The scenario is all too familiar to anyone who's developed headaches upon moving to an apartment with new carpeting or experienced poor indoor-air quality in a unit with inefficient air exchange: One's home, even if relatively new, can often be hazardous to one's health.
That's why healthful, sustainable development is the focus of this year's MFE Concept Community project, the theme of which is “Building Positive: Living Well.” The project brings together the expertise and leadership of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), the first firm to be recognized two years running as Firm of the Year by ARCHITECT magazine, and AMLI Residential, No. 38 on the 2017 NMHC 50 Owners list with more than 25,000 units.
The SOM–AMLI team is undertaking the 2018 Concept Community (CC) to shift the developer mind-set from one of profit alone to one that embraces both profit and social responsibility.
The approach makes sense today not only because building regulations are calling for more-sustainable development, but because new construction processes and products are enabling sustainable buildings to yield a better ROI than nonsustainable structures.
Key to the evolution in codes, building materials, and performance is the improvement such changes can offer to both the environment and resident health and wellness. The CC will show multifamily pros how to incorporate such advanced processes, programs, and solutions in their own work to achieve the dual goals of building sustainably and profitably.
The 2018 CC starts with an existing AMLI project, AMLI 900, built in Chicago in 2014. The team will reinvent AMLI 900's design and construction program using 2018 specifications, to reflect the evolution of best practices surrounding sustainability in the past four years and to show how the AMLI 900 would appear today were it to be built in an optimally sustainable fashion.
At the CC project's conclusion and presentation in September at the Multifamily Executive Conference (MFEC) in Las Vegas, the team will compare the 900's original, 2014 design and construction program with the 2018 Concept Community version using the latest energy-performance metrics. The comprehensive approach behind the CC will address the components that drive thought leadership in sustainable development today, including strategy, tactics, sourcing, and specifications, as well as collaboration, innovation, communications, and marketing—all while promoting the health and well-being of residents.
The 2018 CC will afford the multifamily community the opportunity to uncover processes and products that contribute to net positive building and that, with repeated use and refinement, will lead to reduced costs and overall health and wellness, including lower emissions and grid restructuring, simplified building forms that save on framing, better air sealing and insulation options, simplified and downsized mechanical systems, solar solutions, and more-modest finishes.
Through this nine-month journey, SOM and AMLI will collaborate with leading experts in the fields of energy performance and wellness to quantify the impact of the project's solutions and share findings regularly via the soon-to-be-launched 2018 Concept Community webpage on multifamilyexecutive.com.
Stay tuned to learn more about the process, and be sure to mark your calendars to attend the MFEC, Sept. 17–19, in Las Vegas.
