In 1931, a transformative book was published that considerably changed the relationship millions of people worldwide had with cooking. It stripped away the unnecessary complexities and innovated the recipe format while leaning on tradition, reliability, and the quality and integrity of ingredients. The primary goal of the book was to bring joy back to the home kitchen.
That book was Irma Rombauer’s “The Joy of Cooking”. And it remains one of the best-selling cookbooks in American history. But what does a cookbook have to do with design?
As it turns out, there are several interesting parallels between this book and a new urban development in Phoenix, Arizona. Like Rombauer, the duo behind this development––Austin Trautman and Lucas Johnson––also focused on simplicity, quality ingredients, innovation blended with time-tested, reliable construction techniques, and above all else, human joy. And in doing so, they aim to change people’s relationship with their homes and the surrounding community, and eventually, impact the way buildings are constructed.
The four-home urban development, named the Vali Mews, began as somewhat of an ambitious experiment several years ago. Austin, with a background in human health and a deep interest in the built environment and how it impacts health, and Lucas, with an extensive career in building science and high-performance building design, wanted to see if they could create the “everything bagel” of good building.
This meant not only using materials and building practices that were mindful of human health, embodied carbon and embodied injustice, but also addressing the “missing middle” housing dilemma to create an environment that evoked human joy.
“In this concept of engineering for human joy and all of our work being tied to some sort of building science or human science, there’s this concept called ‘missing middle’ housing, which is the style of housing––the size and scale of housing––that is shown to promote human joy and connection the most,” Lucas said. “And that’s not single family or large multifamily––the things that we tend to build in the United States. It’s four to 40 units.”
As Lucas points out, this type of housing is common throughout many European countries. It’s what creates micro-communities, builds a sense of connection and promotes walkability. And that’s where the Vali Mews story begins.
In an effort to fill in the “missing middle”, which is said to increase affordable and sustainable housing, create more walkable neighborhoods, and provide a wider range of housing options, Austin and Lucas turned to 17th-century London. This is the birthplace of mews, which were originally built in the 17th and 18th centuries as stables and coachhouses used to house the horses, carriages and certain staff of wealthy residents in the nearby mansions and grand houses of London.
Typically, these were built in small clusters, often with the garage on the ground floor and living quarters above. But as cars replaced the horse and carriage in the 20th century, the need for mews eventually faded. Over time, however, these charming structures became highly sought after because they’re often located in some of London’s most desirable neighborhoods. They also offer a sense of peace, tranquility and community in the middle of a bustling city––and Vali Mews draws a lot of inspiration from those London relics.
For instance, while each Mews home is separate, there’s a shared drive designed to spark neighborly interaction––a common feature of many of the mews communities. The development is also strategically placed in a neighborhood with a high walkability rating while still offering a sense of tranquility despite being in a relatively busy urban area.
But creating community was just the tipping point for what Austin and Lucas had on their good building and human joy agenda. Next came the ingredients.
“Most good high-performance buildings are designed around efficiency as the primary metric of success,” Lucas said. “It turns out when we design for efficiency, we often sacrifice human joy.”
Through their years of experience and deep research in building science, Austin and Lucas recognized that prioritizing ‘high performance’ also often came at the expense of health, comfort, long-term human joy, and even carbon impact.
“If we focus on the ingredients the building is made of––just like a top chef would––if we use the right ingredients, even if it’s a low-performance building, it’s still a really good building,” Lucas said. “A lot of people can’t afford high performance. If you can, please do it. But no matter if it’s low-performance, high-performance, conventional building, or cutting edge, use the right ingredients to build it. The ingredients create the results.”
This thought process led Austin and Lucas to create “The 5 Factors of Good Building”––their litmus test for evaluating and selecting building materials––the ingredients.
The “5 Factors of Good Building” include:
These criteria guided every design decision that went into Vali Mews. And just as Rombauer personally tested every recipe for reliability, Austin and Lucas personally tested every ingredient before integrating it into the design.
“The level of research that’s been done on every single one of these materials is…beyond academic,” Lucas said.
Beyond deep dives into researching the materials––their makeup, supply chain, full lifecycle, etc.––they also tested them in the realities of the Sonoran Desert to make sure they held up in the most extreme elements and actually provided optimized performance in this climate.
One place they often started their research was with nature.
Learning from, and often mimicking, the strategies that have been adapted in nature for survival gave Lucas and Austin a good starting point for the construction methods and materials used. This is known as biomimicry or biomimetic design, and it’s the practice of emulating nature’s forms, processes, and ecosystems to create more regenerative designs as well as finding ways to reconnect us back to nature. And examples of this are seen throughout Vali Mews, starting with the arrival experience.
Guests and homeowners enter through a private courtyard that is modeled after a slot canyon with tall narrow walls that not only provide shade throughout most of the day, but also help create a different microclimate for more lush plants to grow. For the facade, they also took a few cues from nature, incorporating more natural materials like wood and stucco, as well as making it “breathable”.
“The wood cladding and the stucco are [applied] over an inch-and-a-half ventilated space that functions similar to a saguaro,” Austin said. “We use a lot of biomimetic design, basically asking, ‘How is nature solving this problem and how is it doing it best?’, and how can we learn from that?”
The lesson they took from the saguaro was to create a breathable facade system by ventilating the exterior walls at the top and bottom to allow air to circulate, and moisture and heat to escape. This system is seen in the saguaro’s spines, or vertical fins, which provide self shading and insulation.
They also wanted to incorporate wood for biophilic purposes, but recognized that wood doesn’t typically perform well in the Arizona sun. So, they went on the hunt for a wood that could survive the desert elements over the long term, and that was low carbon and responsibly harvested. They found their answer in a brand of wood called Accoya.
Accoya is an acetylated wood, which means it is treated with the non-toxic chemical called acetic anhydride, which has been likened to a “really strong vinegar”. The acetylation process essentially makes softwood lumber (in this case FSC-certified radiata pine) harder and more durable by changing the chemistry of the wood’s cell walls, making it impervious to moisture and rot, and undesirable to insects.
Though acetic anhydride can sound offputting initially, unlike most preservatives and chemicals used to treat wood, it doesn’t contain copper or biocides that have been known to leach into the environment over time. Accoya has also gone through the process of becoming Cradle to Cradle Gold certified, Platinum Cradle to Cradle Material Health Certified, FSC certified, and has an environmental product declaration (EPD). In 2017, the product also made it into BuildingGreen’s annual top 10 list (article behind a paywall), which recognizes products that conserve energy and water, reduce emissions and ultimately help transform the industry.*
The next major area to tackle on the good building agenda was indoor air quality, and the courtyard played a small role in that as well.
Austin and Lucas intentionally designed each Mews home so that residents would have to enter through the courtyard. The idea was to prevent toxic fumes from the garage from entering the home, and to create a joyous experience of leaving the car and busy life behind, connecting with nature––if only for a moment––before stepping inside.
“One of the main principles we focus on is air tightness, and we go fairly extreme––well below passive house air tightness,” Austin said. “That turns out to be really important for a lot of reasons.”
One reason was for performance––less air leakage often equates to more efficient temperature control. Another was for human health. Tighter tolerances help keep pollutants from entering the building and can also help with the interior acoustics. But with air tightness, there also has to be a way for the toxins that naturally build up in a home to escape.
Furnishings, building materials, and cleaning products, among other items, can all off-gas toxins and toxicants called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the air. Cooking and even the CO2 generated simply from breathing contributes to the toxicity of indoor air. If that air has no way of escaping, the toxins build up. As more buildings are being constructed with a high degree of air tightness for energy efficiency purposes, some type of intervention is needed. This is where mechanical ventilation comes in.
“Along with air tightness, we like to partner it with its best friend, which is proper mechanical ventilation, which means that we need to put a really nice set of lungs in the home so that you can constantly have that feeling of windows being opened on that perfect spring day,” Lucas said.
The set of lungs they opted for was an energy recovery ventilation (ERV) system that exchanges stale indoor air with fresh outdoor air while recovering heat or coolness. This differs from a traditional HVAC system, which simply conditions and recirculates stale air (and pollutants) rather than continuously exchanging it for fresh air. Still, in many regions like Phoenix, HVAC systems are a necessity. Luckily, they can be paired with ERVs and HRVs (heat recovery ventilation systems) to get the benefits of both.
Indoor air quality has become a primary concern in human health as poor indoor air has been linked to a number of short- and long-term health issues including headaches, eye irritation, asthma attacks, and noncommunicable diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer, among others. This is why proper ventilation and filtration––along with eliminating sources of contamination––are critical.
Typically, opening a door or window is not the best solution as it introduces particulate matter––dust, allergens, organic chemicals, etc. This is especially true in areas like Phoenix that are notorious for poor outdoor air quality. To further support a high IAQ, Austin and Lucas beefed up the filter on the HRV, creating a custom-built filter box that now houses a four-inch pleated filter.
“We can almost guarantee we have better air quality inside than outside at any given time,” Lucas said. “The air quality in the building often goes down when we open doors and windows. That’s how good this system is at maintaining optimal air quality.”
At Vali Mews, they also teamed the ERV with some additional advanced technology to help regulate and automate the air exchange.
“One of the big debates in building science is how much ventilation is needed,” Austin said. “Should it be 50CFM? One hundred CFM? Should it be based on people? Based on the size of the house? The answer is that it is kind of conditional. The house needs a base level of fresh air, but then when certain things happen, you want more.”
CFM (cubic feet per minute) measures the volume of air that flows through a space in a minute. Too much or too little air can create discomfort and impact air quality. And when certain events occur––cooking, showering, more people in the space––it increases humidity and CO2 levels at which point more airflow is needed. To automate this, Austin and Lucas integrated a smart home system called Loxone.
“With the Loxone system, every light switch measures temperature and humidity,” Austin said. “We have one that measures CO2 as well. So we can automate the system for the conditions in the house. It’s essentially always measuring and predicting and maintaining a perfect air quality no matter what’s happening.”
Of course, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. To do that, they use an air quality monitoring system called Awair that measures temperature, humidity, CO2, VOCs, and particulate matter (PM2.5) in real time. While it’s not tied in with the Loxone system, it provides a visual cue for when there might be an issue.
In addition to ventilation, filtration and the smart systems, they also intentionally selected interior finishes and materials that were either low VOC or non-emitting, and also contributed to other factors that impact human joy and well-being––sound and connection to nature.
Though it may fly under the health radar, acoustical comfort plays a significant role in well-being. Noise in excess of just 50 to 60 decibels can elevate stress levels, and it has been linked to increased risk of hypertension, stroke and other cardiac events. It also hinders productivity, memory retention, sleep, and focus.
Since Vali Mews is in an urban pocket, Austin and Lucas took extra measures to create acoustical comfort. Window and door selection were key, but they also strategically chose other “ingredients” that pulled double––and in some cases, triple––duty.
For instance, sheep’s wool from Havelock Wool was used for the insulation. Wool not only contributes to acoustical comfort, it also helps promote indoor air quality by absorbing toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (SO2), and the natural keratins in wool suppress mold and mildew. The R-values, which measure how effectively a material prevents heat from moving into or out of a structure––in other words, its resistance to heat flow––are typically higher in wool than in other types of insulation such as cellulose, spray-in foam and fiberglass. This goes for batt and blown-in insulation.
Other materials such as natural wood––oak and reclaimed walnut––are used on the flooring, door knobs, wall paneling, cabinet pulls, and the stair rail to help with acoustical comfort, but also to create a connection to nature. Austin and Lucas also wanted the space to be highly tactile––almost beckoning occupants to touch and feel them. This is why wood is used on doorknobs and cabinet pulls, Marmoleum on the cabinet faces, knurling on the faucet handles, and Richlite, a material made from FSC-certified paper and post-consumer recycled paper and cardboard combined with resin, on the countertops.
“There are so many biophilic details throughout the house from the strategic and thoughtful placement of windows to the types of faucets selected and the list goes on,” Austin said.
So what did the duo learn from this multi-year experiment?
One key outcome was proving out their “5 Factors of Good Building” framework. In using it on this project, they realized how effective it was at quickly eliminating bad decisions and narrowing the list of product options.
“In applying it, one of the things that became very obvious very quickly is that there are say 10 to 15 materials that should be on a ‘do-not-use’ list,” Lucas said. “They have such low ‘5 Factors’ scores. You can get a score of up to 50 points total, and there are quite a few materials that barely make it to 10 points because of their risk to human health, high carbon impact, social justice issues, or whatever it might be. And those became core to our ‘do-not-use’ agreement.”
Admittedly, they recognized that a lot needs to change in the industry to make good building design and construction more scalable, but they said one fundamental message that emerged is to get the ingredients right, regardless of the building type. Creating a framework––or utilizing an existing one––to evaluate materials is scalable, even if some of the other areas are still lagging.
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