: Design for adaptation and flexibility of the building and site by reviewing against climate risks, determining the service life of the building, and projecting opportunities for incremental building performance over time.
• RESILIENCE: Design buildings to act as a community resource during disaster events, offering shelter, charging points, communication hubs, warming/cooling centers, and points of distribution.
• EQUITABLE: Asses how your project can respond to current and future disaster events (natural or man-made) with designs that protect the most vulnerable members of the community and enable rapid recovery.
• HEALTHY: Address the potential public health risks associated with climate change (and recent intersectionality with COVID) and design to improve community health.

Resilient design strategies

Resilient design seeks to maintain the longevity of a building for current and future use and to withstand future climate risks. Resilience demands inherent durability and flexibility. Buildings shelter people every day, but needs may change in emergencies.

Actions:

• Define what level of support is appropriate for your project type by holding a resilience charrette with your client and stakeholders to discuss the performance goals for the project during a disaster event—continuity of operations, ability to serve as a community resource, quick recovery, or temporary relocation.
• Design the building to meet the projected hazards at the end of service life or prepare an adaptation plan to incrementally improve building performance over time. Consider planning for a phased recovery by incorporating strategies for both immediate assistance during a disruption (e.g., use as a community shelter) and for an eventual return to normal (e.g., using durable materials that require little maintenance).
• All projects can aid in the resilience of the occupants and the community in some capacity. Identify how your project strengthens community infrastructure and overall community resilience. (See the Design for Community section.) For example, for critical services, this could mean either maintaining continuous operations and/or returning to typical operations quickly. For commercial buildings, this could mean utilizing the structure for public gathering, cooling/heating centers, information sharing, resource sharing, or immediate use of the building may simply depend on passive survivability. For residential buildings (single or multifamily), design for shelter in place, and have food and water storage and communication services on-site.

Risk & vulnerability assessment

Understanding the risks that a building may face over the entire service life is critical for preparing for climate challenges.

Actions:

• Assess the current and projected risks and vulnerabilities of your project location and community to help enhance your design. What are the risks, and cascading vulnerabilities from these risks, that the building is likely to face over its lifetime?
• Determine immediate and incremental strategies to prepare for risk. Examples include environmental events (earthquakes, wildfires, flooding, pandemic, drought, extreme heat, etc.), social events (civil unrest, utility disruption, aged infrastructure, city-wide blackouts, etc.), and economic events (cyber-attacks, business closures, war, etc.). Determine the service life of the building and base design and conduct an analysis on observed and foreseeable climate models. Design for projected temperatures and more frequent and intense weather events.
• Designate safe zones within the building that are appropriate to the risk the occupants face. For example, extreme wind events (tornado, hurricane), active shooter, severe flooding, or cooling centers that can remain operational even if other parts of the building are compromised. Design for rising sea levels when building along the coast.
• Determine the first-floor height based on potential storm surge levels rather than base flood elevation. Design for high winds (impact-resistant glazing and façade) and extreme heat (shading for the building, community cooling center).
• Ask your client if a climate risk assessment was completed as part of their financing/insurance requirements for the project. Many large portfolio holders will have access to some form of risk assessment similar to what the World Bank provides.

Passive survivability & adaptability

Passive survivability refers to a building’s ability, or components of the structure, to maintain essential functions and withstand damage after a disaster event whether natural or man-made. Preparing a building and its occupants for such an event requires a discussion with the client and design team early during the resilience charrette to determine performance goals/scenarios, identify critical infrastructure and services that require redundancy and back-up power, and required duration of livability post event.

Actions:

• Determine duration for passive operations. Based on the project location, work with clients to determine short- and long-term needs. Short-term is often three or more days and long-term is often four weeks.
• Assess local hazards and determine what additional design strategies and building systems are necessary to support livability for occupants. For example, if wildfires are an issue, determine how backup ventilation will be provided.
• Determine sources of alternate power. Power outages are common during a disaster. Identify which critical systems require emergency and/or backup power, then deploy passive design strategies to ensure comfort without electricity. Consider the cleanest, most reliable alternate energy sources when possible. When renewable energy is an option, provide on-site energy storage systems to support the maximum islanding period. Provide outdoor power outlets to allow the community and first responders to charge phones and other devices during power outages.
• Design buildings to function passively first. Consider building orientation; passive solar, thermal mass, and solar shading opportunities; and building envelope performance based on project location. Incorporate natural daylight, allowing for building operations during the day, and provide operable windows for natural ventilation and failsafe louvers to encourage air movement. Consider designing for cross-ventilation for full building exhaust and prevention of contaminated air. Ensure access to potable water without a municipal power grid. Assess the availability of rainwater collection and filtration, potable water storage, and redundant supplies of clean drinking water.
• Discuss food security strategies. Provide a protected area for at least one week of food supply on-site for building occupants during emergencies. Identify alternate communication sources that can remain uninterrupted during the recovery period. Provide a backup system if the facility intends to operate as a safe harbor.
• Passive survivability is an equity issue. Evaluate how the facility will support youth, the elderly, and people with special medical needs.

Flexibility & adaptability

Projects should be flexible and adaptable to current and future uses. Buildings are subject to environmental, social, and economic pressures and should be designed to adapt over time to provide continued service.

Actions:

• Design to prolong the life of the building. Each project type has its own unique challenges, and buildings are ever-changing. Design for flexible and adaptable buildings and spaces. This is the idea behind “long life, loose fit”—the flexibility to easily reprogram a space designed for one function with a different one—which provides economy. The future program of a building might not even exist today. High ceilings and clear spaces without interior bearing walls will provide maximum flexibility for new programs. Place structural elements for maximum flexibility. Consider how structural columns, lateral systems, and floor-to-floor heights can accommodate different arrangements of the same use and be adapted for different uses in the future. For example, prioritize floor-to-floor height as this impacts many things, including adaptability. Try to use 12-foot floor-to-floor heights rather than 9-foot floor-to-floor slabs so it can be easily converted into different occupiable spaces. Other strategies for allowing changes over time as use and programs evolve include designing movable equipment/walls/stations and designing flexible room sizes.
• Design for disassembly. For example, use bolted (rather than welded) connections, make interior demising walls non-bearing, and detail gypsum wallboard partitions to be reconfigurable or reusable.
• Design systems for decommissioning. Specify building materials that are not harmful to the environment and consider the impacts of these materials being exposed to extreme heat or prolonged flooding.
• Design for changes in technology. Rapidly changing systems such as audio/visual might be outdated soon after a building is completed. Confirm that these systems can be easily accessed so they can be replaced as technology changes. Each project type has different needs for HVAC distribution, outdoor air, and exhaust: floor space, ceiling space, storage rooms, etc. Adaptable HVAC systems might have an exposed distribution network and a flexible system for altering supply and return locations. Consider accessibility, under floor, reconfigurable, right sized, exposed, and replacement/renovation cycles.
• Design buildings that can respond to the needs of the electricity grid, managing energy use during peak demand (daily peak demand or demand during an extreme heating or cooling event) to increase grid resilience. On-site photovoltaics (PV) paired with a battery energy storage system can be used to power a building in times of need and also be utilized to reduce strain on the grid during peak demand. See “Net Zero Carbon Buildings” under Design for Energy for more information about building-grid integration.

• AIA’s Disaster Assistance Handbook provides a guide for “Citizen Architects” to assist their communities through service on boards and commissions before and after a disaster to plan for hazardous events, ensure building codes are updated, and advise on responsible land use that will allow businesses and communities to assume operations more quickly after a disaster.
• The AIA Resilient Project Process Guide is a key resource for taking action. Organized by project phase, this guide identifies the points in which resilience and climate adaptation goals can be layered into specific design solutions.
• Explore our resource, Key Regional Climate Issues: A Guide for Architects to Drive Change, which leverages the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) to identify key climate resources and issues for 10 regions.
• FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) has developed hundreds of guidelines specific to resilient architecture and design strategies. To get you started, we recommend checking out the Building Science publications available through FEMA. 
• The U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit is a key resource for people to access available federal government information about resilience in one easy-to-use location. The effort to build the site is led by NOAA and NASA, and provides information for citizens, policy makers, and designers alike. It is great for architects to use and share with clients and developers. 
• NIBS (National Institute of Building Sciences) is a nonprofit government organization that brings together stakeholders from all sides of the table, from policymakers to architects to community members, to develop and distribute the latest information in building science. A whole section of its website is dedicated to Building Resilience Resources. This includes links to other, similar sites such as the Whole Building Design Guide which is a NIBS program specifically developed for designers. 
• FLASH, the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, and AIA teamed up to create a comprehensive graphic guide comparing ordinary construction, high wind construction, and resilient construction. While the techniques are more specific to single family homes, the lessons offered in this guide can be applied to any project. The FLASH Resilient Design Guide is available as a free pdf download online.
• There are many resources online that feature the latest maps for high wind and flooding. FEMA has a very comprehensive wind zone map featuring maps for tornados and hurricanes. FEMA also has a flood map resource available online where you can enter a specific address for your site to see available flood maps. If you want more information on maps, FEMA’s GeoPlatform, which includes maps for all sorts of data related to emergency management, is also available online. The EPA Climate Projections Map is also a fascinating resource that can be helpful with predicting how a site will be affected by climate change in the future. NOAA’s Sea Level Rise map is also good for the analysis of coastal areas.
• Eskew+Dumez+Ripple is a New Orleans firm that was displaced by Hurricane Katrina and then spent the better part of a decade helping the city recover from the storm’s devastation. Its tool, A Framework for Resilient Design, shows how resilience is an element of good design, and shares strategies and case studies that can be incorporated into all projects. 
• Sustainable Communities Initiative (SCI) Resource Library includes tools, reports, fact sheets, and case studies developed by SCI grantees, HUD, and its Capacity Building partners 
• ARUP City Resilience Index international framework can help cities understand and measure their capacity to endure, adapt, and transform.