 KieranTimberlake has practiced environmental responsibility since their beginning as a firm in 1984, long before green design gained the widespread relevance it now enjoys in architectural practice and in the building industry. The firm even states, "The principles of sustainable design continue to make up our core beliefs." EnviroCitizen.org found that the firm seeks to fully integrate the need to balance the ideals of resource conservation, energy efficiency and pollution prevention with the realities of performance criteria, constructability and budget.
Over 90% of Kieran Timberlake's staff members, including the two partners, are LEED accredited. They have completed several LEED Certified buildings including the LEED Platinum Middle School at Sidwell Friends School (the first K-12 Building to be certified LEED Platinum), Alice H. Cook House (the first LEED certified building on the Cornell University campus), the award winning Sculpture Building at Yale University and the 9 House for the Make It Right Foundation (both of which are LEED Platinum). The firm has not only created green buildings, but made them superior compared to most green buildings.
Kieran Timberlake's architects are national innovators in sustainable design with dozens of initiatives that they credit themselves with. The initiatives are not optional or additive in nature, but constitute the influential acts around which subsequent design solutions are conceived. Kieran Timberlake has stated, "Buildings are complex networks of diverse systems operating on multiple scales across time. Our architecture explores ways to artfully interweave these systems around the programs they support. This systems approach can often enable the selective removal and replacement of one with minimal disruption to others. These strategies allow for ongoing life cycle value by reducing material, money and time dedicated to maintenance."
Their view is that the current state of environmental design in architecture based upon a "checklist" of opportunities leading architects, engineers and consultants to a solution. This has merit because it brings an extended industry and profession into thinking directly about the environment. From there a design can have an impact upon it. The company writes that the checklist is naturally flawed as it generally leads to solutions which are applied, not integrated. So in order to balance this, they teach and practice a holistic approach to their work, incorporating and integrating systems that are not readily singularly defined or worse, separated and removed from the project after first costs are exposed. EnviroCitizen.org discovered that by truly integrating systems and environmental choices, the integrity of the structure becomes whole rather than a sum of individual parts. Kieran Timberlake certainly approaches building in a unique way, and we hope they will continue to do so.
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