MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT Be the Sustainability Expert You Already Are Empowering Small Firms in Idaho LINDSEY LOVE, PRESIDENT, AIA IDAHO While good design is the foundation of sustainability, market demands, cultural inertia and population growth require more proactive measures. In our rural Idaho market, we face similar challenges to implement sustainable practices, but there are some tried-and-true strategies that are actually doable and will transform your practice. The top three challenges we all face are: 1. Finding the time to implement things we know how and want to do (or learning more about them). 2. Specifying certain sustainability measures in our designs only to have them VEed out or changed in the field by the contractor. 3. Convincing clients that new or innovative strategies are worth the effort and financial investment. In reality, these challenges can be overcome with a shift in mindset and language. It requires a shift in thinking and speaking, but once this is shifted, the rest will flow. I found this to be the case while running Love | Schack Architecture — a small, regional-based firm in the Yellowstone Region. Now, as the owner of Regenerative Building Solutions, I guide architects, owners and sometimes contractors to implement sustainable strategies that feel elusive. The first strategy is to embrace a non‑political form of sustainability. We all want and deserve a safe, clean and comfortable environment (both indoors and outdoors). All types of Idahoans are here for this very reason — we are one of the last “refuges” offering a rural lifestyle — either mountainous or ag/ranch-based. We can talk about these things together, but using politicized buzzwords like “sustainability” might kill your opportunity to implement best practices as you know them. Words like “comfortable,” “healthy,” “efficient” and “performance” go much further with clients and contractors. The second strategy is to take back your power as an expert to lead the entire team. There is a great discrepancy between contractors’ and clients’ backgrounds and yours as an architect. In our state, anyone can become a contractor if they pay a fee. Calling this out is not to degrade their expertise. Your experience as an expert in architecture can never replace what is learned from years in the field, and because our industry is set up to be separate (for better or worse), collaboration and integrated design with a contractor’s input is often the only strategy for efficiency — both time and financial — in the long-run. However, as the architect, you have the ability to differentiate between mediocrity and greatness in a contractor, and your clients deserve your input and guidance. To let a client select their contractor without your review is actually doing them a disservice. Contractors with the client’s best interest in mind understand the language discussed in the previous paragraph and will appreciate and support your expertise. They will be eager to learn from you, and you will appreciate learning from 6 IDAHO ARCHITECTURE | 2025 | aiaidaho.com
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