Taking Sustainable Action
As one of our nine core values, Environmental Responsibility is at the heart of who we are at McGranahan Architects. We believe that the built environment must protect—and even improve—the natural world. We believe that our professional and business practices serve to protect and preserve the environment.
Joining the AIA 2030 Commitment has allowed us to apply renewed focus to one of our core values—Environmental Responsibility—and seek ways to further integrate our knowledge and process towards a common goal. We have crafted our operations plan as a living document, checking in monthly marking progress and challenges. Our work is improved by utilizing Sefaira software at the earliest stages using the iterative palette to drive basic design decisions, informing orientation, glazing and system options working towards higher levels of performance.
Our Work
As architects, we understand the need to exercise leadership in creating the built environment. We also believe that we must exhibit leadership in our day-to-day business activities by implementing operational changes that result in the reduction of our carbon footprint. We are committed to increasing yearly reductions in the use of natural resources, non-renewable energy sources, and waste production.
Open dialogue, intellectual curiosity, thoughtful partnership, a culture of mutual enjoyment and teamwork are the foundations of our design process. An environment of shared teaching and learning expands possibilities, builds understanding, streamlines decision-making and, most importantly, improves the built result.
Elements of the AIA 2030 Commitment have been a part of our work for over 25 years, beginning with LEED and embracing Washington Sustainable Schools Protocol (WSSP) for our K-12 work. We seek innovative solutions that exceed expectations.
Our pledge resonates with our staff, clients, and peers—sharing our body of knowledge ensures the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Our Process
We believe the built environment must protect—and even improve—the natural and we actively and sensitively respond to the unique conditions presented by each site and work diligently within the constraints and opportunities of every design question to minimize our use of natural resources.
We collaborate with clients to establish expansive and aspirational goals for what each project can accomplish, focusing on how the vision established for every project can refine, inspire or frame our point of view. We seek to discover the story each project wants to tell and then reveal that story through our architecture.
Our design approach attempts to balance the social, environmental, and site requirements of each project. Once set with the client and user groups, the environmental goals of the project are integrated into our project schedule to ensure that we can track, revisit, and reach each of the benchmarks that we had identified for the project. We hold ourselves and our consultants to the standards our design group set in the earliest phases of the design process.