Feature image: The LEED Platinum and LEED Zero Houston Advanced Research Center in The Woodlands, Texas. Photo credit: Slyworks Photography.

In Houston this past winter, temperatures have been unusually warm and humid. This is the new reality green building professionals in southeast Texas face in designing, working with our clients and educating future generations of designers. Today’s climate challenges are giving rise to a new magnitude of life cycle design focus, bringing about a wider shift of community expectations for climate resilience in the built environment.

Living in Houston for 45 years, I have watched the region’s climate change dramatically. What we face now are wild swings of weather that challenge the very fabric of the built environment. This past January at the college football national championship, Houston temperatures went from the high 70s to hail and freezing weather over the length of a single football game—a drop of over 50 degrees in less than three hours. Our buildings, open spaces, transportation and other infrastructure are facing fast degradation. However, those who create the built environment still base their designs on a previous reality of two distinct seasons: a cool winter and a very hot summer.

It is undeniable that our buildings and urban infrastructure need to be prepared to face a rapidly changing climate. Buildings must be designed to protect the health, safety and welfare of the public, and our infrastructure must be weatherproofed enough to withstand future extreme climatic events. This means moving beyond just keeping the elements out and intentionally designing for extreme weather conditions.

Extreme weather and the built environment

In my work with the Gensler Research Institute, I have uncovered considerable insight into the global nature of this challenge. In our most recent Global Climate Action Survey, for example, my team collected data on nearly 10,000 individuals’ experiences with severe weather across eight countries. We found that extreme weather is a global experience—90% of respondents reported being recently impacted by at least one severe weather event. Worryingly, the average rate was over five severe weather events experienced per person.

Our survey revealed that the most common of all global environmental stressors are extreme heat and heavy precipitation, with each impacting nearly three-quarters of survey respondents. Both of these stressors have long been issues of concern in southeast Texas. Designers in Houston have historically tried to address the precipitation from hurricanes and the intense humidity that follows. Buildings in Houston are designed with tight facades to stop the mold and mildew that can find its way into interiors after such events. Today, however, our design scope in Houston must increasingly compete with a new foe: extended periods of freeze and drought.

These new environmental stressors have considerable implications on the materiality of our buildings. As the speed and scale of the climate crisis increases, it is getting increasingly complex to design core and shell projects and interiors for durability and longevity. In the summer of 2023, Houston faced months of drought and temperatures exceeding 95 degrees. Added to this weather pattern is the well-documented Houston heat island that has been found to increase temperatures by at least 10–12 degrees in the inner area of the city.

This new climate reality is adversely impacting the humans who build, install and maintain our built environment. It's just not possible to work outside for most of the summer in these conditions. Every aspect of our built environment is being challenged.

People walk into a long, two-story building surrounded by trees — The Woodlands-based home for the Houston Advanced Research Center, which focuses on the southeast Texas region’s resource stewardship and climate adaptation. The LEED Zero building employs ground source heat pump technology paired with a rain screen cladding and passive house–tested envelope. The site was designed to thrive in our frequent rainstorms and survive our increasing drought and heat challenges. Photo credit: Peter Molick.

The effects of climate change on specific building aspects

One of the most at-risk elements is the building envelope. Modern curtain wall and storefront glazing technologies are certainly improving, but the detrimental implications of on-site, stick-built assembly, with its myriad joinery issues, seem to be missing from our design and life cycle calculations. Here in Houston, near the Gulf Coast, we are regularly reminded that humid air infiltration is one of the biggest building health and energy issues we face. Humid air presents a common problem in glass-box design—through leakage—and in older buildings through single-pane (or compromised double-pane) glazing condensation.

In my past practice, I saw additional issues with non-insulated spandrel panels, the failure of gaskets and non-thermally broken window mullion systems. The latter become radiators and leaky barriers to the outdoor humidity. Over time, humidity’s corrosive effects can cause mullion system details to deteriorate. In short, a preponderance of glass can leave a building owner-operator with a cascade of envelope failures down the line.

Within 25 to 30 years of their construction, many of the buildings at the university where I was part of the operations team presented major challenges involving moisture-induced degradation of the seals and surrounding wall systems. As numerous research studies have noted, high-performance insulation and vapor barriers within solid walls outlast the components of window systems.

In focusing on Texas, we might assume we are dealing solely with heat and humidity, but due to the recent effects of climate change, we have experienced freezing weather challenges as well. The impact of freezing on glass panels, curtain-wall gaskets and non-thermally broken mullions compromises these systems further. The temperature variation that expands and contracts these components over the course of a year in north Texas might be as great as 100 degrees. That wear and tear necessitates a vigilant maintenance approach—often the last thing an overwhelmed building operator wants to worry about.

This temperature variation is also putting immense stress on our water and electricity infrastructure. In the past, electricity access was most challenged by hurricane force winds that felled trees and took down power lines. Electricity distribution has also always been challenged by the heat and its implication on expansion of electrical systems. Now, we in Houston face freezes as well—reducing electrical efficiency and detrimentally impacting gas-fired generation.

Electrical disruptions are of particular concern in southeast Texas. In this flat part of the world, if there is no electricity, there is no water. Although there are small Texas towns with water tanks, most of the big metropolitan areas rely on massive pump systems to pressurize potable water and provide lift stations to return the sewage in the very flat terrain of southeast Texas. When water pressure breaks down, through power failure or because of the shrinking soil that follows droughts, groundwater can find its way into the potable water system, creating contamination and sparking alerts for residents to boil water. Also, without water, we can't use boilers to generate electricity in our fossil fuel plants, fueling further electricity shortages.

The design response in design has, in my opinion, been lagging. Following the devastating implications of Hurricane Harvey, the studio conversation has finally begun to address the implications of stormwater, overland water flow and flash flooding in watershed areas. Our built environment is only now being understood, much less approached, with critical design strategies.

This inevitably leads to razing buildings or creating compensatory storm detention. We are also facing a degradation of curtain wall systems and energy efficiency as buildings designed for a hot and humid climate begin to deal with the new implications of freezing and thawing. Throughout all of this, we’re encountering social challenges in urban environments, including food deserts and the absence of walkable neighborhoods.

Climate preparedness for all communities

We would be remiss to only focus on the physical design response peculiar to climate challenges of this part of Texas. The Texas coast, if not the whole Gulf Coast, is characterized by a notable dearth of economic and social resources, as well as access to knowledge. To help bridge this gap, we developed a Climate Preparedness Framework that can help to guide community resilience across North America. In this framework, we break down four interrelated layers necessary for a full community to survive ongoing climate challenges: environment, economy, experience and equity.

For instance, the flood zones and exacerbated heat islands in Houston tend to center around economically underserved and majority-minority neighborhoods. Preparing to mitigate the impacts of flooding and ease disaster recovery is not simply an investment in infrastructure or recovery of property, but also in the long-term social challenges of income, housing and employment.

The CDRZ Act (Community Disaster Resilience Zones) has given us incredible opportunities to work with community leaders, elevating local talent to determine effective ways to prepare and recover from climatic shocks. In addition to good design afforded to all, resources and appropriate respect for the insights of communities within these resilience zones need to be supported in the future. Our resilient communities in this changing climate require not just rethought design approaches, but also a strategic redirection of empowerment resources and city human services.

It takes a coordinated approach across education, design, construction and operations to tackle the challenges of the climate crisis and beyond. It's what we're trying to do now on a variety of fronts, from local chapters of USGBC and AIA to BIFMA, ULI and in our own design classrooms.

Our collective response to these environmental and social shifts will form the basis of cooperation between the design community and its clients. We can avoid starting from scratch by leveraging the collaborative potential of existing subject matter expert groups, like USGBC’s LEED Fellows, to address the myriad life cycle economy implications of these global trends. Leaders can then apply large-scale best practices in neighborhoods along the entire Gulf Coast—harnessing local community empowerment and knowledge of ecosystem services to design for our rapidly evolving world climate.

5 questions for...

Rives Taylor, LEED AP BD+C, LEED Fellow
Co-director, design resilience; global leader, resilience research; principal—Gensler
Houston, Texas

What inspired you to move toward a green building career?

Three life experiences:

Growing up in Pittsburgh, I experienced in the 1960s and '70s firsthand—the reality of visible and invisible pollution and detriments to natural systems. In fact, one summer in high school, we climbed all over the region looking at the industrial economy and the ecology of river systems around the plants...and the relics of the old industrial origins of Pittsburgh.
As a young practitioner in Boston, I was engaged in looking at the implications of old industrial sites on neighborhoods and the populations there.
As a client in the '90s, I witnessed firsthand the unintended operational consequences of poorly designed and constructed buildings on resource and human health stewardship.

What is the most exciting part of what you do at Gensler?

Working globally with dedicated and aspirational young professionals—working to improve their own communities with sustainable design at all scales.

What was your favorite green project ever?

I've done hundreds of projects here at Gensler, but have also seen thousands of projects across the years when my students deliver case studies by global colleagues. I'm particularly enamored by those facilities that have the additional regenerative capacity of education, housing or health care. I also like the projects done in parts of the world where resources to build and operate are limited, where the creative genius of the place kicks in.

How would you like the world to be different for future generations?

Synergistic coexistence of peoples and planet—no existential worry, but instead a focus on making positive impacts!

What advice would you give an emerging professional in this field?

Never stop learning, be curious, and don't be afraid to try something and fail if necessary. In your design, “Always begin with the end in mind and understand our multigenerational design consequences.”

Designing a more resilient Houston