C21: New, Greener Views on the Horizon

Adhamina Rodriguez is the founder and CEO of AR Green Consulting, a women-owned business in San Francisco chosen to guide LEED certification planning and design for KQED’s new headquarters. Adhamina teaches about sustainability at U.C. Berkeley and Stanford University and was featured by the 2017 Pledge 1% “Women Who Lead” for creating change within her community and workplace. We asked Adhamina to walk us through some of the green highlights of the new 2601 Mariposa St. building and why sustainability matters to the community.

KQED:  What are the environmental advantages in KQED's choice to redesign our current building rather than move to a new location?

AR: Building reuse is the most effective strategy to reduce the environmental impact of buildings because it avoids the burden of the manufacturing process of new construction materials. It is common to talk about the carbon emissions of an operational building, associated mostly with its energy use and refrigerants releases. However, the embodied carbon of a building is as important as its operational carbon. The embodied carbon is the sum of all the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the mining, harvesting, processing, manufacturing, transportation and installation of building materials. Reusing an existing structure greatly reduces the need of new materials manufacturing/install and therefore, the overall carbon footprint of the project.

 KQED: A lot of attention has been paid this past year to ventilation systems and how they can help keep people safe from airborne virus’. Did anything pivot during building planning? 

AR: The building design included enhanced indoor air quality strategies before the pandemic--higher ventilation rates, CO2 monitoring and high-efficiency filters (MERV 13 or above). Procuring good indoor air quality to sustain the health and wellbeing of the building occupants has been a critical component of green buildings for many years. COVID-19 has recently brought attention to ventilation systems, but mostly because there are many outdated buildings that have not been updated to current standards.

 KQED: How does the KQED LEED building fit into the San Francisco landscape? 

AR: The City of San Francisco requires that all commercial buildings over 25,000 square feet are built to LEED Gold standards, so San Francisco has many LEED certified buildings, but that fact alone does not take away the merit of designing/building a LEED certified project. We just happen to be in a very environmentally-minded city. There are over 1,000 LEED certified projects in San Francisco.

 KQED: What would you say is one of the major advantages this design has over the previous one?

AR: The welcoming new lobby, the amazing rooftop terrace, the increased use of natural light, the new ventilation systems to procure healthy air inside, and the new LED lighting with carefully selected color rendering index to reduce eye strain and improve human comfort. After all, we spend 90% of our time indoors, so let’s make it a wonderful experience.