Taking Up the Challenge

“Take windows as an example,” Wagner says. “In Minnesota, windows represent something like 28 percent of the energy consumption of a building, either through heat loss or heat gain. Insulating the walls helps, but it only improves things a fraction compared to the windows. But window manufacturers in this country design very poor windows that are not as efficient as the ones the Europeans design. Their windows have somewhere between one and a quarter to two times the insulation value of the typical American window. So when we have product manufacturers come to visit with us, we are challenging them. We’re saying, ‘Are you guys working on a better mousetrap? Is this the best you can offer?’”

Wagner says other firms in Minnesota are starting to move in a similar direction. “There is a core group of architects in the state that are very interested in trying to push the boundaries of the discipline and set the bar at a higher level,” he says. “They know that they need to improve the way that they do business, because trying to develop carbon-neutral buildings is the future of our discipline. If you are not doing it now, you are going to be a dinosaur soon. You aren’t going to have the skills to compete in the marketplace.”

Embracing the 2030 challenge requires a reversal of decades-old design habits, both for clients and architects. In the past, the idea has been that if you have enough money, you can design and build anything under the sun. Now, there is a different perspective because of the energy-use implications. Almost everyone is on board, but the hardest part is breaking out of habitual modes of thinking.

Yet Wagner is confident that it can be done, and will be done. “Most definitely,” he says. “One day John Kennedy said, ‘In the next decade, we’re going to figure out how to send people to the moon.’ No one had ever conceived of that being physically possible, yet we were able to achieve that in less than a decade. For us to sit down and say, ‘Can we design carbon neutral buildings in the next 22 years?’ Absolutely. There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll be able to do that.”