How Gensler Architects Help To Build More Resilient And Decarbonized Cities

Exterior Communual Spaces, Urban Awning project | GENSLER

In the quest for sustainable urban development, Gensler, the world’s largest architecture firm, is leading the charge in innovation toward creating more resilient and decarbonized cities.

Together with Roger Sherman, the Design Director and lead of the Urban Impact Group, we explore how Gensler is reshaping cities to withstand environmental, economic, and cultural changes. 

Robert Sherman, the Design Director and lead of the Urban Impact Group at Gensler | GENSLER

Roger Sherman's career began auspiciously when his firm won an international competition to design the West Hollywood Civic Center, prompting his move to Los Angeles from New York at the age of 29. Over the years, Sherman has balanced teaching at prestigious institutions such as UCLA, Harvard, and the Southern California Institute of Architecture with his professional practice. Teaching has been a vital source of his research and design experimentation, allowing him to test solutions to real-world problems. His contributions to the field are further highlighted by his authorship of three books on urbanism and his nearly ten years co-directing cityLAB, an urban "do-tank" at UCLA. “It was there that I learned and developed the entrepreneurial, “Stone Soup” approach to design that I now employ at Gensler,” Sherman recollected. 

The mission of Gensler's Urban Impact Group, which Sherman leads, is to instigate urban transformation through innovative solutions that enable cities to adapt to unprecedented and increasingly rapid environmental, economic, and cultural changes—the hallmark of resiliency. These solutions address ever-evolving community forms, repurposing obsolete sites, building affordability, and integrating emerging technologies to enhance public life. The group also explores rewilding cities to restore habitats for displaced species. Their approach, known as ‘radical incrementalism,’ involves replicating impactful models on a large scale. As part of Gensler, the world's largest architecture firm, the group leverages its global reach and network to maximize these impacts.

Colloquially known as the Stone Soup Group, Sherman explained the group’s unique methodology, “We operate like a startup, creating our projects and clients through entrepreneurship. We see potential in problems and ask how else things might operate. Our innovative in-house ideas are the stone that attracts stakeholders necessary to catalyze and steward projects. Design strategy becomes a business plan. Design with a blend of programming, funding, zoning hacks, and land ownership, in carefully calibrated combination, become the ingredients of a project ‘recipe’ or strategy designed to become a self-fulfilling economic and political prophecy.”

ELAC project with outdoor learning, gathering and hydroponic farm | GENSLER

Sherman highlighted a few standout projects. One recent project that emerged in this way is transitional student housing at East LA Community College (ELAC), where 20% of students are housing insecure. “Inspired by the idea of using parking garage rooftops for interim homeless housing, we partnered with ELAC’s architecture program to develop a proposal. This project, accommodating 150 students and featuring a rooftop hydroponic farm and photovoltaic canopy, is now under consideration by the College District. It offers a cost-effective and timely construction solution, with several philanthropies expressing interest in its scalability,” Sherman highlighted. Several philanthropies have recently expressed interest in supporting the predevelopment, seeing its potential to be brought to scale across the tens of acres of parking rooftops across the County of LA (there are 40 such publicly-owned parking structure rooftops alone).

Another project, Urban Awning, explores and rethinks housing typology to reduce construction costs and delivery time dramatically. “By focusing on passive environmental controls, such as light and ventilation, collectivizing of living and dining space, and minimizing unit size by reserving it primarily to sleeping, we created a two-story structure with a large PV roof, maximizing southern California's mild climate benefits. This innovation earned a Design Award from Fast Company, acknowledging our pragmatic approach,” Sherman noted. 

Environmental systems in the Urban Awning project | GENSLER

Sherman continued, “EPIC, a net-zero affordable housing project in Compton, CA, funded by a $1 million California Energy Commission grant, demonstrates resilience through innovative energy technologies.” EPIC was designed as a pilot project to showcase the efficacy of an all-electric energy model to the wider development community. The project sits on land owned by a faith-based institution, which plans to lease it to a social impact developer, SoLA Impact. This arrangement provides revenue for the institution while delivering community benefits such as a rebuilt worship space and daycare facility. The 97-unit project includes many innovative energy technologies, such as photovoltaic panels and energy-efficient systems, aimed at achieving net-zero energy consumption. Additionally, ten for-sale starter homes priced under $400,000 are included, making homeownership more accessible.

EPIC, is a net-zero affordable housing project in Compton, CA, funded by a $1 million California Energy Commission grant, demonstrates resilience through innovative energy technologies | GENSLER

One of the most remarkable features of EPIC is its Resilience Hub, which is supported by a microgrid capable of storing and redistributing power in the event of an outage in the larger grid due to an earthquake, heatwave, or other natural catastrophe. Designed to shelter and service on-site residents as well as members of the immediate neighborhood for 72 hours, on normal “blue sky” days the Hub takes the form of a multi-purpose, worship space and daycare center, providing after-school classes and support for various tenant and community functions.

Sherman believes that innovation in climate adaptation involves two separate but interrelated parts, sustainability and resilience. Sustainability addresses long-term progressive changes, while resilience prepares for extreme conditions like floods, fires, and heatwaves. “It is also important to view each holistically, not just through the lens of the environment—that is, cultural and economic impacts as well. Climate gentrification, for instance, as is occurring in the Little Haiti section of Miami, is one well-documented example. As architects, not engineers or technologists, we are interested first in exercising as much ingenuity as possible in the use of passive solutions, which are more certain to elicit true design innovation in ways that technological inventions do not,” he explained. 

Wuhan Riverfront Revitalization Plan | GENSLER

“Our revitalization project in Wuhan, China exemplifies this approach,” Sherman noted, explaining how the project reconnects the city with the Yangtze River through creatively integrated levees, that also serve as public spaces and floating promenades. 

With increasingly volatile weather conditions, the river is subject to ever greater fluctuations in water level, to the extent that levees were constructed to protect the city from the river—ironically separating it from what was once its cultural and economic lifeblood. Gensler's task was to find ways to reconnect the two while still providing for the levees to do their job when needed. 

At one site, Gensler integrated retail spaces into the backside of the levee, effectively widening it to create a raised riverfront promenade. This promenade features a series of terraces that step down into the water, reminiscent of the ghats along the Ganges River in India. This design allows the public to engage with the river while ensuring the levee can still perform its protective function when needed.

At another site, the design includes a raised park that transitions over the floodgates, leading to a series of floating boardwalks or pontooned pathways. These pathways rise and fall with the river's changing tides, threading between circular event pavilions that activate the waterfront with pedestrian activity. This innovative solution replaces the unsightly barges currently moored offshore and integrates the waterfront more seamlessly with the urban fabric behind the levees.

For architects to help the world adapt and transition to a decarbonized future, Sherman advocates for starting with decisions that have a greater order of magnitude impact on carbon emissions, “We seek to avoid creating the need for technology which is more costly and bears comparatively lower impact on energy consumption (don’t let the room heat up so that it then needs to be cooled). An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This begins with first guiding clients to choices that include smarter land use and building reuse.”

There is a plethora of underutilized and obsolete sites in many cities right now as a result of economic restructuring resulting from things like working from home (office buildings), online shopping (big boxes, shopping malls), and the transition to hybrid vehicles (gas station sites). Prioritizing passive environmental controls minimizes reliance on technology, which can be costly and energy-intensive. This approach reconnects people with the climate, enhancing their engagement with the environment. “Think about, for example, the difference between opening a shutter as a means of controlling climate, versus flipping a switch,” Sherman elaborated and concluded.