by Bill Valentine, HOK Chairman

The people of our country are crying out for help. We’re losing access to quality health care and education. We’re losing jobs and retirement funds. We’re losing our homes. We’re losing the respect and trust of the rest of the world. But I see this crisis as an opportunity to make our country better than ever.

When I was growing up, my father owned a tire-recapping shop in a coastal farm town in North Carolina. Dad helped people re-use their old tires. I used to work with him to grind out these old tires with a buffer in a room where the temperature regularly hit 110 degrees. Our family’s frugal lifestyle, which the people of this country have drifted away from since World War II, was borne of necessity. Could we return to this more resourceful, less wasteful way of living? One that would help reverse the damage we’ve done to our environment and reduce our reliance on foreign oil?

Today, as the economic crisis deepens and people search for ways to save money, I’ve noticed that modesty and thrift are taking on a new importance and possibly even a cache in the U.S. Certainly our “bigger is better” rampant consumerism won’t be coming back any time soon. This is a perfect time for architects and designers to use our creative problem-solving skills to show people the potential joys of consuming less – and that less can even by “chic.”

Here’s how I think we can do this:

First, with so many people in need of help, I hope we can finally put an end the awful era of elaborate “starchitect” projects that look interesting but cost far too much and often don’t fulfill their functional roles. Instead of signaling that something special is going on inside, buildings should signal what really is going on – and actually help the occupants do what they need to do.

When my architect friends come to visit San Francisco, they often ask about the great buildings they should see. To me it’s a two-project list: the San Francisco City Hall and the Ferry Building. Though the downtown San Francisco skyline quickly is changing for the worse because of a flurry of high-rise construction, this historically has been one of the world’s best cities because of the wonderful neighborhoods, not the individual structures. Instead of taking over, the buildings in San Francisco fit comfortably into their environments.

We can help society by designing responsible buildings that fit into their neighborhoods and inspire their communities. Instead of attempting to dazzle the architectural press with confounding structures, architects should focus on enhancing the lives of all the people – from the knowledge workers to the students and hospital patients — who experience our buildings.

We also can use efficiency as a design tool and convince clients to build with a smaller program or, better yet, to recycle an old structure. Let’s build only what we need. If we are going to construct something new, we should design it to be durable and long-lasting and use affordable local materials.

I’m not advocating stripping away the elements that make our buildings beautiful. But we can put our structures together in simpler, humanistic and more attractive ways that work with, and not against, nature. Let’s make buildings better, not bigger.

The idea of building less is the essential concept of green design. It resonates with all the big sustainable ideas and LEED requirements by using less land, square footage, materials, energy and water. And it costs less – potentially allowing us to help more people by redirecting capital toward investments in an organization’s employees or critically needed education, healthcare or social service programs.

Though we can’t legislate “less” in U.S. culture, this recession has brought us to a tipping point. Today is a perfect time for the Power of Less message to take hold in the building industry and then, hopefully, to penetrate into the hearts and minds of American people. If we can make a difference in curbing consumption and trigger a societal shift toward simplicity, our success could send ripples across the world.

Valentine talks about simplicity as an important component of the best sustainable architecture:

He says that HOK tries to help clients develop economically and environmentally sustainable solutions:

The current economic downturn has created a new interest in simplicity and efficiency, says Valentine:

Tags: LEED, Less, Sustainable, Video