Colombia. Jeff Risom, CEO of the American company Gehl Architects, was another of the outstanding speakers of ConstruVerde Colombia 2015, an event on sustainable design and construction that took place last Wednesday, September 9 and Thursday, September 10 in the city of Bogotá. In his talk Risomm shared his philosophy of "Design for people", which proposes to materialize the positive impacts on the quality of life derived from the uses given to sustainable construction spaces, such as increases in productivity, better health conditions, higher levels of happiness and other similar measurement criteria whose emphasis is always people.
According to Jeff Risom, "People Design is a different model. In the same way that we have already learned to measure sustainability in relation to construction, we can measure sustainability with respect to people. In the sustainable construction movement we have a tendency to focus on systems, infrastructure and construction. I like to call all this the 'hardware'. We've paid a lot of attention to measuring the performance of this hardware. And I think it's time to turn our attention to estimates about people. They are the ones who make the decision to choose sustainable construction solutions if they improve their quality of life immediately and also when they contribute to their daily routines. These systems really work, if people choose to use them and if they know how to use them appropriately."
"We will continue to promote sustainable construction and understand the benefits of these systems, and I think it is very important that we add an additional layer – which is precisely the focus on people – which is allowing us additional data. Certification systems in sustainable construction such as LEED are very important and we propose to complement them with measuring the use that people give to constructions, in the same way in which we measure different elements of sustainable construction, "added Risom.
Gehl Architects has had a lot to do with Copenhagen's global leadership as a sustainable city. Jeff Risom comments that "the use of bicycles in Copenhagen is a good example on this subject. 45% of the total trips made to work and educational institutions are made by bicycle in that city. When people are asked why they use the bike, they don't do it primarily because it's sustainable or because of the price of a gallon of gasoline. The main reason people use the bike is because it is the fastest, easiest, most convenient and safest way to get from one place to another in Copenhagen."
"I think this example helps explain where we need to focus our efforts: less and less on sharing information with people about sustainability and trying to get them to understand certain truths about it, and more on inviting them to have certain kinds of behaviors, which we already know support the sustainable development of urban centers and the construction industry," Risom said.
