Wearing a
COTE of Green

Americans had seen the price of crude oil quadruple from $3 to $12 per barrel in a six-month period shortly before Bob Gould and partner Dave Evans founded Gould Evans Goodman Associates in 1974. The Yom Kippur War that began on Oct. 5, 1973, and the OPEC oil embargo that followed, set the tone for a decade of rising energy costs for the country. At the same time, Americans had been turning “green,” or environmentally aware, since they picked up trash on their first Earth Day in April 1970.

Gould and architects like him designed buildings in the 1970s with energy-saving features that were as important to the plan as function and aesthetics. Although the ecological friendliness of the 1970s dropped in the late 1980s and the 1990s with the stabilization of energy prices, Gould finds the marriage of creation and conservation on the upswing again after the gasoline hikes and rolling blackouts of last summer. “It will be a big part of the practice as we go forward over the next 10 to 15 years,” he says.

Because of his dedication to keeping the buildings he designs green, Gould found himself resurrecting a dormant Committee for the Environment (COTE) for the Kansas City chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The committee’s mission is to promote environmentally responsible design, building and community planning practices, which involves research and community outreach.

In fulfilling that mission, the committee accepted the task of developing a master plan to rehabilitate existing facilities for Habitat ReStore, a surplus-and- salvage building-material center operated by Habitat for Humanity of Kansas City. The center promotes recycling by accepting used (and new) lumber, fixtures and other building supplies and turning them around for use in Habitat for Humanity projects and for sale to the general public. Donor contractors eliminate dumping fees and gain tax deductions while the environment benefits from reduced landfill waste.

In particular, COTE created a plan for the 30,000-square-foot ReStore metal building at 4701 Deramus that, among other things, will reclaim water, will add new skylights to take advantage of passive solar energy, and will use the earth to pre-warm or pre-cool the air inside the building. “These are all inexpensive actions,” says Gould, “but they have a high return.”

The same principles can be applied on a larger scale. Any building can be made greener by reorienting its entrances, by allowing deeper penetration of natural light into the building, by using earth and landscape as insulators, by incorporating local materials versus those that require more fossil fuel to transport, and by selecting sites near public transportation for users of the building. Better heating, cooling, lighting and air quality makes for more productive workers; energy efficiency makes for more valuable buildings. Says Gould, “We just don’t see any reason why businesses should not conceive a more innovative approach to design.”

COTE includes not only other members of Gould Evans Goodman, but also members of other architectural firms in town, such as HOK Sport and TK Architects.

Gould’s firm practiced what it preached even before the price of crude oil spiked 10 percent to over $29 a barrel in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. The company recycles office supply products, and it has traded in a company minivan for a hybrid electric car. The firm also has purchased and refurbished a fleet of bicycles for its employees to use when they want to grab a bite at lunchtime. Appropriately, the bikes are painted green.