Ready to challenge the status quo of architectural design? This episode, we sit down with Corey Squire, author of "People, Planet, Design: A Practical Guide to Realizing Architecture's Potential," to dissect the impact of design on our everyday lives and the possibilities it harbors for creating sustainable, equitable buildings. Through a fascinating discourse on design excellence, indoor air quality, and our energy sources, we invite you to question the effect of design on our built environment and the progressive steps we can take for a positive future.
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Ready to challenge the status quo of architectural design? This episode, we sit down with Corey Squire, author of "People, Planet, Design: A Practical Guide to Realizing Architecture's Potential," to dissect the impact of design on our everyday lives and the possibilities it harbors for creating sustainable, equitable buildings. Through a fascinating discourse on design excellence, indoor air quality, and our energy sources, we invite you to question the effect of design on our built environment and the progressive steps we can take for a positive future.
Show Notes:
Cover art by Alexander Abero on Unsplash
Follow us on social media for more content related to each episode:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/booked-on-planning/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BookedPlanning
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bookedonplanning
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This episode is brought to you by Lamp La data-v-ddf6351a="" class="transcript-element" data-mindex="0" data-eindex="16" data-key="016Rynearson1. 607" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-pan-x: ; --tw-pan-y: ; --tw-pinch-zoom: ; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-ordinal: ; --tw-slashed-zero: ; --tw-numeric-figure: ; --tw-numeric-spacing: ; --tw-numeric-fraction: ; --tw-ring-inset: ; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,. 5); --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-blur: ; --tw-brightness: ; --tw-contrast: ; --tw-grayscale: ; --tw-hue-rotate: ; --tw-invert: ; --tw-saturate: ; --tw-sepia: ; --tw-drop-shadow: ; --tw-backdrop-blur: ; --tw-backdrop-brightness: ; --tw-backdrop-contrast: ; --tw-backdrop-grayscale: ; --tw-backdrop-hue-rotate: ; --tw-backdrop-invert: ; --tw-backdrop-opacity: ; --tw-backdrop-saturate: ; --tw-backdrop-sepia: ; background-color: rgb(252, 252, 253);">Rynearson</span>n. provides landscape architecture planning and civil engineering services From community-wide master plans to land development. Lampere Nierson incorporates sustainable design principles and equity into all of their projects. You're listening to the Booked On Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked On Planning. Welcome back, bookworms, to another episode of Booked On Planning. In this episode we talk with author Corey Squire on his book People Planet Design a practical guide to realizing architecture's potential. While I do have a background in architecture, I think I would have enjoyed this book regardless, because it's really not hard to find ways to relate when all of us spend a good portion of our day inside buildings.
Jennifer Hiatt:So I do not have a background in architecture and I can attest that you do not need a background in architecture to enjoy and learn from this book. I've been doing quite a bit of a crash course in architectural principles, as a lot of my job now revolves around building projects, and I think out of all the books that I've read so far in this crash course, Corey's actually really helped give me the language that I was looking forward to further conversations with developers about design and the human perspective of the buildings.
Stephanie Rouse:For listeners. I think a big takeaway would be the amount of influence that we have in the buildings that are built in our cities and the buildings that we occupy. We can push developers and building owners to do a better job, to think long term and globally about how their buildings impact people's health and the environment. I'm working on our historic district guidelines update right now, and we've been having discussions about not allowing vinyl windows and siding, mostly from a historic perspective, but it's also not a durable material and one that generally is not the healthy choice to make. What's ironic is vinyl windows are being used to replace original wood windows that were once painted with lead paint as a solution on many of our recently approved projects. However, replacing one obviously hazardous material with another isn't really much better.
Jennifer Hiatt:So I actually had no idea how bad vinyl was for the planet, and a few years ago, when I was looking to purchase the home that I live in now, the brand new big vinyl windows were one of the highlights the real estate agent posted in the listing and I thought nice, you know, I know that those are going to last a while. Like those are good windows. And now that I know better, I guess should I ever need to replace these windows since they're not going to last as long. I can do better. So I appreciate a Corey's take on moving design forward or design discussions forward. He talks about how the things that got us here aren't necessarily the things that will like take us to a better future, and all parties in the design process should review our preconceived notions with each project.
Stephanie Rouse:Well, let's get into our conversation with Corey Squire. Corey, thank you for joining us on Booked on Planning to talk about your book People, planet Design a practical guide for realizing architecture's potential. I found your book to be really relatable because we all use buildings every day. So even if you aren't in the design field, I felt like this book is still pretty thought provoking. And when you were discussing indoor air quality and how we shouldn't be burning wood fireplaces, I had to laugh a little because my husband and I were literally just having this conversation about getting our fireplace inspected so we could finally use it for the first time this winter. So I'm second guessing that decision a little bit. But on that note, who did you write this book for and who did you think would get the most out of it?
Corey Squire:Well, thanks for having me on the podcast, super excited for this conversation and I guess, before we get into the audience. So I do talk about indoor air quality and indoor combustion is not the smartest idea for a primary energy source for our buildings. That should be, as goes for gas as well as wood. That being said, I'm not anti fireplaces. I recognize the kind of the ambiance of the joy and the experience of having a fire. It's very kind of evolutionary, embedded into our beings as humans. But I like to think of fire as a. It's like a dessert, right, you don't have it every day, but every once in a while it's. It could be really nice. I'll give that introduction that I'm not like an anti fire fanatic, but we should be thinking about electricity as the primary energy source in our homes.
Corey Squire:So the audience for this book I wrote this book mostly for design professionals and that could be architects, interior designers, planners and students specifically, who are really focused on what sustainability and equity means from a design standpoint. What are the strategies that we can actually kind of embed into our buildings and our communities to create the outcomes that we want to create the built environment that we want to live in? Beyond that, my hope is that, because we all have this kind of unique personal connection to the built environment, we all spend a lot of our time in buildings, we live in buildings, we work in buildings. So this book will hopefully be relevant to non designers, members of either associated professions or just the general public who wants to kind of think and maybe question why the built environment is the way that it is right now, if that is working for us and how it could be better in the future.
Jennifer Hiatt:So Cory and I were kind of having a short conversation before we started recording and I told him that this book came out at the perfect time for me, because I've been trying to work through learning how to talk with architects, because my job now entails helping design better buildings, and I was just so focused on like, yeah, we're doing all this great stuff on the outside, but what can we do on the inside? So the book gave me some language to move forward with that. I really appreciated that. Right in your preface you laid out one of the key points, stating that design excellence is an alternative to traditional practice and it is the idea that design can and should seek a higher bar for impact and outcomes. I've struggled with making this point to developers that we are working with, so what advice would you give a planner like me who's working with developers to elevate that publicly supported architecture?
Corey Squire:So a few thoughts here. So I kind of define traditional practice as the way that we've been doing things in the past. Often, especially for low budget projects or public projects, we think about this as like redetermined design based on a spreadsheet. So we know that we need the square footage, we know that this cladding material is going to quote, unquote, pencil out, and then the design becomes like just putting together pieces that we've already kind of been given into this building. That may or may not serve the purposes that we hope, and I think that we can question this right. I think we can say what is the purpose of the building? We want to obviously promote the health of the occupants, the health of the communities. We want to think broader, we want to think about the planet, we want to think about supply chains, and every decision that we make has these real impacts. We often say like you could choose side of material A or side of material B and they might look different, but there's like real meaningful impacts beyond that. So how do you shift? That conversation is a question and it is really a challenge.
Corey Squire:But the first step is to say the way that we've been doing things is not the only way that we can do things. There are other options. We can get together and say what are the primary purposes for this project, what are our goals, what are other opportunities out there? And even small changes can have a big impact. So like, for an example, in a certain area, based on code, a certain level of air filtration might be considered standard and never questioned. But you could increase that filter and suddenly you are pulling airborne pathogens out of the air so people don't get sick as often, and you're pulling wildfire smoke out of the air so that the building can be occupied, kind of during smoking, like inundation events. And those small changes make big differences. So I would say, really question the premise, question the outcomes that we want and prioritize those strategies that get us there.
Jennifer Hiatt:I know that a project has to make fiscal sense, but if I hear someone say it's going to pencil out to me one more time, it's just like my least favorite phrase.
Corey Squire:Yes and that's. You can tell that because it was a because the podcast but I use that phrase in air quotes. I mean pencil out is based on a predetermined priority. If our priority was to do the same thing we've always done get this minimal, viable product up and running as quickly as possible then pencil out means kind of the race to the bottom, cheap as possible solution. If your priorities are different, if health is the priority, right, if emission reduction is priority, the cuts of a penciling out means a very, very different thing.
Stephanie Rouse:Yeah, and you start the book out by saying that it's not usually just costs that determines bad building designs, but there's other factors at play. So setting out those goals ahead of time can really set you on the right path. Lincoln, like many cities, has various sets of design standards that projects need to adhere to, and many have site plan review standards that really get into building orientation and design, giving our profession a certain degree of say in how a building is constructed. What would you say are some key guidelines that cities should have in place to also encourage building owners and architects to be more thoughtful about the environment and health impacts of their designs?
Corey Squire:Yeah, I think that we probably want to take maybe a longer view in terms of codes and regulations than we are currently Like. Obviously, there's energy codes in all of the places that we design. Some might be more advanced than others. There's life safety right, we want to make sure that people are not going to die in fire. People are not going to fall out of the buildings.
Corey Squire:We have these regulations to keep people safe from momentary extreme events, and we have regulations to keep energy used in check, but we don't have regulations around long term exposure. So if we're going to fill a building with toxic chemicals, for instance, and people get sick over time, or we were not going to have appropriate air changes and let's say that in a school and students learning outcomes suffer from that, we don't really have those regulations in place. So what I would say to city planners or policy people or those who are writing regulations is to think about the time scale of impact and time scale of benefit or harm, and benefits or harm that happened over a longer period of time are just as meaningful as those instantaneous, like there's a fire. We need to make sure that people stay safe, right? People are spending 20 years in this building. We need to make sure people stay safe over that time period as well.
Jennifer Hiatt:While I was reading through it, I wondered how many brain cells I might have lost going to school in a 1930s, probably not all that well-designed building.
Corey Squire:You might be okay. In the 30s. We didn't have that many toxic chemicals then, right.
Jennifer Hiatt:That's fair. I guess it really when we kind of started hitting building in the 60s and 70s it was the addition to my little school.
Corey Squire:The addition was the problem.
Jennifer Hiatt:yeah, Shoot elementary school. We were fine then. So you make the point that architectural projects should consider the third order function, considering long-term, far-reaching impacts of design. But doing so is difficult in today's hyper-connected, supply chain-driven world we were talking about earlier. We just don't have a lot of control from the public side of that supply chain side of everything. So how would you recommend design professionals start taking third order functions into consideration, since often city staff can't be in charge of that aspect?
Corey Squire:Yeah. So this is a real challenge, but I think it's really important and we all recognize that we make design decisions that promote the function of a building. So let's say that we have a classroom that's designed with appropriate lighting and spatial considerations to make it functional for education or an office or whatever other building type we're looking at. But every design decision that we make because our world is so interconnected has these far-reaching impacts. So the question that I bring up in the book is if we create a beautiful building and the occupants are happy and it's beautiful, wins design awards, all this, but it results in, let's say, exploitative labor on another part of the planet, can we still call that good design? And I think that's a really important consideration.
Corey Squire:Now there's a lot of challenges in understanding things like far-reaching impacts. We don't always know where our materials are coming from, what's happened to bring them to the building site. But I think what we can do as design professionals and as occupants and as building owners and anyone associated with design construction processes, is to recognize that there are these impacts, that if you specify material A versus material B, there are far-reaching consequences for real people and we should care about them and we should be cognizant of that. And though we can't practically dig back every single supply chain and say these two similar products, one of them somewhere else on the planet, the people in the manufacturing plant are being paid a fair wage and somewhere else they're not, we could make broad, I guess, like generalizations. We can say generally, more often than not, going in this direction is better than that direction. So in examples, we don't want to use tropical hardwood for decimaterial because it's more likely than not to be resulting from deforestation somewhere else on the planet. And if we chose a domestic wood or a recycled deck option, like a trex or something, it's much less likely to be causing that harm.
Corey Squire:We can think about that in terms of vinyl flooring, where a lot of vinyl flooring, a lot of PVC, is manufactured in China. That might be the result of some sort of a labor camp. We're just very, very kind of bad labor practices. We also know that PVC, the manufacturing disposal, is going to release toxic chemicals, dioxins, to the atmosphere. And if we choose other products, if we choose like a Lidolin flooring or some other bio-based resilient flooring, we don't have to know all the specifics to know that this choice will result in a better outcome. So I think we should be cognizant, and I think we should be curious, and I think we should generally have a working understanding of which materials are more likely to be problematic and which materials are more likely to be safe, and just really prioritize the ones that we could be more confident in.
Stephanie Rouse:So that made me think about the keynote address from the Association of Preservation Technology Conference last month. The speaker was Yasmin Lari, the first female architect from Pakistan, and she created this design that uses local materials and it's super cheap to build. And then she has a team that teaches locals how to build their own homes and it really helps boost local affordable housing. And it made me think about Nebraska and how straw bale construction used to be pretty common in the early 1900s. We had a local landmark property that was built with straw bale construction that stood for many, many decades. So I wonder if it might become a trend to use these kind of regional construction techniques that address some of these issues that you've highlighted. Because you know where it came from the products, natural, there's really no major issues with the materials.
Corey Squire:Straw bale is such a cool building technology and it is very unique and local and I think that if we do focus on local materials like that's a great way of just having more control and more knowledge about the supply chain, and it also builds regional character and it also makes for more interesting cities and communities and develops local knowledge. So, yeah, I think that's a great example and, from an embodied carbon standpoint, you can't do better than straw bale construction.
Stephanie Rouse:So we touched on this just briefly, about the fact that cost isn't always the reason why buildings are designed with negative environmental and health impacts. But what are some of the other reasons that are used to justify using cheaper materials or the well-known material that also can cause some damage?
Corey Squire:So I mean I think the cost question, like one of the primary messages I want to get across in this book, is that when somebody says we can't do this because of cost, what they really mean is we can't do this because we haven't prioritized these outcomes right. If you have a budget, obviously every project has a fixed budget. It's not an infinite amount of money in the world but that budget is allocated based on values and if we value the outcome of fast and cheap and maybe more square footage, that's very different than valuing the outcome of quality spaces, great in-air quality, kind of working with the natural ecosystem. So what are the other kind of challenges besides cost?
Corey Squire:I think that number one is what I described in the book as inertia, the idea that we just did something in the past and it's easiest just to do that again. And buildings are super complicated, there's a lot going on and it's easy to just say I'm just not going to think about that, because I've made this decision and maybe it worked, maybe it doesn't, maybe we went back and checked to see if it worked, but we're just going to kind of move forward and autopilot. And I think it's really important to kind of break that chain of inertia and say we used the strategy on the last project, but did that result in good outcomes, yes or no? Is that still the best strategy, given where we are today, what the technology, what the environment is like?
Jennifer Hiatt:I feel like you can tell that Stephanie is more of the experienced professional here because I'm asking some of the higher level questions. But when you were discussing advocacy because no matter what we're all advocates in our positions architects, planners, more design aspect you say that the goal is to meet on the battlefield of ideas and allow the better option to prevail. I love this perspective and we have regularly been butting heads up against some traffic engineers in some of our most recent projects. So I was wondering how would you recommend helping the design field or I guess I don't know if you consider planners a design field, but I do yeah, 100% yeah. Help advance this mindset to our technical consultant teams of like yes, I know you have your manual and yes, I know you're supposed to meet this standard, but like I can't get people to this park if we don't have a crossing. So how should we help advance this idea?
Corey Squire:Well, I think a lot of this has to do with the process and what we see is a lot of discussions get shortchanged because the answer is just seems to be predestined. So, yeah, we're not going to get that crosswork because that's not part of the manual or whatever, right. But if we got everyone together, if we created a process that was collaborative and we discuss these things without preconceived notions and again, this is a challenge because you got to get everybody's input we can be more confident that the best ideas will prevail in that process. Right, if the process is segmented, if we're not being collaborative, if we're again focusing on what we've done in the past, we're not going to get the best idea right, because not all ideas have the opportunity to kind of be aired and discussed collaboratively. I'll give a quick example of a project that I worked on.
Corey Squire:We had a client who had design standards against operable windows, and operable windows are super important, especially, like we've learned this during the COVID-19 pandemic, where just opening in the window in the space made them so much safer. And if you cannot open the windows, your air quality would always be subpar and the space would always be more dangerous during the pandemic. And we wanted to have this conversation with the client about. It's like we know the design standards say this, but we think this is really important from a resiliency standpoint, which is also a stated goal of yours. But we kept on pushing to have the conversation and, rather than just accepting nope, that's part of our design standards we basically wrote memos describing our position, why we thought this was important, and eventually we were able to have the conversation.
Corey Squire:And when we had the conversation and we laid out the information, the data, pros and cons, why we thought operable windows were so important for a public building in the 21st century, they agreed with us and they said okay, well, that makes sense. It's a great argument. We're going to change our design standards, so a lot of look. I would say poor processes are based on. This has written a certain way, maybe the right way, maybe not way, maybe it's been written like that for 50 years, right, and we're just going to move forward. But the better process is let's really be collaborative, let's discuss what's important, let's see what's changed, and I do think if you have that process, that collaborative process, the better idea will win in the end, rather than just like whatever was decided or whoever's loudest, or whatever other kind of poor processes we often end up dealing with.
Stephanie Rouse:Yeah, that example reminded me that while reading this and I'm the preservationist in the group as well that a lot of what you're describing and the recommendations in the book are really just look at a 1920s building and bring that stuff back, like operable windows, smaller floor plates, and consider how far light can get into a building versus just relying on lighting to do the job. But also while reading this, I was listening to an episode of cautionary tales about the over budget and long delayed Sydney Opera House project that's now become this amazing architectural masterpiece. Do you think projects like these, the kind of Starkatech design masterpieces, still have a place in a world of climate change?
Corey Squire:So it's a good question and it's something that I think that a lot of us wrestle with. Creating exotic forms for the purpose of creating exotic forms is not the basis of good architecture, but they are. They're like intoxicating. You look at it, there's these amazing buildings, that's it's hard, like we want that. It's hard to look away. The imagery is just so great. And then the problem is that architectural students see buildings like I don't know Frank Geary building, or like the Sydney Opera House, or like Azaha Hadid, and they see these flowing, dramatic forms and they think that's what good architecture is. And I think that we need to be very clear is like that is that is not good, like that is a way of designing that is not quote unquote good architecture just because it looks good. Good architecture has to provide real benefit for real people. Like we are a architecture planners, we serve the public, we have a functional craft. We are not pure artists, which is something that I try to describe in the book. Now I think we need heroic architecture, we need grand architecture, but we need this grand architecture to be responsible and we can't say irresponsibility is okay if the form is stunning enough.
Corey Squire:An example that I give in the book is there's a performance space in Rome called the Parco della Musica by Renzo Piano and it is a really, really nice public space. It has these various kind of individual performing spaces that surround the plaza. You could see how this building contributes to the community because people can walk through it, people can congregate there. The problem is that the roofs are made of lead and the reason the roofs are made of lead was because there was some like metaphorical connection back to cathedrals from the Middle Ages. The building got closed, right, the irresponsibility is the lead material, but it is a really pretty form that allows for a great community and enhances the public sphere.
Corey Squire:Now an example like an opposite example that is like the Disney Concert Hall in LA Frank Gehry building, where there's just like swirly forms, to the point of swirly forms and a concrete plaza that no one would have spent any time in and the light hits these shapes and reflects into other people's windows and causes glare. There's no benefit from that form. It doesn't actually help anyone. So I think that we should think about creating grand public spaces and works of architecture that build community, that benefit the ecology of the space, that work kind of in line with people, and we should be very clear when we're teaching architecture for sure, that form making for the sake of form making is not good design, it's just form making.
Stephanie Rouse:So the funny thing about that is that when I was in architecture school, way back when and I was learning all about how to create these crazy cool looking forms and that was pretty much all of our projects I went and saw the Frank Gehry building and thought this is such an amazing piece of architecture. Look at all these forms and the light, and my perspective has definitely changed since then.
Corey Squire:Yeah, I thought the same thing in architecture school because that's what was being taught, and I also went to visit that building. It was like super cool and now I'm recognizing like that actually doesn't help. That's a lot of resources, it's a lot of money, it's a lot of unnecessary glare and energy use, it's a missed opportunity because of what it doesn't do for the city. So, yeah, and I think that my hope is that, just like you and I had that experience, my hope that the paradigm shifts a little bit and that the goal of architecture is really to serve people and to solve problems, and that's really why I wrote this book.
Stephanie Rouse:Well, hopefully students that aren't getting that in their education are reading your book.
Jennifer Hiatt:Lincoln has the flagship campus for the University of Nebraska and we both help students from the planning program there, and I actually like to go and talk to them, partly because they remind me that we should still be whimsical and optimistic. But it is also one of my favorite things to walk in and crush their student hopes and dreams by reminding them to consider, like what's in their power with this project. How can we control these littler things within the project? Why are you using this thought paradigm? So we know that sustainable change has to start from within, and you state the first key is a clear and strong held vision dedicated to making sustainable choices. The second is to establish a culture that supports it. So how can firms you know, architecture firms, planning firms, even city departments take the steps to creating that culture?
Corey Squire:That is the hardest part. There are a lot of books about sustainable design that jump right into the strategies. It's like up an hour floor plate. We want the reasonable window to wall ratio. We want the healthy material data line strategy and all that is super important. And I go into detail on all the technical design strategies as well. You don't get anywhere with those unless you have the vision. So, very much at the level of an architecture practice or planning practice, or at the level of a city or even a project, if you don't set out a vision and set out goals, it's hard to decide where you're going right. And this needs to be kind of consistent among the team or the group or the firm, because people could just be going off of different directions and have different goals. It's very easy for an architectural project, for instance, to have any different potential success criteria.
Stephanie Rouse:So we want to be clear.
Corey Squire:I spent some time as a consultant working with architecture firms that wanted to kind of improve sustainability across their portfolio, and they would always come to me and say, ok, we want to focus on sustainability, what energy modeling tools should we use? And I would say, wait back up a little bit. What's your vision, what do we want to accomplish? One of the first things that we do is lead these firms through a visioning workshop and say these are our values, these are our goals, this is what's out there. And once we had that in place and people felt part of the process of building it and really kind of held this vision personally, it's much easier because a lot of the decisions are already made for you.
Corey Squire:So if you say that human health is super important and that's who we are, and that's this practice and that's this project, and then choices of I don't know two different paints pop up and one is zero VOC and one of them is kind of the typical traditional paint and we're in a budget crunch, it would be so easy to be like, ok, well, we won't pay for the healthier product. But if you are clear about what your goal is, then you say, well, obviously we're going to pay for the healthier product, and the budget crunch is going to be rectified somewhere else in the project. So I think establishing the vision is just really simple. That's like how we get started, and it's hard to get anywhere without being clear about what we want to accomplish.
Jennifer Hiatt:The background for the question is that I am a strategic planner, like I work with nonprofits, help them put goals and stuff in place, and this book was one of the first books I've ever read about design that actually touched on you have to do that strat plan Like without that, we don't have a foundation, and I was like, yeah, exactly, we don't know where to go.
Corey Squire:Well, I'm so glad to hear that that's your experience. And, yeah, no strategic planner know this, and a lot of people who do planning understand that the first thing you have to do is set a goal, because it's really easy to just be working through a design process and seemingly going in a direction, but if you don't have a goal, you just won't end up in the right place. Not everyone will be on the same page, and I agree with you and I really wanted to kind of connect the interpersonal goal setting, interpersonal environment that we work within. And then the design strategies. We know that design strategies alone are not going to solve the problem, because there's no mystery there. We already know what the strategies are.
Stephanie Rouse:So towards the end of the book, you discuss equity and design and bring up the baseball graphic that has the three kids watching the baseball game standing on crates over the fence and we actually discussed this in an earlier episode with Veronica Davis. What's interesting is that you both said the same thing why is the fence there in the first place? What should architects be thinking about and planners be pushing for in building designs that will increase equity? Excuse me, yeah, wow.
Corey Squire:So, yeah, the diagram that you're describing. It's been a powerful meme within the design community and a lot of discussion around it. I think it's super important for kind of thinking about equity within the built environment. But, yeah, there's a fence and it doesn't make any sense for there to be a fence to prevent kids from watching a baseball game. If you're not familiar with this diagram, just search equity diagram, baseball game or something like Google and a hundred renditions of it will pop up.
Corey Squire:But we need to think about what solutions we're using to solve problems that we've created for ourselves in the first place, and then maybe, rather than spending the effort on solving those problems, we just don't create the problems that result in new problems to be solved. So one of the ways that I like to address this, and the way I discuss in the book, is we need to trust people. There's a lot of design conversations around. Well, what if somebody does X right? What if someone throws something out a window? So we cannot open windows? What if somebody breaks something? So we have to lock it down to prevent that? And I think that when we design a, build an environment where we treat users like delinquents, they're going to be delinquents. And if we treat you as like people and we trust them and we bring them into the conversation and we design for their agency, they're going to be normal, normal, responsible people. So I mean, one of the examples that I think I bring in the book is you often in public buildings see a thermostat with like a locked plastic box around it, and for me this is a symbol of like how wrong we get this idea of thermal comfort and user responsibility and agency. And people should be able to manipulate their spaces so that they're more comfortable. And some people are going to be a little cooler, some people are going to be a little warmer, some people want a fan or background noise or open window or whatever else. And if we say no, everything's the same. And there's this person who comes in with a key who's able to control everything. Like that's a real problem that we're creating for ourselves.
Corey Squire:And then we have these discussions about people not feeling welcome in buildings. Like well, well, duh, they're not feeling welcome to buildings, just everything's locked down. So I describe a solution to this is trusting people, talking to people, making spaces where you can manipulate certain things, making a variety of spaces so people could choose places that work better for them. But we need to be very clear. If we're building a fence, is there a real purpose behind that? What are we? What are we signaling? What are we trying to prevent? What's the worst thing that could happen? If the worst thing could happen is not that bad, let's not put it in a fence.
Jennifer Hiatt:We actually just started a recording around the tragedy of the commons and the pushback that that theory, that economic theory, is getting at this point and it's like when you start with the assumption of a bad actor, I really just think you end up with a bad product.
Corey Squire:Yeah, 100%.
Stephanie Rouse:Yeah, your example is really timely, because temperatures in Nebraska have dropped this last week and it's gotten very cold in our building and it's set so that we don't have any control and our planning department wing has been so cold that staff are wearing gloves and everyone's bringing in their space heaters. So we're taking it upon ourselves to make our space work for us, but we definitely don't feel welcome or want to work in such an environment.
Corey Squire:Right, because it wasn't designed for you, right? That's a problem. People yeah, people feel like just buildings were not designed for them, and I think that's a real problem.
Jennifer Hiatt:More heating and cooling comes from a company called District Energy Corporation here and it's a steam and chill plant and so in theory, we're doing a really great thing because it's supposed to be like so much more energy efficient and bringing it through and whatever.
Jennifer Hiatt:But because of the way that the pipes lead into our building and how the heat or the cold air gets pumped through, it takes forever to change the temperatures in our building and so on weeks that the temperature quickly plummets. Dec has to switch over all of the way that they were just doing chilled air. So now they have to switch over to get steam pumping and it takes forever. And is it really energy efficient? Because we're all bringing in our little space heaters and we're all pulling off the grid really hard, and so we're having this conversation with our redevelopment agreements of we kind of want to encourage our developers to sign on to DEC because we just put in all this, you know, multi-million dollar infrastructure to create this and say, but again, is it the best option for the end user? I don't know that it is.
Corey Squire:I'm going to make a quick pitch here for a great thermal envelope on buildings. So for new buildings I mean, temperatures do swing and mechanical systems do take a while to keep up, especially the like intensive, expensive ones that we typically want in our buildings. A lot of this could be solved with a building envelope. So if we do design with better windows, we design with more continuous insulation, we're creating much more comfortable spaces, we're decreasing our reliance on mechanical systems and we're preventing those dramatic swings right. That alone that's a design solution that solves a lot of problems. So it's just an example of all this is connected right the equity, the controls, the systems, the energy use, the building design it's all connected and there's lots of ways of approaches and generally I think that we can design better overall buildings with better insulation. You have smaller systems, you have less variation, you can have more access without the crazy things happening that people were worried about them happening. So all this is connected and overall, use less energy.
Jennifer Hiatt:I think that's a great place to end a conversation about people, planet and design. So our last question this is book done planning, so we talked about a lot of books here. So, besides your book, which obviously we've made an excellent case in this episode that everyone should go pick up and read and understand what's going on, that is at least one. We've had a lot of authors say they can't just share one. So at least one book that you would recommend to our readers.
Corey Squire:So a few books that I found really inspiring, both in my own work and also when writing my book. I'd say one from a planning standpoint is a book called Happy City by Charles Montgomery, and it just shows a connection between design and inhuman well-being. A lot of it is focused on density, transportation, community building. I think it's just a phenomenal book that architects, planners, any design professionals should read. A recent book, Healthy Building by Joseph Allen, is a really great book that describes indoor air quality, healthy materials and the benefit the financial benefit of creating healthier, safer spaces and it's written both by a professor of public health at Harvard and a business professor and they show real case studies where maybe you invest a little bit more on better systems, better materials and you can expect to make money off of that in the future because the people are more functional, people are asking for better spaces and the discussion about kind of development from earlier. I think that there's some great case studies to address that. We'll go with that.
Corey Squire:Oh, one more that I'll mention there's this great book called Scale by Jeffrey West. It's not specifically a design or planning book, but it talks about how different systems operate at different scales and I spent a lot of time thinking about that from my book. It talks about density of cities and kind of how many people you get in one place. That leads to predictable patterns, like innovation, Like the more people, the denser they are, you're going to have maybe more pollution, but also you're going to have more innovation right, More buildings at different scales behave differently. So super interesting, thought provoking book that connects buildings, natural systems, urban systems. I don't know I could go on forever. I actually I have a recommended reading section in the back of the book, so if you if you purchase the book and read it and enjoy it.
Corey Squire:I totally recommend checking out a whole bunch of books that are called out in the back.
Stephanie Rouse:Yeah, I can attest that Happy City was a really great read, and I read it a couple of years ago, so I'll have to check out these other two. But, corey, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today and talk about your book People, planet and Design.
Corey Squire:Thank you for having me.
Stephanie Rouse:Well, we hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Corey Squire on his book People, Planet and Design a practical guide to realizing architecture's potential. You can get your own copy through the publisher at islandpressorg and check out the other great titles that we've covered. While you're there, Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and please rate, review and share the show. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on Booked, on Planning.