Tackling Design's 'Impossible' Problems

It is important to note each of these three pieces is paramount in accomplishing real change fast. To rethink how we design buildings in ways that not only adapt to uncertain risks, but foster a relationship with nature, we need to come to the problems with passion, optimism, and fearlessness.

Each meeting of the think tank begins with a short mindfulness activity. Whether it be a breathing exercise or a body scan meditation, the entire group leaves work at the virtual door and prepares our minds to be present.

The focus for this think tank is "Scenario Planning for Future What Ifs." In each series of the initiative, we select a different what-if question and break into multiple teams to tackle the question from different points of view. The inaugural question was "What If the Grid Goes Down?" In many of our office locations across the U.S., this hypothetical became reality in the last year. Scheduled brown or blackouts and unintended grid outages due to storms, fires, etc. brought this question home to the group.

One team began at a global scale, then stepped inwards to a national, regional, state, and city level, to explore what the grid offers.

• Which aspects can the community survive without and for how long?
• Besides power supply, what other interconnected systems work in harmony to form the grid?
• How resilient/vulnerable is the existing grid?

The group then chose a specific Flad healthcare project on Florida's gulf coast in the early design phases as a case study for a detailed exploration. Large-scale healthcare facilities can be refuges for the community in times of natural disaster. In addition, as a typical part of the design process these types of facilities are assessed for emergency power production supplied on site. The team chose to look at the facility as an ideal safe haven if the grid goes down.

The team ran the site through Flad's Resilience Toolkit – a resource crafted by the Sustainability and Data & Analytics teams to assess environmental, social, and ecosystem vulnerabilities. The insights gained through this analysis aided the team in understanding which specific vulnerabilities would be magnified in a power outage. Taking this research into account, through the lens of a community refuge, we considered how we might alter the design to be more resilient.

Coincidentally in the latter weeks of the think tank's work, Hurricane Ian, a Category 5 hurricane, hit the area of this project. At an estimated cost of $50-$65 billion in damages, it highlighted not only that designing for resilience is something we should do, but also the real costs if we do not.

Many of Flad's clients operate critical healthcare or highly technical research facilities that must maintain power with emergency preparedness plans in place. Those plans often rely on fossil-fuel-based, back-up power sources, which can adapt to short breaks in power supply but not long-term outages. This think tank allows space, away from the pressures of billable work deadlines, to devise longer lasting solutions.

There is no simple way to complete this work with a feeling that we've crossed a finish line, but that isn't the goal. By allowing this think tank to simply exist and creating a space where individuals can bring their whole minds and full selves, we can shift the mindset to a belief we may find resolutions that work with nature.