3 min read December 2022 — In an interview with Invest:, Tim Carl, CEO of national interdisciplinary design firm HGA, discussed the effect that great design has on those who experience the built environment and the growing intersection across industries. “As designers of this environment, we must help our cities evolve to meet the current challenges many big cities are facing. There is an incredible opportunity to help our cities grow sustainably and bring people back,” Carl said.
How would you describe the state of demand for your services in Minneapolis-St. Paul?
It has been an interesting intersection of all the markets we serve. Right now, in the Twin Cities, there is an incredible landscape of opportunities to make a difference. HGA is addressing the changes that our clients are experiencing. I have been in Minnesota since 1992 and I love it here. Greater MSP has world-class arts and culture, incredible colleges and universities, great healthcare and amazing for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Our expertise serves across all those areas and what we have learned is how to listen to and engage those clients more deeply and learn what they are experiencing and what they need.
Over the last couple of years, the firm has seen a great intersection across industries. For example, we are seeing higher education work with healthcare in a way that has never been seen before. Businesses, arts and other industries are collaborating with higher education as well. There are exciting and new opportunities, and it has been fun for us to explore and guide our clients through them.
How can great design improve outcomes in the different spaces you create?
HGA has been learning to apply genuine research to find what people want to experience, what inspires them and even what helps them enhance their work while having an overall better experience. There is a history of architects designing beautiful buildings but not necessarily understanding day-to-day experiences as people move through them. For instance, we have a design anthropologist who has been trained to engage people and understand what makes a person’s day efficient, exciting and inspiring.
When working on campuses, we shadowed students for a week and learned there is inequity in physical space because some areas are more inviting than others. We have been researching to understand what makes it a livable experience and applying that. Once the project is done, our team stays with the client and learns what is working and what is not through a post-occupancy evaluation. Another great example is in hospitals, where we use devices to track the movement of doctors and nurses and apply that information to make their spaces more efficient.
What are some of the ways that technological innovations are being implemented in projects?
There are a lot of things going on here. We recently created a new role at HGA called Chief Information Officer and hired a fantastic woman to fill that role. We are looking at how we use technology in so many ways to help our clients innovate by using virtual and augmented reality to help them visualize spaces. We’ve been doing that for a long time and it is amazing. Our Building Technologies Group is working to understand how technology is integrated into the building, especially in this new hybrid world where tech is used to more easily navigate everyday work. As an industry, we need to learn how to connect information and data across channels that are more effective and accessible. There are all kinds of hardware and software to improve our work and increase the value of what we do in the communities we serve.
Sustainability is a huge component of HGA. In what ways is the firm helping clients reach their sustainability goals?
Forty percent of carbon emissions come from the built environment, so our role as architects and engineers is huge. We have to step up. The American Institute of Architects has created a goal to bring the carbon footprint down by a significant percentage by 2030. Each of the firms is measuring the impact we are having and the goal is to move toward net zero. We just finished a great project that sets a benchmark for the Living Building Challenge and we already have several completed net-zero buildings. However, not all our clients or everyone in our industry is prepared to do it at the level that must be done.
HGA has been building the structure for sustainability internally with over 30 experts across the firm. Additionally, we have a Building Performance Group, which is a group of engineers and sustainability specialists who can come into the existing built environment and bring it close to a carbon-zero footprint. Lastly, we are doing a lot of education and training for ourselves and our clients as part of our effort to move the needle faster. I strive for all projects we do to have three things: an expert who will identify sustainability goals and track them and share the progress. We are working very hard, and considering the scale of our firm, which has 12 offices across the United States, on how we can make an impact.
What is the outlook for HGA and the architecture industry in the near term?
There is an opportunity to use our expertise to continue to participate in projects that intersect across industries. I see a huge challenge and opportunity for the built environment. As designers of this environment, we at HGA must help our cities evolve to meet the current challenges many big cities are facing. There is an incredible opportunity to help our cities grow sustainably and bring people back. The industry as a whole has to get better at listening, learning, and applying what we learn, with expertise that can cross over and be used in a way that addresses the needs of a community and brings them together. I think that will create more vibrant environments that will help rebuild our cities. At the same time, I think we need to create a more equitable pathway for students to come into our profession. When we look at the cost of education, we can quickly realize that it is a huge barrier for a lot of students. We are doing so many things on so many levels to help change that, which will help our ability to thrive as an industry moving forward.
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