It (Still) Ain’t Easy Being Green
by Pat Matson Knapp
For the creators of exhibits and environmental graphics, working toward sustainability goals is a give-and-take process.
The U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program continues to push sustainability issues to the forefront, but its reach doesn’t yet extend fully to environmental graphics and exhibit design. But that doesn’t stop many designers and end users from working to incorporate green products and processes into the creation, operation, and afterlife of their environmental graphics and exhibit designs.
Green materials for exhibit and graphics production are not as easy to come by as they are in the architectural market, and many industry-standard processes and materials are less than environmentally friendly. But while many see this industry seriously lagging behind in the green movement, others are working to fulfill the spirit of LEED guidelines and promote sustainable outcomes.
Many first -generation LEED-certified projects have opened in the past couple of years, and design teams that cut their teeth on those projects are now applying what they learned to second and third generations of green projects.
“We have a long way to go,” admits Mark VanderKlipp, President of Corbin Design in Traverse City, MI and Principal-in-Charge of his firm’s wayfinding system design for the Herman Miller MarketPlace. The entire Herman Miller project was awarded the Gold LEED certification and numerous environmental awards. “More and more clients are becoming aware that many of our industry-standard materials and processes are unfriendly to the environment, and we need to be more creative about alternatives.”
First Do No Harm?
The struggle to be green is often about compromise, says Scott Mallwitz, Director of Experience Design at The Henry Ford, which operates museums, visitor centers, educational institutions, and the new Rouge Factory Tour, part of the renovated Ford Rouge Center in Dearborn, MI. “It’s a give-and-take process. Designers creating exhibits and graphics must weigh the desire to be environmentally friendly against the need for highly durable exhibits, special effects lighting, and other elements that help create a successful visitor experience. But often the available materials present potentially harmful environmental effects.”
While LEED certification factored into all team decisions on the Rouge Factory Tour project, some of the visitor experience elements-such as the two immersive theater experiences, which are high-energy consumers-ultimately cost the overall project LEED points.
While he agrees it’s important to keep sustainability in mind, Wayne Hunt, Principal of Hunt Design in Pasadena, CA and the environmental graphic design consultant on this project, offers a perspective check. “First, of course, we should look for environmentally friendly alternatives everywhere: paints, finishes, materials. But second, the [LEED] points are given based on a quantitative measurement. If we can use low-VOC (volatile organic compound) paints on the exhibits, that’s great. But compared to the thousands of square feet of wall and ceiling surface in these spaces, what we put on exhibits represents only in the thousandths of a percent of the materials used overall.”
A New Frontier
While LEED provides guidelines for building exteriors, core, and shells, and the new Commercial Interiors pilot program extends to interior planning and design, LEED is silent on environmental graphics, signage, and exhibit design.
“We essentially had to come up with our own criteria and try to follow the LEED spirit,” says Julie Silverman, Director of New at the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center in Burlington, VT. “It was a real learning curve, trying to research materials that would meet visitors’ needs but be as environmentally friendly as possible.”
Silverman and SAS Architects collaborated with Amaze Design of Boston to research and source environmentally friendly products for the exhibits. They tried to limit materials to those that are recyclable and part of the natural waste stream, used low-VOC paints and finishes, and sealed substrates to avoid off-gassing. But graphics production was a real challenge. The need for durability, especially in exterior and high-traffic areas, often limits designers to existing industry-standard techniques such as vinyl lettering, porcelain enamel, and phenolic laminates, all considered less than environmentally friendly. Theatrical lighting, a high-energy consumer, is another serious challenge. “We need environmentally friendly products that address these issues,” says Silverman.
Financial Balancing Act
The give-and-take equation is also about economics. Sustainable products and energy- maximizing systems are often more expensive up front (not considering life-time returns on investment from lower operating costs), which is a major factor for cash-strapped museums and educational institutions. The high costs can sometimes promote short-term thinking.
“With the ECHO architecture, we had some great partnerships with Burlington Electric and efficiency grant programs that allowed us to defray the costs of some of the up front LEED premiums,” notes Silverman. “We didn’t have that with the exhibit design, and our budget was tight. It becomes an issue of balancing financial realities with doing the right thing.”
In addition, the extensive documentation and research required for LEED certification can strain resources and budgets. Some clients choose to avoid the “LEED tax” altogether, notes Isaac Marshall, Lead Designer for AldrichPears Associates Ltd. of Vancouver on the Pierce County Environmental Services Building in Tacoma, WA. Pierce County chose not to pursue LEED certification, but still made the AIA’s list of the top ten green buildings in 2003.
“You have to produce a huge amount of documentation to get a building LEED certified – for basically a plaque on the wall,” says Marshall. “You can spend upwards of $35,000 to get that plaque, or you can take that money and apply it to educational programs that really engage people in the idea of sustainability and how they can live it themselves.”
One Step at a Time
While the LEED program has been a hugely positive force, it’s only a step in the journey toward sustainable design, cautions James Hicks, a New York-based architect who has worked on green projects for the National Building Museum and the John Heinz National Wildlife Reserve in Tinicum, PA. “A complete paradigm shift is still needed to reorient the building and design industry away from creating resource-consuming buildings and toward creating resource-regenerating buildings.”
And where does the exhibit and environmental graphic design community fit into all this? Seriously lagging behind, claims Hicks. “Currently the bottom line is king, which means using plenty of plastic, vinyl, metal, and glass.”
“In this business, there are not a lot of manufacturers pushing for green design since the demand hasn’t been there yet,” says Gary Stemler, Vice President of Nordquist Sign Co. in Minneapolis. “There is a definite price impact in changing the way of traditional sign manufacturing and, in this competitive economy, it comes with a financial risk.”
But many end-users are committing themselves to sustainable products, practices, and work environments. “We set up a water-based printing system several years ago for environmental reasons,” says Brian Baker, Digital Imaging Project Lead for Herman Miller in Zeeland, MI. “It would have been much easier to use solvent inks and printers, but they’re quite toxic to the work environment, cannot be disposed of safely, and the VOCs remain on the printed product for a very long time.”
Corbin’s VanderKlipp says designers and fabricators must work together to develop solutions. “It’s part of our responsibility as designers to look for more environmentally friendly alternatives and to partner with fabricators and suppliers to develop new, more sustainable ways of doing things.” Choosing a fabricator willing to explore new processes and alternative materials is key, says Stemler, whose company is working with VanderKlipp’s on the Metro Health Village in Grand Rapids, MI, slated to open in 2006 and working toward Gold LEED certification. “The designer has to choose a fabricator who is open to new techniques and won’t dismiss ideas because they’re not the way things have been done before.”
AldrichPears and its local fabricator, Artcraft Advertising Ltd. of Vancouver, have forged just that type of partnership. Working together on the Pierce County project and the Desert Living Center, a sustainability demonstration site due to open next spring in the Mojave Desert near Las Vegas, the two companies have developed a new process of using fired-glass pigments on recycled aluminum to replace porcelain enamel on steel. “Aluminum is infinitely recyclable, and it won’t chip or rust,” notes Marshall. Images can be screenprinted onto the aluminum or, if higher resolution is required, screenprinted onto a substrate, transferred onto the aluminum, and then fired.
Marshall says designers have to be willing to do the research and ask fabricators the hard questions: What’s in this stuff? What waste substances are produced in its manufacture? Is it recyclable? What are the sustainable alternatives? And he advises, “If you don’t get the answers or attitude that you need, go elsewhere.”
Pat Matson Knapp focuses on design and its effects on business, culture, and quality of life. The former editor of IDENTITY magazine, she writes for a wide range of design publications and is the author of two books: Designing Corporate Identity (Rockport, 2001) and Designers in Handcuffs (HOW Design Books, 2002).
Rouge Factory Tour
LOCATION:
Dearborn, MI
CLIENT:
The Henry Ford; Ford Motor Company; United Auto Workers
DESIGN
BRC Imagination Arts, Burbank, CA (visitor experience producers); Hunt Design Associates, Pasadena, CA (environmental graphics, exhibit design); William McDonough + Partners (architecture and community design); Walbridge Aldinger (construction manager): Arcadis Giffels (architecture and engineering); Harley Ellis (architecture and engineering); WH Cannon (landscape construction)
FABRICATION
Kneupper Music LLC (sound design); Scenario Design Inc. (scenic fabrication); City Design (lighting): ShowFX (special effects); Be There Inc. (interactive media)
PHOTOS
Gray Krueger and Christian Lachel
The Rouge Factory Tour is the visitor experience capping Ford Motor Company’s $2 billion renovation of its Ford Rouge Center manufacturing complex. For the design team creating the visitor experience for arguably the world’s most highly publicized green project, it was a constant balancing act between meeting visitor expectations and supporting the LEED certification goals.
“Our first goal was to do no harm—or t least try to minimize it,” says Scott Mallwitz, Director of Experience Design for The Henry Ford, which partnered with Ford Motor Company and United Auto Workers on the project. Mallwitz oversaw a creative team that included BRC Imagination Arts and Hunt Design Associates, as well as consultation from green building guru architect, William McDonough. “For everything we did in the visitor experience, we were mindful of how it would affect the LEED certification process for the overall project.” The Rouge received Gold LEED certification, but could have received a Platinum rating if not for the visitor experience, particularly the two theaters that provide immersive, multimedia looks into the manufacturing process and Ford history.
“The shows actually cost points because of their huge energy draws,” Mallwitz admits. “But our first and primary driver had to be providing a unique experience.” Inside the visitor’s center, materials like carpeting, lighting, and paints were LEED-approved, but exhibit materials are largely conventional such as a factory-inspired rail system that includes backlit aluminum display boxes suspended from the floor by steel tubes. Aluminum-framed freestanding kiosks have metal and acrylic elements. Environmental graphics include digitally printed fabric banners. The team found some energy reduction solutions in lighting. Neon was used rather than incandescent lighting in some interpretive cases. LED lighting was used for washes rather than heavy-duty architectural sources. And the lighting for interpretive panels on the observation deck is motion-activated to save energy. “These were energy solutions,” admits Christian Lachel, creative Director for BRC Imagination Arts. “They didn’t address product afterlife.”
While ifs not the primary story told on the Factory Tour, visitors get more than a glimpse of the ambitious environmental stewardship involved in the overall Rouge complex. From an observation deck inside the visitor center, visitors can see the 10-acre turf roof on the adjacent Dearborn Truck Plant and just inside the door of the center, a huge blue cistern signals the onsite storm water collection system that collects rainwater from the roof and reuses it for toilet flushing and irrigation. The cistern proved to be an icon for the project’s balancing act says Mallwitz. “From a visitor experience standpoint do we want a cistern to be the first thing people see? No. Can we move it? No. So we painted it blue. Was the paint LEED certified? Yes.”