Kohler Company partnered with The Real Deal and Best Plumbing Supply to host an event at the Kohler Experience Center in New York City during Climate Week 22’ which brought together a trio of AEC experts about the responsibility manufacturers and the development community have in addressing major societal shifts like climate change, water shortages and urbanization. With a rapidly aging and increasingly urban population, the discussion, led by Kohler Company SVP Human Resources, Stewardship and Sustainability, Laura Kohler, kicked off with an urgent call to action to design sustainable products, living and working spaces that reduce environmental impact while accounting for changes brought about by climate instability. It continued with an urgent call to action for manufacturers and the build industry to unlock consumer adoption of more environmentally friendly products.
“The market is changing,” said Yasemin Kologlu, Design Principal at SOM, a leading architecture and engineering firm with studios in the United States and the UK. “As designers, it’s our job to make sure that sustainability can be delivered at every price point. I don’t think that should be our excuse any longer.” Kologlu pointed out that companies like Kohler producing a wider range of sustainable products help her in her role as a designer, giving her the ability to address climate impact at “every level of society.”
Caleb Anderson, Partner at Drake/Anderson emphasized the importance of teaching clients and consumers about the importance and benefits of environmentally friendly designed products and spaces. “Our responsibility as an industry is to come together and educate people,” said Anderson, who went on to say that sustainable products often set themselves apart from the rest of what’s on offer by virtue of their sustainability. “When we show clients an innovative material that we are excited about, it makes them excited.”
“One thing that people have always been really great at is rising to an occasion and innovating out of a problem,” said Kimberley Petredis, Director of Residential Interiors at FXCollaborative in Brooklyn. Petredis, who works with big-name developers around New York City, mentioned that she has seen an increased interest in sustainable design in the last couple of years, thanks in part to individuals recognizing the need to address climate change as well as more budgetary concerns. “Depending on what kind of product it is, you might actually be saving money in the long run by paying more upfront.”
Laura Kohler tied things up with a few lessons that she had gleaned from the discussion. She used Kohler’s WasteLab as an example of her first lesson, that design and engineering don’t have to conflict with sustainability. The WasteLab, which takes materials destined for the landfill and repurposes them into manufactured materials like tiles, has taken off since its inception in 2019, with more demand for the products than the firm can meet.
Let’s try to use easy-to-understand language. Let’s bring everybody with us. Everyone’s participation counts. After all, it’s all of our futures that are at stake.
“We’re starting to see a lot of really interesting products and solutions,” said Caleb Anderson, who got the last word. “The exciting thing to me is that with the challenge comes newfound creativity and innovation.”
The second lesson related to what Caleb Anderson said about generating excitement around sustainable products, and Kohler emphasized the importance of the company’s associates in creating positive energy around products like those from WasteLab to build the momentum needed to make real change happen. The third lesson related to the need to produce environmentally friendly products at multiple price points now, not at some distant point in the future, calling back to Kimberley Petredis’s point that demand for these products grows every day.
Finally, Kohler closed out the discussion with a call for the AEC industry to be inclusive when talking about sustainability.
Ready to learn more? Reach out to Leadership@kohlernyc.com today to make an appointment at their showroom to see the experience.