Because building construction now accounts for 30 percent of global raw material use — billions of tons each year — designers are waking up to the fact that since their work is part of the problem, they have to be part of the solution.

HOK, notes the author, has turned the trend of green design into a corporate mission.

"Our objective is to incorporate sustainability into everything we do and to lead design practice into a new way of working," says HOK's Sustainable Design Director, Mary Ann Lazarus, AIA, LEED AP.

The firm is led by a team of professionals who practice what they preach.

"This is not a grassroots, junior employee thing," Lazarus says. "It starts at the top." Most of HOK's Executive Committee members are LEED APs, as are the majority of design directors and principals, including IIDA President Pamela Light. The company target is to have more than 40 percent of design professionals LEED AP by year's end, which is the "people" part of their three-tiered sustainable goals: people, projects and practice.

On the "projects" side, HOK begins every endeavor with a LEED/BREEAM checklist, and then tracks it throughout design and construction. Each HOK office is expected to have at least one LEED/BREEAM-registered project under its belt.

The "practice" tier brings green into the office, where sustainability is part of the day-to-day culture in everything from using recycled paper to asking employees to pack their lunches in reusable containers. HOK even recently offset its office energy use with renewable energy credits. "This is how we demonstrate to our partners, clients and friends that we can walk the talk," Lazarus says.

Source: "The Road to Green," IIDA DesignMatters.net, January 2007, by David Whitemyer. Read the story.