Stephen R. Kellert is a professor emeritus of social ecology and a senior research scholar at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and is decorated with more honors and awards than would ever be rational. His work concerns the relation between humans and natural processes and features, more specifically how this relationship applies to design and development. His book, Building for Life, examines our society’s need for sustainable design in order to achieve a higher quality of life. He champions the ecological and cultural movement in biophilic design, design that appeals to the innate human affinity for natural processes and features.

By eliciting positive, valued experiences of nature within our built environment, we can repair the relationship between nature and ourselves, so that we might easier recognize our dependence on nature, and ultimately become more responsible in our treatment of it. Sustainability aside, biophilia is very much cultural, and is envisions a society of individuals more conscious of their surroundings, first through their natural environment, but also indirectly through their social environment . The Promenade Plantée, or the Bastille Viaduct, in Paris is cited as an effective example as it has  successfully “[restoring] contact with nature in an urban context”. He asserts that the project has revitalized the area socially and economically, while returning the city dweller to a more common interaction with nature. At the same time, Kellert is fast to critique the Bastille Viaduct’s failure to address “low environmental impact or ecological landscape design” and entertains the idea that the project may not be a great example. He similarly discusses the work of Frank Lloyd Wright whose prairie houses, most notably with Fallingwater, have demonstrated biophilic principles in establishing a sentimental harmony of human within nature. Yet, due to the cost, heavy use of materials, and limited energy efficiency, Kellert cannot quite call Frank Lloyd Wright the ideal ‘Biophile.’

Three degrees of our human affinity to nature can be considered when applying biophilia to a design: direct, indirect and symbolic. The direct is the hardest, as the built environment can only frame, and never be a direct experience with nature. Full nature does not anticipate the implantation of built works. A greenhouse or courtyard can frame a garden, a direct experience of nature, but the structure around it could simply not be. The indirect experience involves the existence of nature that is dependent on the maintenance and support of human efforts. A fern in a vase, or the fishtank at your dentists’ office are examples of natural environments confined and constrained where their vitality is dependent on third support. Lastly, the symbolic experience of nature, which is the most obvious within art, and has been pursued for as long as architecture has been practiced. Arabic floral patterns, Gothic sculptural details and rose windows, to the efforts of Frank Lloyd Wright to integrate structure into nature, all relate directly to understanding nature through abstraction, through symbol.

Kellert makes one significant assumption that forms the basis of his whole argument, that humanity has a natural tendency to revere what is resemblant of nature. Seemingly sensible in theory, the assumption appears to be false, as aesthetic tastes do exist that appreciate the quality of orthogonality and the hand-prints of man.

Biophilia Presentation.

Harvard Design Magazine

Construction focuses on two site scenarios; an open site with minimal clearing before beginning construction and an existing site that likely has a building on it that must first be demolished. Aside from being cheaper, the former option is also the easier of the two from a construction point of view. This mentality has prompted increasingly unprecedented levels of construction every year, even in the years of a slowly growing economy following the recession. The US Department of Housing and Urban Developments estimates over 1,103,000 residential construction permits will be issued in the 2015 calendar year, a roughly 5% increase from last year (US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development). This rate is implying an unsustainable trend; discarding the older building in favor of their newer counterparts. Enter option three in the initial site scenario debate; an existing building subject to adaptive reuse. The modification and ultimate reuse of existing buildings in an urban context is pivotal for sustainable growth of New York City in both the immediate and long term planning conversations.

Between the 1930’s and 1960’s, Robert Moses was responsible for creating much of the gridwork that still defines New York as a city today. In addition, he was responsible for the creation of countless projects, with a total cost of over $184 billion in today’s dollars, all of which were new construction (Goldberger). During this timeframe, Moses was not alone on widespread construction with many developers undertaking transitional projects and constructing higher and larger buildings. This massive influx of buildings is now ageing and is currently in one of two states. The first option is that these roughly fifty-year-old buildings simply no longer exist. This is most commonly the case of properties that had fallen into disrepair or were no longer large enough to meet the demands they we facing and were ultimately replaced by a building that was able to meet those needs. The second option is that the building is still standing, often in its original condition or with minimal updates over the years and possibly uninhabited; both of these represent a misusage of resources. Buildings and construction represent the largest portion of the US produced CO₂ emissions and are greater than that of the other two sectors, industrial and transportation, combined (Architecture 2030). Much of this pollution, as well as waste material not counted in the previous statistic, stems from new construction and demolition of buildings.

The selection and active decision to choose existing buildings for adaptive reuse and modification to meet both current client and environmental needs solves both of these problems. By starting with and simply modifying an existing building there is a greatly lowered amount of initial construction costs and wastes. In a city like New York, its also likely to expedite the construction time and ease some of the logistics associated with the large infrastructure needed for the early/structural parts of the projects, e.g. those associated with pouring concrete slabs, structural steel framing, and masonry walls. Some may feel limited by working with an existing building, yet all of the same tactics that exist for new construction exist for adaptive reuse; vertical expansion, horizontal expansion, densification selective removal, etc. Not only is this avoiding higher costs for new materials, but also greatly diminishes the initial carbon impacts from construction; something that takes an estimated 20-30 years for even a green building to offset. The positive environmental impact can be even greater when combined with integrating new sustainable technology into an adaptive reuse situation.

The reuse of these buildings is also beneficial to the community. Many cities face issues of regionally high levels of uninhabited and under cared for buildings, New York included. The environment of a city or neighborhood can be greatly improved simply by adaptive reuse and inhabitation. Aside form removing the holes from an otherwise vibrant urban fabric, repurposing buildings into a new life allows for a structure to meet the most current needs of a situation. Jane Jacob’s work The Death and Life of Great American Cities often skirts around the idea that the community revitalization of formerly lacking areas of a neighborhood, when carried out by the residents, is almost always better than the initial planned usage of the building. Who could know a better usage for an uninhabited structure better than people who eat, work, and live within a block from it? Many projects within the city have repurposed previously industrial sites into new programs as diverse as; office space, residences, breweries, urban farms, and even concert halls with minimally invasive changes (Schropfer). The re-utilization of a building also allows the history of a site to be carried with it into its second life and provides a level of outward continuity for the immediate neighbors.

While new construction may still be the first and only avenue many developers pursue, this too is not a flawless system. Jane Jacobs stated it best by saying; “We expect too much of new buildings, and too little of ourselves”, something that is undoubtedly relevant to the question of urban re-use. Reinvesting time, planning, and resources into the second life of a building is pivotal is urban sustainability and redevelopment. New buildings have the same set of problems that an existing building may face, but also lack the innate historical integration into the site and have a lower potential for diminished environmental impact. Rather than a universal call to action, this should serve as a reminder. Carl Elefante said it most succinctly, “the greenest building is the one already built,” no matter where it may be. There are undoubtedly situations where utilizing an existing building is not beneficial to the project as a whole, but far more times where it is simply an overlooked option in the planning phase.

Works Cited

US Department of Housing and Urban Development. New Residential Construction in September 2015. Washington: n.p., 2015. US Census Bureau News. US Department of Commerce, 20 Oct. 2015. Web. <http://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/newresconst.pdf>.

Goldberger, Paul. “Robert Moses, Master Builder, Is Dead at 92.” Editorial. The New York Times 30 July 1981: n. pag. The Learning Network. The New York Times, 2010. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1218.html>.

U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2012 Release, Table 18 Carbon Dioxide Emissions by Sector and Source; http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/index.cfm

“The Environmental Value of Building Reuse.” Preservationnation.org. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, 24 Jan. 2012. Web. <http://www.preservationnation.org/information-center/sustainable-communities/green-lab/valuing-building-reuse.html#.Vi1BZs7_T8E>.

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961. Print.

Schropfer, Thomas. Ecological Urban Architecture: Qualitative Approaches to Sustainability. Basel: Birkhauser, 2012. Print.