Christine Bruckner

Christine Bruckner

President, AIA International Region 2014-15

“By role modeling sustainability in our own lives, people around us will see that daily decisions can help lead to a better world. I try to do that in my profession, in my life, in my integration and volunteer work with the school, community and church. When selecting items at a store or specifying materials for a project I consider the packaging, the durability, the life cycle, the embodied energy, the recycled content and all aspects to the best of my ability to make a holistic and sustainable selection. Sustainability truly effects everything we do and we can all make a difference with every choice we make.”

 

Isabelle: We have a broad prompt – where you can just talk about your work and how you’ve been involved in sustainability.

Christine: Sounds good. So, I’ll do self-introduction?

Isabelle: Yeah, so introduction with what you’ve studied, where you are now, and what you’re doing, and how you’re involved with sustainability.

Christine: Alright. My name is Christine Bruckner. I am an architect and a sustainability consultant. My path starting from – I guess your age – I was in college at Rice University. I went to the school of architecture there which was a 5-year professional program including a one year internship where you spend one year working. I spent that year in Japan and received some scholarships including the Monbusho as well as the Watson Fellowship and really explored different aspects of our profession, trying to understand human needs and experience within space, as architecture is sort of fundamentally focused on helping people reach their potential. That’s where I started. I then jumped into the University of Tokyo, where I did a masters and a doctorate but I didn’t want to be far away from the states so I was also doing my masters at Yale. I finished all of that and started working as an architect in Japan and then NYC. I think throughout all of that study, I realized the importance of the environments we create around the world and everywhere – what we build, where we live, and how we live is critical. Being an architect and a designer of those spaces is a very important role and responsibility with great potential to shape those environments. I really wanted to learn from all the places I’d been and the people I worked with – how we can create environments that are healthy and really help people to feel good and to reach their potential to do the things they want to do, to be at home, to be reflective, to be successful. That was the starting point. Working as an architect, I’ve worked on all scale projects. In New York, I was working with Kohn Pedersen Fox. I was part of the team that worked on the very tall building in Shanghai (Shanghai World Financial Center) and several projects in Korea and New York including Baruch College, which is a vertical campus with daylight streaming through it in NYC. I also worked privately on residences and did some more research. Then I came out to Hong Kong, where I have been based since the Handover – which is a while ago (1997)! At that point, I saw all that was being done over here in Asia and I saw a lot of the fast construction – particularly going on over the border in the PRC (Peoples Republic of China), and started to feel that maybe there were some lessons that I had learned, that we had learned as a profession that could be shared with this vast development that was going on. I actually started then to get very involved in a non-profit Institution, which is the American Institute of Architects. We established the Hong Kong chapter in 1997 (President in 2009/10 and 12 and active) continuously helping to lead discussion groups and symposiums to raise awareness for sustainable best practice and urban development. I’m still doing that, but the Hong Kong Chapter has now grown, and we now have helped to create a chapter in Shanghai and those leaders have just kicked that off this year. We’ve also begun an international region – which is the American Institute of Architects International Region – and I’m currently the President of that. We are currently reaching out to all experts around the world to try to bring best practice together. Not only of American architects, but of architects licensed and working globally and trying to share expertise, create symposiums and panels. We had a symposium two months ago on Asian Cities, best practices, and we had ten international speakers. I still continue to raise awareness for sustainability and how people are building, can build, and bringing lots of people together. My education was very extended and is still ongoing. I think it will go forever. I always want to learn more from the people around me – from the places I see best practice. But I also see my role as connecting people together so they can see best practice and they can each work together to do better. I don’t think an individual person can make these changes, but one can help to catalyze and connect and carry things forward. I am now also working as an architect, I am a director at M Moser associates and we’re working on all kinds of buildings – schools, hospitals, corporate work place, and bringing sustainability into all. Trying to do net zero wherever we can. LEED and BEAM (the equivalent in Hong Kong). Also I have set up previously a company with my Partner called CALEXIAN, where we do energy efficiency retrofit for existing buildings. Existing building reuse is another wonderful way which we can sustainability develop our cities. Growing up in Boston, that’s where retrofits and revitalization really took hold, I guess, in the 60s, and it’s really going strong. I come from that base and I’m seeing how we can continue – it’s beginning to get some traction. In Hong Kong – it’s still quite small, but in Shanghai and other places there is a little bit more opportunity. Some of the older buildings still exist and there is potential for them to be revitalized.

So that’s a long background of what I’ve done and what I’m doing. But I think there are some other things that I’ve done on the side that you [Isabelle], may be interested in and in fact how you knew me.

 

Isabelle: Right.

 

Christine: And what they are is – throughout all of this, in every arena I am in I’ve felt the responsibility to share opportunities to make this a better world. I think as an architect, we are generally optimistic – we want to build a better world. From the very beginning, freshman year in college, and even before – I’ve wanted to build a better world. What does that mean? Of course it’s beautiful, it’s green, it’s comfortable, it’s healthy and now that all translates to sustainability in our current world. When I was working with the Girl Scouts for example – I was a USA GSO leader for more than 10 years and brought a lot of the girls through till their gold – we focused on how the school (Hong Kong International School) could be more environmentally conscious. There were many programs. The girls embraced recycling plastics, creating programs with the teachers and administrations support, working, and they actually created some of the same things we’ve been doing more recently – reached out to principals, reached out to leadership within the school, created competitions and programs, saved millions of plastic bottles. But then eventually, through additional programs and other activities and individual’s efforts, the whole campus became plastic free. This has continued. And to move that along, another group of kids created the [stainless steel] bottles, we then helped to initiate that. We found the producer, we made sure they could make it, we tested them all, we created the designs with the students, we incorporated them, we figured out how the pricing would work, and then we helped the kids to find ways that they could sell them. Many of the student groups got involved, the Girl Scouts put the initial seed money in and then gave one to every scout,  the Admin gave one to each teachers, and tried to make them available to visiting students – we wanted to show – as a role model,  this is what we think one should do. One should be plastic-free, one should have a reusable bottle that is a material that’s molecularly solid – not a cheap material, not made improperly. We actually want to be healthy for wellness and healthy for the world- that is true sustainability. There are multiple levels of sustainability – it’s sustainable to reuse something many times in terms of the objects waste but maybe not in terms of your health if that going to degrade within you. And that brought us into developing some more sustainable initiatives at the school.  Now we have the glass recycling going – we just celebrated our two year anniversary for Glass recycling – that was the Southside Glass Recycling Initiative that we officially launched with Maria Gillette and myself as the cofounders and the scouts and students of the HKIS Green Dragins Sustainability Committee, SGRI was originally encouraged by April Lai, of Green Glass Green. The way that these things happen is first you find somebody out there who is doing what you appreciate. I saw April – and through the architectural awards, we recognized her with the AIA nominating committee for what she’s doing for our environment in Hong Kong. I got to know her better and then brought her in to talk to the girls (Girl Scouts) and she found an opportunity for us to actually apply for a grant which then funded the whole process. Then the kids in the school painted the collection bins, we got it all working, and then she helped to coordinate the trucks for pick up weekly …so again, I’m just emphasizing that this is never a single individual. Just collaborative success – it was the school, the kids, myself, my friends, my mentors, the government, the businesses, the community. We needed the businesses to loan us space, we needed the public to agree to donate glass, we needed the school to agree to have glass on campus – we had to develop a system so younger ones don’t touch it and the older ones are in partnership, in some cases with adult supervision, and worked all of this out so that everybody’s needs were met and considered. All of this together, I would say, when you want to get an initiative done, you have to really start looking for people to work together – people that you admire that are doing it, and then to start to learn from them. They’ll help you and then you can actually bring other people to get involved so you can actually get these things to happen. We’re still doing it [glass recycling] and it’s still a fun and meaningful initiative. The Southside District Council (SDC) had another grant, which April reached for, and she asked if we would help – so we actually had some of the kids from HKIS come to help with a workshop to teach little ones how to revitalize the bottles…then educate them about what they’re doing and how the glass is 100% recycled and gets a new life and how that process works and where they can drop their glass off, and how they can be a part of that process to keep glass out of the ever shrinking landfill. So it becomes kids teaching kids to change the world. I think that is fundamental…hours of volunteer of learning and sharing. Generally, the kids take off with it, and come up with some new ideas to do things. That’s for the glass recycling side. We’ve actually had some recognition. It went out in the local papers, it’s gone in a few magazines, but at the end of the day, it is the government that will embrace some method for recycling glass, and I think that our Secretary of the Environment, KS Wong, has been working on that and whether they’re going to do it by taxing people who buy glass and using that money towards recycling, or actually employing and working with groups like Green Glass Green to have them help get that taken care of…how that will be assimilated and run by government we are all eager to understand, but in the meantime, we have a solution that works, and we know that we have a place where we can take our glass and we don’t have to throw it into a landfill. Bit by bit, that’s happening. At HKIS we now have the Green Dragons – and they have been trying to get some things done. If you start to look closer into what the school has done, they are really embracing energy efficiency with all the retrofits that have been going on in the school, and all of the new buildings are aiming to be platinum or gold rated. I try to recommend and bring that expertise into other projects, whatever projects I’m working on, whether it is a hotel, or a school, or an office, or somebody’s residence, to give them advice on what are best practices that are sustainable – which materials are more sustainable, which orientation for their building, what detailing, what energy systems, what heating and cooling systems, and specifically interior materials. I really do take sustainability into health – my current focus is on wellness, because I believe we want to have a sustainable world because we want the Earth to last for your great grandchildren, and to be as beautiful in places as it still is today. But we also want to stay healthy. Particularly with being in this region – I do a lot of my work in Beijing and Shanghai – and there are days where you really can’t see much through the smog and it’s quite scary and we’re conscious of that. Everybody is conscious of it and we’re looking at ways to create wellness within homes, within schools, within different areas where people live. Ideally, within the whole world, within the city; so that you can go anywhere and have lots of open-air designs, but in this situation you start to wonder how indoor spaces that incorporate nature can exist and know that they must have incredible filtration systems.  For health, for example, we can create a design, which makes the stairs easier to get to than the lift (elevator), so that people will be more likely to just take the stairs. Incorporating that as a designer will change how people use buildings and will change how healthy they feel. Also the material choices are critical – there are a lot of materials that are natural, like wood or bamboo, but then they coat them in varnishes or they glue them with very toxic glues and materials so we look for VOC free materials. This is starting to get more popular. You can actually go to the store yourself and ask for VOC free paint when you do your house, and you can buy it yourself, you don’t need to go to an expert, you no longer need to import it from Germany – sustainable healthy options have become much more available. I think this is because of lots of people are saying we care about our world and our health. So everybody does their bit, whatever decision one makes, I’m always bringing it back to – how is it made? For example, let’s imagine we’re designing your room, and we want to paint it, we want to put new furniture in it, you’ll tell me what you like, we’ll work together, we’ll source it, but before I would actually specify the items and materials and agree to it, and specify, I would double check the manufacturer – are they working sustainably? When they created that all natural VOC free item, did they in fact discharge polluted water back into an aquifer? Were they running inappropriately? In what way were they creating this product? One needs to consider the whole cradle to grave’ or cradle-to-cradle method. So when you’re finished with that item, will they take it back? Will they reuse any parts of it? There are some companies where 95% of their new product is a recycled piece, and they are beautiful as well. So you start to actually select based on these – in every way – grocery stores, everything you do, every decision you make – how is it packaged? I’ll buy the apples free, put them in a basket, rather than the ones that comes in a plastic box, wrapped with Saran-wrap with special non-bruising Styrofoam all around them – because otherwise I would take that home and it would fill up my trash bin and would then put in the landfill, particularly here in Hong Kong, it’s harder to get all that sourced. It’s something that I think we do everyday, and by role modeling it in ourselves, other people around you will start to see that that’s one of the ways you make decisions towards a better world. I do that in my profession, in my life, in my integration with the schools, and all of my volunteer work with the church. That’s sustainability; it’s pretty much in everything we do, so you understand it that way. Yeah, it’s a very long explanation, and I’m not sure if there was one part of that which I should emphasize more for you?

 

Isabelle: I was curious, because you said that you are a sustainability consultant, in terms of architecture, right? So, have you come across clients that don’t really like your ideas around sustainability or that they don’t want to pay the costs? How do you deal with these sorts of struggles and how do you get them to understand that making these decisions are important?

 

Christine: Well, usually, if somebody has hired me to be a sustainable architect or consultant for them, they already have that interest. They’re searching somebody out to help them. So then they are asking for some expert suggestions. And what one has to do whenever you are giving a service is provide a spectrum. If we pull out all the stops we can create a positive energy creating completely renewable solutions. If we want to make it healthy and aim for gold or silver we can make a very good building a very good solution. In some cases if we do it early on, it may not have much of a cost impact, but it has a time impact, because usually you have to do more thorough checking of all of these materials, you have to get proof of their backgrounds and their VOC free qualities. You have to do a little more energy modeling and studying of it, so there may be some consultant cost. But then again, if they come to you to do that, that’s what they’re interested in. You never really find yourself in a position where you’re pushing too hard, because you can sense what people are interested to do. You engage them; they share with you their goals, and your job is to work within that budget and those goals to provide the best solution you can. Then, if you think there might be a better solution you can always suggest it, and they can consider that and understand that there might be a different price tag or timeline. And sometimes they’re okay with that, and sometimes it doesn’t work. Even if a project doesn’t go all the way, I generally would like to help out or give some advice, even if it’s a small consulting job, because it’ll be a little bit better, it’ll be a little bit more sustainable, and if you multiply that with all the projects that are out there, if it’s going to be a design for a 4-acre resort area, and you’ve made it a little bit more sustainable, then you’ve actually made a difference, right? For example perhaps a project wouldn’t have captured the rainwater and reused and been oriented properly to get the solar gains. I feel that no matter what level people are willing to go, you can still make a difference, and that’s why I do so much with AIA to raise awareness. With more awareness, my belief is that if people know better they’ll do better. Sometimes things don’t happen because people just don’t know, they don’t see an easy opportunity, they may have misconceptions about what it takes to do things best practice. But actually, the more you share, you show case studies, they say: “Oh! That’s interesting. That works! I’d like to do that.” So I hope, as we continue to raise awareness, developers and architects, and even people who aren’t necessarily working with me, but working throughout China, India, America, are starting to say: we’ll try for those ideals. You just have to be patient through these hurdles and keep raising awareness.

 

Natasha: What are some common trends that you have observed with the people that consult you and what they have to say?

 

Christine: The fundamentals are still the fundamentals of good architecture. If you get in at an early stage, it has to do with location and orientation. You can follow some aspects of feng shui or different methodologies of planning that incorporated some aspects of best site planning. But, just to be conscious of where the winds are, that can naturally ventilate a space. With the energy efficiency aspect – particularly in Hong Kong – buildings use almost 95% of the energy of the city. Air conditioning, running power – it’s all about our buildings. If we could have buildings use less energy, then we could help Hong Kong and other cities reduce their loads, then they would need to use less coal generated energy, and ideally would create less carbon. The key, in cities like Hong Kong, is reducing energy use by buildings. That’s where we put a lot of our attention – on how to have more energy efficiency. Sometimes it’s as simple as commissioning. Commissioning means you go back and check on something. So you come up with a great design, you give it to a client, and they build it. If you never go back to check if they did it right, if the machines are working properly, are they calibrated?, are they clean?, are they being run all the time or just when they need to? – one could be wasting all kinds of energy and money. So going back in and checking on that is going to be a way to help very much in the future. People are now beginning to expect that. Some countries demand it. Hong Kong is beginning to have a request to certain types of buildings to show their annual usage, and eventually they’re going to have to print and publish that right outside in the lobby so that it will be a way to see if it is a good building or not. People can choose to rent there or not rent there based on this information and their own sensibilities. Owners would not like to spend that much more money if they don’t have to. Energy is a big cost. The multitenant buildings have some complications because of how the electricity is billed, so it gets quite complicated. I think there are still a few hurdles that they’re working through. The other part is in day lighting. Day lighting since the beginning of architecture has been a key, if we can daylight and not use electric light for more of the time or in more places, then we can save a lot of energy. Reduce is always the first part of sustainability, and using any materials that can help you reduce. A trend as I mentioned briefly is reuse – so reusing a building. Have you heard of the term embodied energy?

 

Isabelle & Natasha: No.

 

Christine: If you look at anything, like your phone, there is an embodied energy of how they created the plastic casing, the glass, the interiors, how they shipped it to wherever you are. There is so much energy that was used to create it. You can actually quantify that. In a building, you can quantify one ton of concrete. So for a certain type of concrete, it took a certain much energy to create it, it had this much waste; it took this much [energy] to be transported out there. You can do that for everything in a building. So if you have an existing building with all that embodied energy and you used it again, then you’re saving that embodied energy, and you’re not going to bring in new materials to create a new foundation. You’re using the maximum that you can that’s smart to use, and you’re reusing it. Utilizing embodied energy is a key one for retrofit and revitalization. It also helps you maintain character and scale if you’re in an old city, some of the stones, they don’t use them anymore, some of the craftsmanship isn’t available anymore so you’re saving also cultural heritage and proportion, scale of city, and that starts to help preserve neighborhoods. There are a lot of aspects to retrofit and revitalization that are key as an architect and designer in sustainable development. Windows – like I mentioned – we usually do change them. For example, in Hong Kong it’s just one piece of glass – that means there is no insulation. I’m not sure where you are now…

 

Isabelle: Yeah, there’s good insulation here, but I find that in Hong Kong it’s always really cold indoors.

 

Christine: Yes, and you have the condensation issues and all that. What we recommend of course is insulated glass – that’s two pieces of glass with a gap and it helps to modify the temperature and a lot of people are even using triple glazing so that you really don’t lose any thermal transmission through the window. If you are losing any heat either direction it’s coming around in the frame, and then you can actually detail your building better. Then you are not wasting money heating the exterior world or cooling the wrong part of the building. Revitalization is taking special pieces, the doors, anything reusable form an existing building. All the steel structures you may or may not know is recycled – that is always done because it is so valuable, but beyond that – even bricks or tiles – all kinds of things, some are worthy some are not, so you need to get experts to come in to test the strength or to recognize value to use it for decorative motifs. There is a lot that can be reused, so then there is no need to reproduce more, and if you don’t produce more then you save all that energy again.

 

Natasha: I’ve also heard this one controversy about energy saving and recycling because some people are saying how recycling glass actually takes up more energy than producing new glass bottle. How would you advise that? When do you recycle and what are the cost and benefits of doing so?

 

Christine: I think I know that that resource comes from reusing one glass bottle as material to create another glass bottle– that’s where you have to melt it and purify it and refine it, and then create it, as opposed to starting with raw materials. Because of the way that certain factories are set up – they are set up already to make the new glass, and some of them are not set up to take advantage of existing or recycled glass. It’s a change in how they have set up the factory and then it’s a look down the line…Are you looking at the cost today on your balance sheet for 2014? Or looking at what it’s going to look like in ten years. Are you considering where all that glass is going? Does that have a value? All that waste piling up and then putting a park on top and say “Look! It’s gorgeous!” but underneath there are lots of bottles and plastic packaging. If people knew and really thought about it they would choose not to have that under the ground because we don’t know what that does and how that leaches into drinking water. It takes thousands of years to break down… It’s our only Earth. Waste is a big, big issue. Again, I go back to the reduce and reuse. So first thing would be to reduce the amount we need because we maybe don’t go out and buy glass, we use our own container, we fill it up with water at home and bring it with us. But there are times where we will buy something that comes in a bottle, and that’s okay, we just need to be aware of it. But we reduce the amount that we use, and then we reuse them. I think some of the plants take back their own bottles and then wash them. Washing is different from melting and refining and recreating. They wash them and they can reuse them. I think they have a limit, maybe ten times, but still, if you could use it ten times, that’s ten bottles they didn’t produce, that they just washed. Then they had to collect them, there’s some driving, but that’s a more sustainable option. In the old days, the milk was delivered in glass bottles and then those bottles were picked up and brought back again. You never had to throw them away at all; they were reused. We’ve developed into a very disposable immediate society, which serves some of our needs efficiently and there are certain times when everybody does that, and that’s okay. But there are some methods that we can adopt which are less disposable. You guys are studying sustainability maybe, but the key to understand about sustainability, is that there is no ‘away’. “Just throw that away” – where? Where’s away? Your backyard? Under your ground? Or squish it into a smaller ball and pack it into a boat and send it somewhere? Where is away? When you throw something away, you have to think about where it is going. We do that with our site. Everything must leave the site and now, you actually have to report where the material goes. When you realize that there is no ‘away’, there are very simple things that can be done to change your mentality.

There is one misconception I can share with you about wood – a lot of people think that if they use wood, they are going to cut down trees and that’s really bad because trees give us oxygen. One of the things that we have learned is that’s true when trees are young. When they’re young a tree is growing and it’s grabbing all the carbon from the environment and it’s turning it into this beautiful wood while creating oxygen. When it gets old, at some point, if it’s taken down and turned into wood for construction, or if it’s a renewable forest – if you cut it up and use that in your building, you capture the carbon. If you burn it, forget it, you’ve released it again. But if you capture that carbon and you create things with wood and then you replant trees, then actually that cycle is a very sustainable and beautiful one. The conception that cutting down trees is not sustainable only applies to rainforest-type wood, not for specific renewable forests, which a lot of American hardwood and other woods are.

 

Isabelle: I have a question regarding promoting sustainability. You say that with your consultant work, people come to you and they already have that mindset of being sustainable. How do you promote sustainability to people who don’t necessarily want to make that change? I also have a follow up question, have you worked with the government on how we could make government buildings more sustainable in Hong Kong?

 

Christine: The Hong Kong government is very aware of it. In fact, many governments have the most regulations for government buildings to be more sustainable. I believe in China actually, the government has a certain rating of LEED or 3-star that they have to reach and I believe in Hong Kong, for BEAM, they have a certain recommended level that they should be at in terms of being role models within the city. But those are for new buildings. Let’s say we have a hundred buildings, you’re only going to maybe tear down and rebuild four or five of them in a given period percentage-wise. That means you’re left with approximately 90 percent or more that are existing, and those are the ones that need the most attention right now. So revitalizing and revamping those buildings are very important. The government does have some schemes being developed to support this. Some governments are giving money – I know in Singapore, they are really encouraging developers to do these retrofits, to save money and to create a greener city. Any encouragement that the government can do is really helpful. One of the things that the government here does, is they give you more GFA – so that means the amount of space that you can actually rent and build is increased. Each unit and each square meter costs so much money in Hong Kong, so additional GFA is a big incentive. That translates into significant dollars, so people are then willing to try to be more sustainable to get that additional GFA. Sometimes people would have done it anyway, but sometimes that extra incentive is needed. So incentives are a really great way [to promote sustainability].  Schools generally really want to be greener, and local schools have funding for that. They know that the kids are there, so you want really sustainable , healthy schools. I know that when we were first starting our energy efficiency company, we were really looking at the universities and thinking that people like yourselves, if they’re living in a place that is more sustainable and they’re made aware with screens and monitors of how the energy and all the things around them are being used, they’re just going to learn instinctively from that. Even in your own dorm room, if you had a meter and you saw “Oh, on Friday, I used so much energy. What was I doing? Oh yeah, I had the air conditioning on and I was out all day. I can fix that.” You start to modify your own behavior and say “Oh wow, this week I had half as much energy use.” If everybody had that sort of direct awareness of their own use, we would all be able to potentially make a difference. Some people may say “Well, I don’t care, I needed it at that temperature.” But you just have to keep encouraging people to do the best that they feel comfortable to do. The other way [to promote sustainability] is through awards – to recognize projects and people that are doing what we call ‘walking the walk’ or doing what’s right. We definitely, through the AIA, and lots of other programs try to recognize and give awards to people. In fact for architecture, if there is not a sustainable element, it’s unlikely to receive a top award – even if it’s a very nice design. If it hasn’t tried to create a more sustainable solution within that design, then how can you say it’s the best design? It has to have incorporated and really considered best practice and sustainability is integral. With that being said, it’s interesting, as a designer, to say that just being sustainable doesn’t also get an award. It has to be sustainable in a way that is meeting peoples needs and elegant and worthy of a design award. It’s awards, recognition, incentives, and then sometimes it’s just the money savings. People hear that that building is costing half as much than their building. That’s all it’s going to take, and that person is going to revitalize their building. Those are the incentives. Ideally, the government can give us more. As nonprofits and groups, we can keep creating more awards, and then people say: “why did a certain project get the award?” Then the designers can give presentations of what they did, why it was award worthy, what was recognized. They describe their systems in a way that people can understand and then people may realize: “I can implement something like that.” Then people will learn. It’s definitely changing. It’s 100 percent different now than it was when I first got here in 1997. But, is it fast enough? I don’t know. We’ve got to keep trying.

 

Isabelle: Could you explain a little bit about what retrofitting is?

 

Christine: Sure, I mean, I use these words interchangeably: retrofit or revitalize. Revitalization is when you give new life to something. Retrofit is the process of changing the existing building into the new use. The retrofit is when you remove the non-performing windows and the ugly carpets, and some of the unnecessary walls. Then you come in with sustainable solutions. Then you change it from a non-used perhaps, school building for example, into an elderly home. You literally give it a new life. A very old example in Boston would be Faneuil Hall, where they took the old markets, which were these old brick market buildings in which people used to come in and trade all their goods way back. The city cleaned them up to be a very nice dining and shopping areas with indoor outdoor spaces. It becomes a destination within the city, and it has character because it was originally built back in the 1700’s. A lot of these initiatives are happening all around the world. Sometimes buildings are retrofitted into the same use they were designed for, these you don’t notice as much. It’s more about cleaning it up, and making it more efficient and attractive. But typically, revitalization changes use. In Hong Kong, some industrial buildings are being changed and are getting new uses as offices residences or artists quarter.  Some industrial buildings have been turned into all kinds of crazy athletic programs and trampoline centers. But I guess you just have to come back and explore. It’s about breathing new life into an old structure, so you’re keeping the embodied energy and you make something useful for the city. That’s retrofitting. People can do it to their homes. It’s common. You come in and you add more insulation, you change your windows, you add some shading, maybe you add photovoltaic panels. One can directly upgrade one’s home – Change the boiler system to something that is only on when you need it, (many systems in houses keep a large volume of water hot all the time which is more costly. while other ones just have access to the water, and when you turn it on, then the water will start to be heated, and it will be continuous.  The government in America will actually give you some credit for retrofitting and changing to be more efficient as well. It’s in small amounts but they would like people to do that, because again, it uses less energy and it saves them money, it saves everybody energy. Retrofit is a huge potential business. It’s been going on forever and it holds a lot of possibility by revitalizing cities without destroying them. In addition revitalization can make cities and neighborhoods more fun and more affluent. Some places you go in and you can spruce them up, make them places you want to be. It’s a fun challenge.

 

Isabelle: I have one final question and then maybe you could provide some closing remarks. You mentioned your father was an architect so I assume that because he was an architect, it became your dream as well. But what inspired you to want to be a sustainable consultant and make buildings that are sustainable, and retrofit? How do you think you’ve inspired others in that same way?

 

Christine: I was surrounded by architecture my whole life. All of our holidays as a kid would be visiting the pyramids, and we used to joke that I would take pictures of windows because that’s what I was used to looking at. Taking a holiday with two architects, it’s what you do! But it also teaches you about societies. When you study architecture of different cultures and when you start to travel and learn about it, you understand how the cultures work, you really learn, it’s a really wonderful education that way. My father didn’t really expect me to become an architect. He shared the joy of it and what he enjoyed about it, but then it’s not the most profitable profession that one can go into. You have all kinds of challenges in terms of responsibility – you take all the responsibility. If anything goes wrong ever; health, safety, and welfare are our responsibilities as architects. Again, the other reason I’m into wellness right now stems from that. But in the end of the day, it is worth it to be creating environments that are uplifting and improving our community and our world. I guess it grew as I started to learn more, to not just want to create one little building that was a gem and was really sustainable, didn’t really use any energy. I didn’t see how that was going to really help change our world completely. Maybe it could be a role model but if you don’t share that information and get the people that know to share ideas and encourage each other to do more, then it wasn’t going to make a difference. So that’s when I got into the urban design side of it. I’ve been part of the Hong Kong Institute of Urban Design, which we founded four, five years ago. We try to take those considerations in with our symposiums and our work. You’re responsible not only for your little part of the city, but also for the area around you. I think that just came naturally. I think also being a mother of three, I’m very worried about the world that they’re inheriting, and I’ve been teaching – how to take care of their world. They’ve been very involved in all of these initiatives. Anybody who has been a part of any of the groups, projects, meetings that we’ve had, have seen what we’ve done and I hope that it has maybe spurred them on to think: “oh I can do that,” or if we introduced them to April (Green Glass Green) and they get to work on a project and see how that one woman has made such a difference, they could be inspired by her. Then each of them becomes an inspiration. I mean, yourselves, you could be an inspiration by sharing with your colleagues. I think that just being aware and sharing that awareness, then you will start to ask different questions.  At the grocery store when you select a non-packaged alternative your friends will be like: “I should think about that too – Okay.” And you’ll change them and they’ll change a friend, and then they’ll change a friend, and hopefully they’ll stop packaging our apples in plastic containers. These little things will happen one by one. That sounds like a small thing but can you imagine how much plastic is in every grocery store in the world? That’s how you approach it and we take that into architecture in the same way. Everything that we specify, any group that I work with, any architectural supplier that I recognized or work with – they are also walking the walk. I think it’s a constant circle – being inspired by others and being able to share awareness with a larger group. I do it professionally; that’s the priority in terms of how we build our cities, but since my kids have been born I’ve been doing it in some way in the community, whether in school, the scouts, the church, or where there are groups. In fact, we have one group of silver scouts – I’ve come in as their advisor for the silver program and they’re working on safety issues of sustainable homes, fires, and related aspects. They want to learn about that and they want to raise the awareness to see why other people’s homes aren’t as safe and what they can do to make them safer in Hong Kong. No matter what it is you’re interested in, finding a few people who share that concern, and then having them introduce you to other people, you’ll find your own path and I think that just happens naturally. It’s an ongoing process, so stay open-minded and enjoy the ride.

 

Isabelle & Natasha: Thank you!

 

Natasha: I have a question that I guess is unrelated to our entire project. It might be a sensitive topic so it’s okay if you don’t feel comfortable answering. I know that the building of the incinerator plant in Hong Kong has been a huge controversy, in terms of what is more environmentally degrading – incineration or landfills. I was wondering where you stand on the issue.

 

Christine: It is a politically sensitive topic here because the government does really want to push it forward and most environmental groups do not want it. So that might right there capture your answer. But you always have to look at these things holistically and that’s not so easy. Like I said, there is that embodied energy in a building, and when you tear it down you throw it all away but that might have been the best solution if what you’re building is going to be that many more times better. So you always have to understand the whole picture. If Hong Kong really had this incredible amount of waste and would for sure have that much waste forever, then an incinerator might make sense because it doesn’t bury it. But there is a lot of research to be done, and the particulates that come out – some people say they dissipate immediately and you never see them again, others say that they’re all going to fall straight back into the water where the finless porpoises live and it’s going to completely destroy some very beautiful areas. We all want to see the research, so we ask for all these environmental studies to be done about the third runway, about the incinerator and they try really hard to do the research and the difficulty is again, value weight. Are we weighing the value of those marine mammals? But you have to think again – the government is taking care of the people…So they’re trying to figure out what’s the best way to take care of all this waste. Then you have to look at precedence and some people who create incinerators are saying, “oh we have wonderful precedents.” I think there’s one incinerator – maybe in Taipei – where it’s so efficient to the point that they don’t have enough garbage to incinerate. They actually bring in more garbage because these things are only efficient if they’re always working. Again, I’m not the expert at incineration technologies but I have heard so many sides and I believe that these things work if they’re continuously going. But if they go on and off, then they’re not as effective and their value of efficiency does not make sense. I was actually on one jury at a university here where the architect kids were trying to design a way to make something fun around it, cover the incinerator with growing tomatoes or a place for fashion shows – whatever they could think of that would soften the look of this thing, and also emphasize that it’s a place for people and it’s not bad. That was an interesting effort. I just spoke to a gentleman last Saturday who strongly opposes it. He strongly believes that it will damage the surrounding beaches, the water, and the animals. He believes that it’s overkill for what we need in terms of our use. I’ve always been at some discussions where the government and some representatives are speaking and saying that it seems to be the best solution that we can have at the moment, we don’t know what to do, we have no more landfill space. We can’t reclaim anymore land because we are not allowing more reclamation (which is where we used to put all the waste). I feel like they really are searching. They are very open minded, so maybe this is an opportunity where we have to really understand what the best solutions are and help make our voice be heard. Personally, I’d prefer that there was no incinerator, but that would require another solution. As I’m so aware of the holistic aspects of some of these things, I would need to really understand all of the other solutions and my first solution would be to reduce our waste. I think that they feel that it may not be possible to encourage this society to reduce it’s waste to a degree that would make that difference in time. Eventually we may be able to get there, but do we have to see something horrible happen before that? I hope not. I hope we can do it gently and positively and just get there. There are a lot of things going in the right direction but they come hand in hand with weighing values and making choices. That’s why I say that with every decision we make, there is some aspect that you can weigh and at some point it’s like “I’m just buying groceries! This shouldn’t be so hard!”  – I don’t always buy exactly the thing I want, because I don’t like how it’s packaged. I can’t always source the exact piece I want, I have to look for so long to find something that meets those needs, that also meets my internal values. I guess its just raising awareness that these are shared values because they result in a shared, better, sustainable globe for everybody’s kids. I think getting that message across is not just about what any of us individually needs or wants but what will make our world a better place for our grandchildren and great grandchildren. I think that’s always the best motivator. There is one problem though. If you look too closely into some of these issues that are going on in the world you start to think: “Why did we do that? Why is that happening? It’s awful.” But I always think: what can we do to help? Here is where we are, how can I raise some awareness? How can I make a little bit of a difference? What can we do to positively impact this situation? I hope you guys will keep that positive energy going. Anyway, I’m sorry it’s been a long talk and I can’t imagine that you’re going to have to transcribe all of this. Please do ask me if there are parts of this that you want to read more clearly, I’d be happy to make sure of that.

 

Isabelle & Natasha: Thank you so much!

 

Isabelle: Thank you so much for talking with us. I really enjoyed our conversation!

 

Christine: Yes! It was really nice to meet you both and good luck!

 

Isabelle & Natasha: Thank you! Bye!

Christine: Take care! Bye!