New buildings give organizations the opportunity to arrange their activities in an ideal way – creating new environments organized around interior activity spaces, filled with natural light and a connection to the outdoors. New buildings can affect the exterior space around them in a positive way, and provide amenities that enrich the activities within.
Modernizing older buildings has a place in our work, too. We bring new visions to older buildings – new ideas about how groups work and learn. We can adapt existing buildings to fit the way people need to use them now, and ensure they adapt to the way people want to use them.
Buildings can help us be stewards of the future – we hope our buildings will be around a long time, and reflect our values of saving energy, preserving resources, and providing environments where people want to work, learn and play.
Older buildings need to save energy and water too – over the next thirty years, more energy will be used by buildings that have already been built, than by all the new buildings that will be constructed between now and then. To have an impact on energy and water use, we need to change the way we design buildings – for the way we work and learn, for how we use resources, for a sustainable future.