Visiting Epsten Group - A comparative look at sustainable building practices

On September 30^th, the delegation went to visit the offices of the Epsten Group, a multidisciplinary architectural firm based in Atlanta, which focuses on commissioning and offering consulting advice on sustainable building design.

Even before being introduced to the company's work, the group's offices made their mission clear: Being located in a previously economically deprived area just outside of downtown Atlanta, the group chose to remodel an old workshop and reuse old building materials in order to reduce waste and achieve LEED platinum certification for their office, which opened in 2011. As the old roof could not handle the weight of a typical installation of PV panels, the company ingeniously decided to go with 5kW of flexible and lightweight solar panels that could directly be attached to the roof without the need of a heavy installation rack.

Dagmar Epsten herself, who founded the Group in 1991, gave us a presentation on her lifelong mission to make commercial buildings more sustainable. A German expat, she moved to the US after her diploma in order to use her architectural abilities in Atlanta and the Southeast. Since then, the group has been commissioning new buildings as well as retrofitting existing ones. Being involved from early-on in the planning process allows the group to take a holistic approach to planning, not only designing a sustainable building on paper, but also making sure that the building structure is actually built and used accordingly. Furthermore, Epsten Group has been particular active in evaluating and granting LEED certification to commercial building owners, a market that shows strong growth in the US. Being able to certify a buildings sustainable merits has become a competitive advantage in assuring real estate developers and future owners that a building is cheap to maintain and manage. This, in turn, can help achieve a higher selling price on the market. In Germany, where state-set buildings standards on efficiency are stricter, LEED has not taken up as much for commercial development, but particularly international real estate companies like to also rely on LEED certification in Germany, China and around the world, as it has become a universal selling point.

As LEED is primarily catering to commercial housing, we also talked with Epsten Group employees on the different approaches that are being taking towards building sustainable residential homes on both sides of the Atlantic. Here, a number of differences emerged: Germans move less often from one place to another and have a stronger culture of being personally involved in the planning of residential housing. Therefore, they often personally ensure that their house is energy efficient and overall sustainable, which also saves them cost of operation in the long-term. In the United States on the other hand, housing is often developed by professional developers who are in a competition to offer the lowest price per developed square-feet - a competition, that can sometime go at the expense of sustainability and energy-efficiency concerns. This is further accelerated by low energy prices, which allow efficiency concerns to take the backseat in comparison to other considerations. Furthermore, differences in building usage were discussed that have strong effects on the overall sustainability of buildings: Whereas Germans like to be in control of their flat or house and open windows regularly to let in fresh air (which is more doable in Germany, where temperatures are more moderate than in Atlanta), Americans prefer managed environments with included ventilation and air-conditioning that also take indoor air quality in account.

In consequence, developing sustainable buildings needs more than just using the latest energy-efficient technology, it also means taking the future end-users behaviour and building cultures into account. Our visit at Epsten Group gave us a great impression on the intercontinental differences and communalities in building development. Dagmar Epsten herself, being a translator between these different cultures, was the perfect host to explain those different approaches to us. Thank you for the fascinating insights!