It's Coming Up Everywhere

I personally think that the amount of information flying at all of us is incredible.  What to read, what to believe, what to think, what does it all mean, when is enough enough?  I have to let it sit in my brain and distill for a while and then it all seems to take shape.  Staring at the ocean helps too.

Paul Goldberger wrote an article for The New Yorker this past week talking about a new building by Daniel Fisher.  Dr. Fisher has designed a building using Dynamic Architecture creating an 80 story skyscraper in which every floor rotates independently of the other floors.  He calls it "flexible for life" able to morph for the user today and tomorrow and everyone can have the mixture of views from the building.   To make it environmentally friendly, each floor is separated by a few feet of space to accommodate wind turbines which make the building self powered.  

Deloitte and Charles Lockwood released a study The Dollars and Sense of Green Retrofits.  Lots of statistics that I have seen before and heard about for years supporting green building.    There were a couple of highlights I pulled out that were interesting.  Deloitte states that organizations that forego green building for whatever reason ( usually ROI ), should reconsider because they are predicting that within the next three years they will be at a competitive disadvantage due to higher operating costs, lower productivity and declining attraction of skilled workers - and don't forget a potential of negative brand image.    Then there are the dollars and sense, LEED building are commanding rent premiums, have a higher occupancy rate and sell higher on the market.  My personal favorite statistic is the movement of the younger workforce where 80% are saying that they are interested in a job that has a positive impact on the environment and 92% want to work at a company that is environmentally friendly.  

The quote of the week in The Week magazine is about how the person could not afford to drive their Land Rover anymore due to the cost of gas.  She goes on to say that she used to laugh when drivers of small cars honked at her and she would think Go ahead, make my day.  I could crush you like a bug.  Oh, how have the mighty fallen now.

Harvard Business Review has a host of articles about people, alignment, motivation, leadership and high-commitment, high- performance CEOs.   There is a list of companies that are lead by this leadership - a whole bunch of environmentally aware companies appear.

And last but not least, the USGBC announced earlier this month that they will release a huge revision to the current LEED systems that includes realignment, consolidation, updating and streamlining the process.   The drivers for this change are nested in the input from the users of LEED that criticize it for being too rigid, cumbersome and demanding - and too costly.  

So if you link all of these together, the message coming into my head is that the individual is the common denominator in these readings.  The individual wants a view no matter where they are in a building, the individual wants to work in a environmentally friendly building,  the individual is making decisions about their behavior and mindset, companies want to influence individuals in multiple ways and individuals are demanding change in benchmarks.  So, bringing it back to the almighty adaptable workspace, doesn't it make sense to think before you act and bring attributes of environmentally friendly ways of building into your workplace to accommodate the diversity of the individual?