Crafting Carbon Neutrality: How archimania is Creating a Connected Corridor
Cooper Street in Memphis, TN has a storied history that dates back to the mid 1800s when it was established as a major thoroughfare for what would soon become the Cooper-Young neighborhood. Over the next few decades, it became a primary artery for streetcars and businesses. And by the mid 1900s, the street and surrounding neighborhood had become a hub for creatives and musicians, including Johnny Cash who recorded his first album there.
Though Cooper Street played such an important role in this pocket of Shelby County, like most neighborhoods with history, it’s gone through its fair share of boom and bust cycles. But, even through the declines, one thing has remained constant: a strong spirit of community and connection.
This is in part why the team at Archimania (archimania), an architectural firm, chose the neighborhood for their next home––connection and openness is part of the “archimaniac” ethos. Little did they know that the move to Cooper Street would evolve into something much larger: a study and potential model for carbon reduction in urban corridors.
Making a living laboratory
As luck would have it, a pair of 1957 midcentury modern buildings on Cooper Street were up for sale. They began the purchase process and soon found out, there were numerous other opportunities for this site.
Enter, Barry Yoakum.
Barry is a co-partner at archimania. He’s been practicing architecture nearly all his life and is a self-proclaimed modernist at heart. One look at his dossier of work, and there’s no contesting that claim.
But what’s not as immediately obvious is just how progressive his designs are when it comes to sustainability. Begin to peel back the layers, however, and you discover a series of brave experiments, and an honest and heartfelt endeavor to crack the code on reducing the built environment’s impact and creating connectivity.
See the full interview here.
The new home for the archimaniacs would become yet another one of those brave experiments––and this one blazed a few trails.
“We reinvented [the buildings] and applied a lot of principles that we’ve learned on other projects to elevate and get them to a point where they were ILFI––International Living Future Institute––certified zero energy and zero carbon,” Yoakum said.
This put the archimania HQ on the map as the second project in the world to receive dual certification, but the first renovation to receive it.
“The fascinating thing for us is this is a living laboratory for the firm and how we do work, especially on renovation work,” Yoakum said. “We were told you can’t make zero energy, zero carbon in the hot, humid South. Well, we did it and we did it very cost effectively.”
Pushing the boundaries of convention
Barry and his team are no strangers to testing conventional approaches––it’s a common theme throughout most all of their projects. This project at 663 S. Cooper, however, was an audacious endeavor into true resiliency that stretched well beyond zero carbon and zero energy targets.
They wanted to see if they could create a model for developing connected, carbon-neutral and human-centered districts using middle America’s aging commercial corridor building stock as the bedrock. And it began with the purchase and upcycling of these two adjacent buildings––one of which would serve as the control.
“The reason we like the two buildings is it allowed us to build the smaller building as a code-only building, then we did all the aspects of creating a zero energy, zero carbon building in this building [headquarters],” Yoakum said. “So, we have a one-to-one ratio when we want to check how these two buildings perform.”
Of course, there was also the community and connection aspects that appealed to the team.
“The other opportunity for us moving into the midtown area is there is this connection to amenities…and the things you’d want if you are going to make this your home away from home,” said Heather Koury, Hon. AIA, director of strategic alignment and a LEED Green Associate with archimania. “The site offered that opportunity to better connect with the community. And by elevating the space as a public courtyard, it allows us to welcome the community onto the site, which is something in a typical office environment you’re not able to do, nor is it part of the program. Those were really important goals for the space––connectivity and openness.”
Driving carbon neutrality
Another key driver behind this project was achieving The 2030 Challenge. Archimania is one of the more than 1,300 architecture firms that have signed the AIA’s 2030 Commitment to reach carbon neutrality by 2030. To assert their commitment and create one potential pathway for others to follow, they were determined to achieve this goal a full decade early––and they did.
While they were busy paving a pathway to achieving The 20230 Challenge, something unexpected happened––something much bigger than they had anticipated. They were creating a model for a carbon-neutral corridor.
“When you set out to do something like that, you’re not expecting to get awards and recognition,” Yoakum said. “We wanted to prove that we could do it and we wanted to do it 10 years before it was required. Our office has now turned into a project we’re calling ‘Carbon Neutral Corridors’.”
The project has since attracted national funding in the form of a research grant to test the hypothesis that if all of the businesses along the corridor did what archimania did it would significantly drive down the carbon footprint––potentially eliminating millions of pounds of carbon.
“There are communities across the country that are facing the same challenges of ‘How do we activate historic centers of community in a way that maintains and protects the fabric of the community?’,” Koury said. “So, how can we show this as a model?”
Taking cues from the Apollo spacesuit
So, how did they do it? One word, layers.
Inspired by the book, “Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo,” it occurred to Barry that if this suit could be used to sustain human life in the most extreme environmental elements using a series of interrelated layers––21 to be exact––just maybe the same model could be applied to the built environment.
“How do you put layers on things to protect the inhabitants? That’s what the storyline started to become,” he said. “That was a connection point. It starts at this very micro level and you make one little move and look at the impact.”
This layered approach became fundamental to achieving their tenacious goal. Because, in addition to meeting The 2030 Challenge criteria for carbon neutrality, there were also a number of challenging existing conditions that had to be taken into account.
First, there was the fact that they were attempting to retrofit a pair of midcentury buildings on a budget. Next, there was the Memphis sand aquifer that resides below the surface and finally, the adjacent New Madrid Seismic Zone.
“We live in one of the worst seismic zones in the country––very similar to San Francisco,” Yoakum said. “In Memphis, we’re on a fault line that runs about 100 miles from here along the Mississippi River. We had to come up with an idea on how to make this seismically retrofitted in a very cost-effective way.”
Residing above the city’s main water source also meant environmental considerations were mission critical, not only during the construction phase but even how the site continues to perform.
Layer by layer, they began to develop solutions. And in the process, found ways to create interrelated functionality between the layers.
For instance, by converting the parking lot between the two buildings to a central courtyard, they were able to address the community and connectivity layer, human health and well-being layer, as well as the water management and energy efficiency layers.
Today, the central courtyard serves as a break area for the archimania team and their neighbors, as well as a gateway for welcoming the community thanks to a pivot gate they designed and installed. It also houses an element that was imperative to achieving zero energy, zero carbon.
“It [the courtyard] is where we connect with the community,” Yoakum said. “It’s an interior/exterior piece of architecture that really makes it about community, which is a big deal to us.”
Innovating sustainable solutions
On the sustainability front, the courtyard conversion also helped increase the permeability of the site from 2% to 60%, improving stormwater management. It also now houses part of the geothermal, renewable energy system that was mission critical in getting them to zero carbon, zero energy.
The grid-like system contains 88 loops that extend down into the earth 29 feet––a concept Barry and his team developed to mitigate the issue of hitting the below aquifer.
“We’re really protective of our water supply and if you go 30 feet or deeper, you’re considered a well and you can’t do that in this city,” he said. “We had to think through all of that and we proposed, ‘What if we just go down 29 feet? What can we do?’ Fortunately, our engineer said we could do that.”
This geothermal system taps into the stable underground temperature, via the looped pipes. The network of pipes works much like a condenser on an HVAC unit. But in this case, the system is taking advantage of the constant temperature of the earth which is around 55 degrees, avoiding the massive temperature swings that occur above ground. This makes heating and cooling much more efficient.
“It’s being able to look at materials and systems in a new way, and bring people together around that experimentation to get to the solution that works,” Koury said. “But you’ve got to be open and you’ve got to be creative. And you’ve got to have the right team.”
Tracking performance
By the numbers, archimania has been able to achieve:
a net Energy Use Intensity (EUI) of -1.3, producing 7% more power than consumed,
reduce the carbon impact 67% by upcycling many of the existing materials,
reduce water consumption by 76%,
and avoid more than a dozen chemicals known to have adverse human health impacts by opting for products that were Declare, Cradle-to-Cradle or Living Product Challenge certified.
And if the neighboring buildings along the Cooper Street Corridor followed suit, they estimate it would eliminate more than 21 million lbs. of carbon.
“If everyone did what we did, it would totally change this neighborhood––as far as its contribution to stitching the environment back together,” Yoakum said.
Of course, the archimania team also had human health, well-being and chemical-avoidance goals, but their Goliath on this project was encapsulated in three Cs: carbon, community and connectivity. And chief among them was addressing carbon.
“You can get lost in other categories and forget that the bottom line is that we’re trying to stop and reverse carbon––operational carbon and embodied carbon,” Yoakum said. “It’s a harder one to do and I think that’s why you’re not seeing as much progress in it. It’s hard.
Every project we have has an opportunity and that’s what we should do as architects––is find those opportunities. They’re not always given to us. Typically they’re never given to us.”