The HOK Chicago office received a LEED-CI Platinum designation in 2009.

By Liz Switzer
The horizon for sustainable development has broadened as LEED has become mainstream, but what lies beyond is open for discovery. Global architecture firm HOK has that horizon clearly in view.

Through a unique and exclusive alliance with an environmental consultancy, HOK is actively following its vision for what it believes will be the next major sustainable initiative: biomimicry — the emerging science of applying the innovations of nature to the planning and design of buildings, communities and cities.

Biomimicry has captivated the design professions, and HOK is leading the way. But thinking out of the box on sustainable design is what HOK has been about since the inception of the green building movement.

With a network of 24 offices worldwide, HOK serves a diverse client base within the corporate, commercial, public and institutional markets. Founded in 1955, the firm’s expertise includes architecture, engineering, interiors, planning, lighting, graphics, facilities planning and assessment, and construction services.

Since the birth of green building in the early 1990s, HOK has been a leader in sustainable design. The firm’s expertise has led to 43 LEED certified projects, six BREEAM-rated projects and more than 100 others actively pursuing certification. HOK has played a significant role in applying sustainable design strategies to emerging geographic regions, building types and sectors.

HOK principals authored one of the industry’s most respected texts, “The HOK Guidebook to Sustainable Design,” now in its third edition, and for the second consecutive year HOK has ranked as the greenest design firm in the world, generating more than $197 million — 26% of total revenue — from sustainable projects in 2008, according to a 2009 Engineering News-Record (ENR) survey.

“We have built from the ground up and taken a different approach than a lot of firms in that we are trying to integrate sustainability with expertise from the top down in each practice: health care, technology, corporate, justice, all the sectors the firm serves,” said Mike Plotnick, HOK director of corporate communications. “LEED is a great tool — basically, a good starting place — but it’s not the be-all and the end-all, so we are exploring how to get to the next level.”

In 2008, HOK forged a relationship with the Biomimicry Guild, an ecological think tank and consultancy that uses nature as an inspiration for design. It’s a science that is “bioinspired” not just “biomorphic,” said Mary Ann Lazarus, HOK director of sustainability. In other words, it does not simply entail designing projects to look like nature but designing in a way that mimics the functions found in nature.

“This is different,” Lazarus explained. “This is inspiring and indentifying solutions driven by looking at how nature solves problems, so it is beyond LEED in that regard. It’s not a rating system either, per se, but moves forward with a sense of the regenerative and a very clear sense of requirements.”

HOK’s biomimicry work has significant implications that resonate throughout all sectors of the building industry. “What we think it means to the rest of the world is it is looking to the natural world for a completely different source for information and one that we know has survived for 3.8 billion years,” Lazarus said. “That’s a lot of information to learn from. Through years of the industrial era, we just don’t think that way but we really need to and learn from this stuff.”

HOK is in its second year of alliance with the Biomimicry Guild, and some of the work that has been done is now entering the early design phase, focused on large-scale projects outside the U.S. that involve economic, social and environmental issues with teams in India. “Evolution is about the way things that work last and the things that don’t — well, don’t,” Plotnick said. “Biomimicry is about how we can learn from nature, which has been here a lot longer than we have.”

Nature: That’s the goal, and it is a big idea. The concept of biomimicry has primarily existed in the consumer products realm until now. Velcro is an example, inspired by burrs that stick to clothes. Swimsuits used in the Olympics are another, based on shark skin that allows the wearer to glide through the water with the least resistance.

“There are a lot of examples with consumer goods but few within the built environment,” Plotkin said. “So we thought, given our size and our commitment to sustainability and our client base, we could help take biomimicry mainstream.”

HOK is gaining ground in the realm of applying nature’s innovations to the planning and design process through biomimicry. Despite the economic downturn and slowed global construction, HOK’s green expertise and impact have ramped up, according to Lazarus.

“While the business has shifted dramatically in the past year, sustainable design continues to resonate among clients across all sectors and regions,” she said. “We are continuing to broaden our expertise to help clients solve their environmental, economic and social challenges through traditional and non-traditional strategies.”

Bio-inspired solutions frequently have far-reaching sustainable implications, reflecting the interdependence of a project’s systems, and Lazarus frequently speaks on the topic. In her view, for designers and other design professionals, it opens up a whole new universe of inspirational ideas for transforming interior spaces while optimizing human and social well-being.

As an example, the ability to effectively bring natural light into a space that has limited access to it reduces the need for artificial lighting. Because less heat is generated, less cooling is necessary, which could reduce the size of cooling equipment, a capital cost. Overall energy use is reduced — an operational cost — and fossil fuel dependence is lessened, an environmental cost.

Because biomimicry addresses critical environmental issues at the habitat scale, it gives lessons on how to achieve increasingly more significant sustainable outcomes, she added. “We’re pursuing solutions that reach far beyond the realm of LEED Platinum, net zero carbon and regenerative projects. And beyond the projects themselves, the principles of biomimicry will help our people and teams work smarter, design smarter and truly connect our work with the natural environment.”