Market Transformation

On April 3, I attended an event at the AIA Center for Architecture:

Healing the Materials Supply Chain: The Google Story, featured three speakers, including Susan Kaplan who teaches Materials and Products for Sustainable Interior Environments in our masters program at FIT and is the Director of Specifications and Sustainability at HLW International.

Joining Susan were Bill Walsh, founder of the Healthy Building Network and Anthony Ravitz, leader of Google’s Green Team. Google is using the Living Building Challenge Redlist and the EPA’s list of chemicals of concern as strict guides in specifications of materials for office renovations and building systems.

Many of the concepts that we’ve been covering in our classes reverberated in this presentation. Most impressive for me was the concept of market transformation.

Companies like Google, Kaiser Permanente, Nike, Whole Foods, and Walmart are able to establish their sustainability goals and put pressure on manufacturers to change the ways that materials are produced or to develop healthier, more environmentally sound options.

It was pointed out that large companies are not the only source of power in this process and that the aggregate demand of the broader design community could influence change going forward.

Hmm, could it be that we are part of that right now?