‒ m m r 2 0 1 4
W o o d C h a m p i o n
34
Peter Busbyarchitect basks in san Francisco’s atmosphere of creativity while adding to a body of work committed to sustainability, innovation and design excellence
Theresa Rogers Centre for interactive research on sustainability (Cirs), university of British ColumbiaPHoto Credit: Martin tessler
Kingsway Pedestrian BridgePHoto Credit: Martin tessler
WOOD_SUMMER14_67_.indd 34 5/29/14 12:02 PM
‒ m m r 2 0 1 4 35
W o o d C h a m p i o n
Peter Busby is internationally recognized for his contributions to architecture and his portfolio embodies his philosophy of social responsibility and commitment to sustainable design. Since opening his Vancouver practice in 1984, Busby has gained a reputation for design excellence and innovation, becoming a powerful catalyst in the growth of the green architecture movement in North America and abroad. After merging his firm with Perkins+Will in 2004, Busby became a driving force across the company, compelling its sustainable design initiatives. In 2012 he relocated and became the Man-aging Director of Perkins+Will’s San Francisco office, bringing his focus on sustainable communities and regenerative design to all Perkins+Will’s west coast offices, directing teams work-ing on projects locally and internationally. Busby’s dedication to design advocacy is prolific and he lectures frequently at academic institutions and professional engagements around the world.
Busby holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of British Columbia and one in political philoso-phy from University of Toronto. In 2008, he was conferred an honorary doctorate in science by Ryerson University and in 2011 was named a Cascadia Fellow. In 2013, he was elevated to LEED Fellow, a designation of the US Green Building Council, which recognizes exceptional contributions to the green build-ing community as well as significant achievements within the community of sustainable design professionals. Most recently, Busby was awarded the 2014 Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) Gold Medal, which recognizes a significant and lasting contribution to Canadian architecture.
What makes you a wood champion?I’ve been a pioneer, using wood in unconventional ways for about 17 years. I’ve found wood makes it very easy to be quite creative architecturally. It allows me to design things that you can’t design using other materials.
Can you elaborate on what you can do with wood that you can’t with other materials?First of all, it’s beautiful itself so you don’t have to cover it up, you don’t have to protect it in any way except from direct weather. It’s structural so it can perform in more than one way. It’s a carbon sequestration strategy which is important to me in trying as much as possible to reduce carbon impacts with architecture. It’s indigenous to most parts of the world, so we can use a locally sourced building material pretty well any-where we go in the world, reducing transportation impacts. People enjoy it because it’s soft, it’s organic, it’s humane, and it’s got warmth to it. I guess part of the sustainability move-ment has been moving toward things that are more organic, more representative of nature, and wood is certainly one of those things.
You touched on sustainability. You are known as a proponent of green building design and even a founder of that. What influenced that philosophy?I’m committed as an architect to doing what I think is right. My first degree is in philosophy so I came out of that with a moral and ethical position about what I should do as an architect going forward and I stuck to that. My entire life, my whole career, is built around recommending to my clients that the right choices be made for society. Whether it’s the design or the sustainability of my work, I always try and make a public good, so it comes from the heart.
Your firm employs upward of 1,500 LEED-accredited professionals. How does the use of wood play into this green aesthetic because wood in and of itself is not truly promoted with the LEED program. Actually, that’s not true. The FSC certification for wood existed since the very early versions of LEED so their relationship between sustainable harvesting of wood and reuse of wood in projects is embedded in LEED. The carbon issues relating to wood are not there but locally sourced materials definitely count for credits and wood can get you there. LEED is a very wide-ranging sustainability tool for the fact that it’s not any more specific about the use of wood than those general points. It’s not to be worried about. We know that wood is the only building material made by the sun and it’s as good in its life as it’s fixing oxygen in the atmosphere as it grows and contrib-utes to habitat and healthiness and fresh air worldwide. If you let it fall on the forest floor and turn into methane it’s a real problem from the greenhouse gas emissions point of view, so it’s better to harvest it sustainably and use it in your buildings. It’s easy to shape and carpenters know how to work with wood in every corner of the world. Material cost is relatively low but it’s labor-intensive to use which is a good thing as it creates some employment opportunities.
When you are using wood in your projects around the world are you often using the locally sourced varieties or are you shipping in Douglas fir, for example?I always try to use local wood and, in fact, I always try to use local waste wood. I did the interior for a hotel all out of alder. Alder is often considered firewood but, if you look carefully, it’s very beautiful so I did a whole hotel interior with locally-sourced alder.
We’ve got something in British Columbia called beetle kill wood which is a waste wood. You can find beetle killed pine in my projects in British Columbia for the last 10 years. Occasion-ally I’ll go for an exotic wood that has to be imported, like ipe, because of its durability. I’ll use it for an exterior deck applica-tion. It’s just so durable and it’s sustainably harvested in Brazil according to FSC standards.
WOOD_SUMMER14_67_.indd 35 5/29/14 12:02 PM
‒ m m r 2 0 1 4
W o o d C h a m p i o n
36
I could send you some ash. We have a lot of problems here with the emerald ash borer. You’re from eastern Canada, then. Yes, I’ve proposed emerald ash for a series of transit stations in Ottawa.
The pine beetle killed wood has had a lot of press and a lot of uptake. Do you see a parallel with the ash?Absolutely, there’s a ton of it, and it’s actually in better shape than the pine. The emerald ash borer killed wood is not as decomposed as the pine beetle killed wood so I think it has even more potential to be used than the pine.
A couple of years ago you moved from Vancouver to San Francisco. B.C., as we know, has many things happening in wood right now. What was the transition like? Compare these regions on the west coast.One of the reasons I moved down here is that the businesses that are thriving here are all run by younger people and generally that means environmentalists. If you look at Google or Facebook or Twitter, any of the startups that are going, they’re all being run by engineers or businesspeople who have graduated in the last 15 years so they’re all interested in environmental issues and there is a great deal of receptivity to an environmental approach here in California. With respect to the use of wood specifically, I’m working with a number of clients that are very interested in having a wood building in California because it’s different from everything else that is here, plus they get an environmental story, they get the humanity of it. Building codes are reasonably rigid here about the use of wood and timber, but we’re working with engineers like Arup who know how to work with that and we hope to be able to announce some significant wood buildings in the near future that are built locally.
Perkins+Will is designing our new San Francisco office, and I brought some Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) down from Brit-ish Columbia. We’re making a number of very public walls out of CLT so that when clients come to the office they can see what I’m talking about. We’ve salvaged some hundred-year-old Doug-las fir piles from a very large construction project here in San Francisco, called the Transbay Transit Center. It was the Transbay Terminal, a huge transportation complex. In the excavation they found old wood piles made out of Doug fir that are over 100 years old that had been immersed in the muck and have not deteriorated. We salvaged a bunch of that and we made it into all of the millwork, tabletops and furniture in our new office. So there are two good, solid wood stories that I can show my clients in California about the reuse of wood, the beauty of wood and I can show them the most sophisticated engineered wood solution, CLT, as a demonstration in the office.
You’ve just received the RAIC gold medal for 2014. What makes people respond to your architecture?I think the reason I’m getting the medal is because there is a very consistent portfolio over 30 years that has laid out some
pretty consistent principles; sustainability being the main one. If you look through my work from the last 25 years, I started doing green buildings and I think that that’s admired by the public as well as other architects. I’ve done a lot of teaching, lecturing, and educating about sustainability and that public commitment is also, I think, one of the reasons why I have received the honor of getting the gold medal. I was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2005 for the same reasons; it’s consistent. My buildings are always contextual, so they are different from each other. My buildings, wherever I build them, are public and I try to enhance the public space. I believe that architecture is the art that’s practised in public, which is differ-ent from sculpture or painting or anything else in that there’s public responsibility to do something good. There’s been a lot of innovation in my work, so I think consistently we’ve been bringing new ideas to the way buildings are put together or how they operate. That subject of innovation in architecture; I think that’s perhaps also why the folks at RAIC think I should get the medal this year.
Can you give me a wood-related example of something innovative that you’ve brought forward?Sure, my very first major lab building in 1985, which was for a wood company, MacMillan Bloedel. I did a research lab for them and I made a major public stair out of what was then a brand new product called Parallam. I built the stair out of Parallam which they manufacture in 60-foot lengths. I actually made the whole stair tower out of 60-foot lengths of Parallam just to demonstrate how beautiful it was and how strong it was and how long they could make it. The PhD research scientists in the lab were the people who developed Parallam so it was a demonstration of their own ingenuity in that building. I’ve been using wood in innovative ways in buildings ever since.
nicola Valley institute of technologyPHoto Credit: Martin tessler
WOOD_SUMMER14_67_.indd 36 5/29/14 12:02 PM
‒ m m r 2 0 1 4 37
You said you lecture on innovation. What do you tell people regarding where you come up with all these ideas?First of all, I work with clever designers. I’ve always got a mixed team of younger designers, more experienced designers and tech-nical staff, and I work in a way where all ideas are considered good ideas to begin with. Folks that work on my teams can show up with ideas that are untested, that are clever or reflect their ideals. Second, I work with engineers in a creative way on all my projects and the synergy between architecture and engineering allows us to create innovation through a combination of structural materials and architecture. I’ve always said that good engineering is good architecture so again that brings us back to wood because you can do curved forms and show off the wood in those instances. I work a lot with Fast + Epp and Equilibrium, the two engineers that I’ve done most of my wooden structures with. They’re very creative folks in their own right because they also specialize in developing solutions that have wood as major elements. I literally try to do something that hasn’t been done before in each and every project. One or two new ideas in each and every project has led to a string of innovative solutions over the decades.
Are there other ways you push innovation forward in wood architecture and construction?One of the things that wood is particularly useful for is prefabri-cation because if you build it in the field it’s subject to invasion of weather during the construction process. We try to prefabri-cate components of our buildings as much as possible and this is gaining momentum in the marketplace at the moment and of course, wood is uniquely and specially adapted to prefabri-cation. In a factory setting you can control the measurement, cutting, quality, dryness, finishing, and you can provide stable locations for carpenters to work in better environments. Once completed, the prefabricated component is light and easy to
ship, easy to join to other pieces, and it can be finished. In some recent buildings like the VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre, the prefabricated wood roof elements came complete with acoustical materials, interior finishes, sprinklers, electrics, lighting, and plumbing. They were pretty much finished off-site, boxed, shipped and then put into place. It’s an area of innovation in wood design that I’m particularly interested in at the moment.
And CLT lends itself well to that.Of course it does, and as I think you know, the Earth Sciences Building at University of British Columbia was the first kind of large CLT installation in western Canada and there are more to come. I like CLT a lot.
Is there anyone that you look up to?Of course, I look up to many architects but specifically, the work of Renzo Piano has affected me. His work is always beautiful, it’s always innovative, it’s always research-based, and it’s also always beautifully engineered and detailed. He’s been a constant dose of inspiration in my life.
What’s on your nightstand? It sounds ridiculous but I’m actually reading the book I’m writing which certainly took a lot of work. When I have time to read, I work on my own book. I’m publishing a book in November of this year, so I’ve dispensed with other types of reading until I get it done.
Can you give me a hint as to what it’s about?It’s called, Architecture’s New Edges, and it’s all the things that we’re doing as architects today that were once never considered. Sustain-ability is a big one, wood is a big one, innovation is a big one, whole systems design is another, and regenerative design is another. These are some of the things that I’m writing about at the moment.
W o o d C h a m p i o n
earth sciences Building, university of British Columbia PHoto Credit: Martin tessler
Vandusen Botanical Garden Visitor CentrePHoto Credit: nic Lehoux
WOOD_SUMMER14_67_.indd 37 5/29/14 12:02 PM
W o o d C h a m p i o n
‒ 2 0 1 438
Do you have a favorite wood to work with?Yes, I do and it’s driftwood. Over 20 years I’ve built a summer home and it’s located on an island in the Gulf Islands. It’s hand built by me and the main structure is driftwood that I’ve col-lected on the beach. It’s not just one building; it’s a whole family compound so I’m always finding unique ways to use the drift-wood. It’s pretty cool. It’s not for publication. It’s a very private place and it’s been a lot of fun. I walk the beach every day and occasionally discover these incredible pieces of wood.
And in doing the compound style you can constantly add to the collection.Exactly! I’m doing a spa right now. My latest project is a spa: an outdoor shower, sauna, and a wood-fired hot tub. There’s no power on this island so I burn wood, too.
What is the most challenging wood project you’ve worked on and how did you overcome it?I could probably categorize it rather than name a specific project. The two main issues for me have always been code and weather. Codes are getting more flexible in B.C. now and Quebec, but it’s always been a challenge so we’ve always had to get code engineers and we’ve always had to get exceptions to do what we wanted to do, so that’s one category. The other category of challenge is protecting the wood during construction. Typically, I’ve been building in rainy environments like Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, and protecting wood during construction is always a challenge.
Proudest career moment?It’s coming up. My oldest daughter is going to be married at VanDusen Botanical Garden under the dome there so that’s going to be pretty special. She chose it without any suggestion or pressure from me. She thinks it’s a beautiful space as well.
What do the next five years look like? It doesn’t sound like you’re slowing down at all.Coming to California has been empowering. There are more opportunities here. The market is much larger. The market for innovation is here. In the tech world, this is the center of global innovation so when I talk about new ideas in architec-ture, clients are very receptive. There’s a lot of enthusiasm here for innovation. I’m finding it’s a lot of fun here. There are a lot of very strong businesses. The San Francisco Bay Area is the strongest part of the U.S. economy right now with the lowest unemployment and it has to do with strong startup firms and more established firms such as Google and Apple becoming the largest and most powerful firms in the world.
What would you like to do that you haven’t done yet?I’d like to do an airport. I haven’t done that yet. I’d like to go to the Galapagos Islands and see some very interesting nature. I’d like to climb Machu Picchu.
What would you like to be known for? The reputation that I have for innovation and for sustainability is one that suits me. It’s important to me to make a contribution in my lifetime, to do something toward lowering the impact of global warming, mitigating it as much as possible, and I’m com-mitted to that. I believe I’ll be known for that; I’d like to think I am already.
YeAr eStAbLiShed: 1935
emPLoYeeS: 1 ,500
office: 24 LoCat ions WorLdWide
www.PerkinSwiLL.com
Brentwood skytrain station PHoto Credit: nic Lehoux
Natural Wood/Clear Grades
• Western Red Cedar • Yellow Cedar/Cypress • Port Orford Cedar • Douglas Fir • Redwood
Visit Our Website www.bearcreeklumber.com
BEAR CREEK LUMBER
(800) 597-7191 fax (509) 997-2040
WOOD_SUMMER14_67_.indd 38 5/29/14 12:02 PM
