Jaxson Stone: Can you tell me a bit about your research as a Loeb Fellow and what inspired it?

Alberto Kritzler: Growing up in Mexico City I experienced a city always on the edge of collapse where everyone experienced a common disaster: an aggressive urbanization process of mindless overdevelopment. My experience led me to believe that the way we currently live is unsustainable. 

From this perspective, I sought to reframe business models that are usually based on exploiting land and people. My work aims the opposite, to reverse the destructive power of mindless overdevelopment by creating business models built across scales in urban and rural Mexico.

My research focused on the intersection of urbanization processes and sustainable design at a territorial scale from a systems approach (as opposed to sustainable buildings). That is where water and its infrastructure come into play.

Why is water such an urgent concern now, especially in Mexico?

Mexico’s constitution enshrines the right to water, yet Mexico is the number one bottled-water per capita consumer in the world. Our capital with 22 million people was built on a lake by draining it, yet we built a system to bring water from 138 miles away and over 2,000 vertical feet below (loosing around 40 percent along the way). In 2024 nearly 76 percent of the country was experiencing drought. In addition to this, the distribution of water is deeply inequitable. According to a study conducted by the Universidad Iberoamericana (January 2024) based on statistics obtained from National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), a little over 77 percent of the population in Mexico City does not have access to a sufficient amount of potable water to maintain a healthy life in accordance with WHO standards. An urgent question is: how do we adapt our cities and infrastructure to sustain life under these extreme conditions?

This is why one of the most crucial aspects of the Reserva Peñitas project is the design of the community’s water harvesting system, which serves as the foundation for everything else to function and adapt around it.

In your work, how do you define regenerative design, and what principles/practices do you apply to address water management and the needs of local communities?

Regenerative design goes beyond sustainability to design systems that proactively regenerate natural-based systems. 

In terms of water: my work explores interconnected systems of water harvesting to increase self-sufficiency. In Reserva Peñitas I relied on permaculture principles and key-line design to create a water-autonomous community of almost 100 homes. The system relies on both the rooftops (at a small scale) and the basins (medium scale) to collect rainwater—the former provides water during the rainy season, the latter during the dry months. It is not always possible to achieve autonomy. However, in Mexico City, I have adapted over a dozen buildings (some over 100 years old) to harvest rainwater to increase their autonomy (an example: La Laguna, in Col. Doctores CDMX, an adapted factory from 1930s. 

All of this, to have its potential impact, must belong to a larger scale design of living systems. An example of this: for La Reserva, I created the regions first native flora nursery so we could design a landscape that requires no irrigation, less maintenance and provides food for the local fauna. I’m working on replicating these same principles in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico with a community land trust on the pacific coast.

These methodologies are part of the course I will be teaching at the Landscape Department at Harvard Graduate School of Design in the Spring of 2025.

Alberto Kritzler recently opened Polistudio, an interdisciplinary office dedicated to environmental design through research, conceptualization, and the development of sustainable territorial models.

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• Cultural

• Alberto Kritzler
• Harvard GSD
• Jaxson Stone
• Landscape
• Landscape Urbanism
• Mexico
• Mexico City
• Water

Some of us continue to believe that if something comes from nature and does what nature does, then it can’t possibly be bad. The catch, of course, is that “you don’t want to copy nature and harm it at the same time,” warns writer Audrey Gray. 

Now, ZGF’s addition to Portland International Airport is not a “building like a tree” in the sense that McDonough and Braungart imagined, even though it is made of lots of trees and has lots of trees inside it (“Forest to Frame: Why Portland’s Airport is a New Milestone for Mass Timber,”). What makes it special, as writer Brian Libby and senior editor Francisco Brown lay out, are the efforts of an extraordinary group of professionals with deep respect for all forms of life—the design team at ZGF, the biophilic design consultants at Terrapin Bright Green, the host of foresters and mill owners who supplied the timber, and many, many others. It takes gargantuan care and dedication on the part of a huge number of people to embody in a building even the smallest piece of nature’s magnificence.

Although Portland International Airport’s (PDX) new terminal is defined by its vast mass timber roof, ZGF’s design also focused on human-scale experience, with an emphasis on biophilia. 

“The Port [of Portland] was very clear that a key outcome was to reduce passenger stress,” recalls Bill Browning of Terrapin Bright Green, the project’s sustainability consultant. 

The design team created several user profiles to map high-stress areas and target specific moments of intervention. Just after the ticketing area, for example, passengers encounter a grove of mature deciduous trees (under the largest among dozens of skylights) before moving on to restaurants and shops or ensuing security checkpoints. Not only do the trees deliver a dose of nature, but their canopy provides a protective sense of enclosure. 

The roof itself is part of the biophilia strategy, from the warm-feeling wood to its curvy biomorphic shape. The skylights’ wood-lattice edges create dappled light patterns like a tree canopy. “That’s a type of fractal pattern that we know lowers stress,” Browning explains, citing studies by University of Oregon physicist Richard Taylor that influenced the design. 

A nearby mezzanine, where a large pub is located, provides a perch supporting two aspects of biophilic design: prospect, or an ability to survey your environment; and refuge, a place of protection. 

The lower-ceilinged security checkpoints, above which are Port of Portland conference rooms, were affixed with large video walls featuring soothing artist depictions of nature. 

The terminal’s displacement ventilation can be fine-tuned in specific spaces, like a deliberately lower-temperature security area, where people tend to sweat the most. 

Before the terminal opened, Sandoval took his 15-year-old son, whose responses were ideal. “He said, ‘One, wow: It smells like wood.’ Second, he said, ‘The light is really comfortable,’” Sandoval remembers. “Third, he goes, ‘It’s so peaceful.’ And fourth, he said, ‘I want to come here early before our next flight.’ That to me was the ultimate win.” 

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• Research

• Biophilia
• Brian Libby
• Embodied Carbon
• Healthy Materials

Would you like to comment on this article? Send your thoughts to: comments@metropolismag.com

• Technology

• AI
• Artificial Intelligence
• Francisco Brown
• monograph
• naya studio

3 Goals for Climate-Smart Forestry

“We needed to rethink biogenic carbon,” Dunn says, explaining that the forest and built environments are interconnected. The wood in a building isn’t isolated but part of a larger carbon cycle that must be optimized for climate-smart forestry. The goal is to increase the amount of carbon stored in wood, reduce emissions by substituting wood for steel or concrete, and promote the reuse of durable wood products.

The tool’s basic approach involves calculating the carbon sequestration in a forest over time and dividing that by the amount of wood harvested. Using both observed satellite data and NASA resources, the team measured how much biomass grew on specific lands over the past 30 years. Satellite tools like lidar could analyze forest growth on a per-pixel basis, tracking changes in carbon stocks across small or large tracts of land.

At Portland Airport, the team connected this data with their wood sourcing, applying carbon factors to the wood based on its origin. “This was the ‘aha’ moment,” Dunn says, as they began quantifying how much carbon each forest saved or emitted. The variation was significant depending on the data set and forest in question. These discrepancies also opened the conversations about forest stabilization and rotational patterns as regeneration practices. 

According to the ZGF team, the case study cemented three principles for climate-smart sourcing in the region: first, understanding how harvest practices in the Northwest can influence carbon storage; second, evaluating whether the forest is increasing its carbon stocks over time; and third, working with definitions and frameworks to ensure that forests are managed sustainably, stabilizing carbon where needed.

By integrating these data sets, UpStream has provided the tools to analyze and optimize wood’s role in the carbon cycle. Portland Airport is proof of the concept’s potential to guide climate-conscious building practices for the region and the entire nation. 

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• Sustainability
• Technology

• Airport
• Francisco Brown
• LCA
• Mass Timber
• ZGF Architects

bi·o·gen·ic 

/bīō jenik/ 

Think about living organisms and natural processes as executive producers of these materials. It’s the raw stuff—made before humans got their hands on it. Shells of marine animals are biogenic, as is the straw from our farms and the timber in our forests. But so is the crude oil pooling deep under the ocean floor before it is turned into plastics. “Perhaps look at it as a mono-material,” suggests Lola Ben-Alon, director of the Columbia GSAPP Natural Materials Lab, who cautions that not everything produced by nature is beneficial for humans or harmless to ecosystems when processed/burned, so “biogenic” is not a label of absolution. It’s more a signal that we’re at least starting with something that wasn’t made in a factory. “It feels truer to the 100 percent,” says Alison Mears at Parsons, because “it’s harder to use ‘biogenic’ as greenwashing.” 

Completed this past spring in the heart of New Westminster, British Columbia, the təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre serves as a vital hub, not only for the surrounding neighborhood of single-family houses but also for the entire city of 87,000. Its name means “sea otter house” in the Indigenous hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ language. It’s the city’s largest recreation center and its only indoor pool. As such, its purpose extends far beyond merely offering a place to swim or pump iron: It functions as the city’s main community-builder—the cathedral of this time and place.

Designed by Vancouver-based HCMA Architecture + Design, təməsew̓txʷ replaces an aging indoor pool that had been built for the 1970 Canada Games. Three times as big as its now-demolished predecessor, with a state-of-the-art pool-water filtration system, the new facility is Canada’s first completed Zero Carbon–certified aquatic center, according to the architects. The project includes a comprehensive program of pools, saunas, workout rooms, a childcare center, gymnasiums, offices, a café, and a wealth of hangout spaces—elements that were defined through a three-year-long community engagement process that prioritized the voices of Indigenous community members. 

Shaping Space to Fit the Land

With over 13,000 residents per square mile, New Westminster is the second most densely populated municipality in Canada and is proud of its identity, history, and land. Millennia of Indigenous inhabitation were followed by the city’s 1859 establishment as the original capital of British Columbia. That honor lasted only seven years but transformed it into a major industrial site and transportation hub. Subsequent population growth ultimately cost the city much of its lush natural landscape. 

The Glenbrook Ravine was one such treasure—and is now the site of the new aquatic center. Once a deep valley bisected by a freshwater stream, the ravine has long since been backfilled. A large underground stormwater pipe replaced the stream, restricting the buildable land to a jagged, narrow footprint, which the design team used to their creative advantage. “Rather than follow the colonial grid, we torqued the whole thing,” says architect Paul Fast of HCMA. 

Each main section of the building is defined inside and out by a roofline that cants and jogs in alignment with its respective position and function. In the main 50-meter lap pool, for example, the ceiling peaks at the diving-platform end and slants down toward the shallow end, a functional approach that also avoids the common but rigid shoebox form of most aquatic centers. The wading pool is spatially distinguished from the main pool by a lower ceiling and a glazed dividing wall, which offers a more intimate atmosphere for its purpose and contributes to energy savings. 

Blending Past and Present in Design

Entry plazas on each side are edged with naturalistic landscaping by Vancouver-based PFS Studio to partially restore the ambience and stormwater retention qualities of the historical ravine. The landscape architects sourced plants that once thrived on its slopes: salmonberry, huckleberry, cattail, and other native flora. 

Inside, a spacious and comfortably furnished entrance area evokes a public living room more than a foyer. At the other end of the foyer, the dramatic circular stairway offers the semiotics of a home, rather than an institution. Beyond the paid-admission wickets, the design team has devoted much attention to the way people use athletic spaces. Instead of a wide-open plan, the upper-floor fitness area is broken up into smaller zones from “leftover spaces,” as Fast calls them: the practical reconfiguration of irregularly shaped areas adjacent to elevators, mechanical rooms, and the pool-viewing gallery. The approach has the extra benefit of providing a greater sense of privacy for anyone navigating the fitness area. 

The pool itself is distinctive for its suspended CLT beams that support the ceiling with the help of embedded steel girders. “They’re fantastic; CLT doesn’t corrode,” says Fast. It’s also noteworthy for its adjacent and very open locker-room area: 70 percent of the locker space is all-gender, with private stalls available. And the main locker area features floor-to-ceiling glazing between the change area and the pool, with the overall configuration reflecting a larger cultural acceptance of transparency and gender neutrality. “These places are ground zero for a lot of changes that are happening in society,” notes Fast, “and it all comes down to the details.” 

The aquatic center now serves as a contemporary town square. “The notion of free is really important to us, to have a no-barrier condition,” says New Westminster chief administrative officer Lisa Spitale. That means it is both universally accessible (the project has a Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification) and has large public spaces inside and out. The pool and workout rooms require an entrance fee, but the foyer “living room” is completely open and free to enter. 

At sunset, the glazed facade turns the building into an illuminated beacon within the low-rise neighborhood. At a time when city dwellers find it ever more challenging to connect in person, the Aquatic Centre provides a welcoming venue. “People can stay as long as they want and connect with their neighbors,” notes Spitale. “You have every right to be there, and it doesn’t cost you anything. That’s the epitome of civic life. 

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• Architecture
• Interior Design
• Sustainability
• Wellness

• Adele Weder
• Community Engagement
• Embodied Carbon
• HCMA Architecture + Design
• Net Zero and Net Positive

A Headquarters Designed for the Greater Community

Osborn gave CLB wide latitude to design EMIT’s headquarters and manufacturing facility, with a single condition. “His one edict was that all of the employees needed to enter and exit through one door,” Logan recalls, part of what EMIT calls its no-collar workforce. The project includes numerous common areas where industrial and administrative workers can mingle—a coffee shop, an auditorium, a basketball court, a library, and a barbershop—many of which are also made available to the community. “We wanted to create a place that wasn’t just for the employees, that the whole town and county could come and use,” the architect adds.

The interior includes many custom features fabricated by EMIT, including wood ceiling panels in an intricate pattern, and a perforated steel reception desk. “It was a learning experience for us,” says CLB Architects interior design director Sarah Kennedy. “We would often have a typical product specified, and they would say, ‘We can make our own.’ It gave us the opportunity to really rethink the way that we were executing some of these details.”

Celebrating Craft with Design Details

Outside the company headquarters in an adjacent new city park is a Stonehenge-like circular steel sculpture called FILTER that CLB and EMIT codesigned and fabricated for the NYCxDESIGN festival in 2022. CLB had been working solo on a wood sculpture for the festival, but it proved prohibitively expensive, so Kennedy suggested to Logan that they invite EMIT, with which they were already building the headquarters, to collaborate. For the sculpture’s new iteration, displayed in Times Square before returning to Wyoming, “we took a basic sheet of steel that shows up at their facility every day, and folded it in half so it actually has a spine and can self-support,” Logan recalls. “This material often plays a hidden role in construction, so the sculpture became a way to honor their craft.”

The EMIT headquarters is already attracting interest, and not from would-be Kmart shoppers. Osborn recalls a recent job applicant who arrived without an appointment: “She said, ‘I really have no idea what you do, but the building is so interesting, I had to apply because I was curious what’s going on inside.’”