🎧 #142: Living buildings and where technology fits

"The building industry can be the first to show the world what it looks like for an industry from within itself to transform itself in line with a sustainable future."​

—Lindsay Baker

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Episode 142 is a conversation with Lindsay Baker, CEO at the International Living Future Institute.

Summary

We talked about Lindsay's rather awesome background, including her time building the smart building startup, Comfy, all the way to getting acquired by Siemens.

Then, of course, we dug into what living buildings are, where technology comes into play with living buildings, and the role of certifications at the intersection of climate, healthy buildings and technology.

Without further ado, please enjoy this episode with Lindsay Baker.

Mentions and Links

1. Awair (1:38)
2. Comfy (6:56)
3. WeWork (12:07)
4. International Living Future Institute (14:23)
5. Design the Future Podcast (15:56)
6. Kira Gould (16:29)
7. 🎧 #141: CRE Market Talk #2 (55:44)
8. The Expanse (1:03:44)

You can find Lindsay on LinkedIn.

Enjoy!

Highlights

Music credit: Dream Big by Audiobinger—licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

Full transcript

Note: transcript was created using an imperfect machine learning tool and lightly edited by a human (so you can get the gist). Please forgive errors!

[00:00:31] James Dice: Hello and welcome to the Nexus podcast. I have Lindsay Baker here with me. Lindsay is a CEO at the International Living Future Institute, and we're gonna talk about Lindsay's rather awesome background, I might say, including her time building, the smart building startup, comfy, uh, all the way to getting acquired by Siemens.

And then of course, we're gonna dig into what living buildings are, where technology comes into play with living buildings and the role of certifications [00:01:00] at the intersection of climate, healthy buildings and technology. So, Lindsay, welcome and can we start by, um, asking you how smart and sustainable is your home?

[00:01:12] Lindsay Baker: Oh man. Well, so I have to say, this is a funny one in part, I don't know if any of your listeners are like me, but I have a husband who is not a particular fan of sensors and technology in his home because he is a little concerned about, like, you know, surveillance and things. So my, our home is not that smart.

I have gotten away with a few sensors. I've got an air quality sensor. I, we have an aware in our house, um, and I do, you know, there's lots of little, you know, old school mercury filled thermometers in different places in the house so that I can monitor the temperature, but it's actually pretty, um, pretty low tech here.

Uh, I also live in a 1969 glass box. Uh, it's a high rise. So I, you know, there's this interesting [00:02:00] dynamic with the choices that we make in our homes. I, I, we live in a nice, dense neighborhood where I can walk everywhere. and because we live in a, in an apartment building, I think we're using fewer resources than we would if we lived, you know, kind of a single family home with a big yard or something.

So all told, I think we do pretty well, but the irony has not been lost on me that, um, , we, we like horrible heat game problems and a lot of glare and all sorts of things that, uh, the building scientist in me wasn't really thinking about when I saw the sort of beautiful view out of these windows and we decided to buy this place.

So, you know, pros and cons, but generally speaking, I'm, I, I think we've found the right balance for us. Um, and, uh, I don't, you know, I don't have too much guilt about it. I think we all do as well as we can on the sustainability side, but yeah, on the smart side, I, there is no machine that I can talk to that can put music on or [00:03:00] otherwise, you know, um, tell me, make a phone call or anything like that.

So, uh, I don't know. I think maybe that is my style as well. I don't, I'm not sure I'm, I'm totally ready for all of that technology yet, but that's me,

[00:03:14] James Dice: It's funny, I, I get, uh, um, naturally vendors like to send me products, smart buildings, products, and I have one of the, one of those vendors is an occupancy counter, a people counter. And I've been thinking about installing it, but I'm also like, you know, how much am I violating my wife's privacy and my own privacy?

Like, like, like really? Do I need to count people in my living room? Do you know what I mean? Um, so I struggle with that same

thing.

[00:03:43] Lindsay Baker: Yeah.

You gotta be, I think we have to be kind of like honest, um, early adopters here and tell people like, Hmm, nope, sorry, my husband's not gonna be comfortable with, with that one. Like, I, I always worry about the, I'm, I'm so interested in, in acoustic sensors, I've always [00:04:00] wanted there to be kind of more of a, a market for, and like use cases for knowing how much sound is in a space, but I now understand that if anyone were like, they think it's, it's definitely just the government listen to, to your conversations.

Like, that's definitely how everyone understands. Or your boss, you know, or your company for some other kind of nefarious

[00:04:23] James Dice: Exactly.

[00:04:24] Lindsay Baker: thing. So I, yeah, I think I've, I've kind of learned, I may have to give up on my like nerdy desire for, for that type of sensing anytime soon because people are just too, Squeamish about it.

But that is, you know, of course an important aspect of building controls, in my opinion, is the question of the human and how, what the, what the actual human behavior thinks about all this stuff. So, you know, um, I, I believe in it. I think that's an important constraint.

[00:04:53] James Dice: Totally. So let's, let's talk about your awesome background. Uh, can you just take us through it? How'd you [00:05:00] get here? How'd you get into the industry? And maybe give us a little, uh, timeline on, on, from, from there.

[00:05:07] Lindsay Baker: Yeah. So I'm an environmentalist by background. That's how I got into working on buildings. Um, I was, grew up in Atlanta. I got sort of concerned about climate change and I don't know, the heat island effect, all these things, pollution when I was growing up and. I learned about buildings pretty early on when I was actually in high school and got interested in the idea of working on green buildings when it was just kind of starting to be a concept, um, in the industry.

So I was really lucky, kind of that I nerded out on something pretty young that ended up being this growing field. My parents were like, there's no way you could get a job working on green building, so you're gonna have to work on this, you know, like come up with some backup plans. But it just happened to be when the US Green Building Council was getting started and so I ended up there right outta college and, um, you know, I guess I should say I went to college at Oberlin [00:06:00] College, which has a, you know, super, super green building that also had a lot of intelligence and that I started getting exposure, um, pretty early to this question of how buildings operate and, and the importance of operation.

Optimizing sustainability. Um, so I, I came out to California to do a building Science masters at uc, Berkeley, which is at the Center for the Built Environment. Probably some of your listeners will know, um, really focuses on sort of that just, you know, some of the intersections of normal comfort lighting, um, but a lot of human behavior related stuff.

A lot of things around sort of, um, controls, for example, like the, you know, um, what kinds of controls work, um, what do people intuitively understand or not. Um, so I was there for a little bit, ended up at Google in their real estate group. Um, and it was sort of because of Google that I got connected to a couple of guys who built a, uh, the prototype of what became comfy, the software, um, at uc, Berkeley, they were [00:07:00] computer science, um, PhDs there.

Um, and yeah, some, you know, some like Berkeley slash Google Connections. Um, they were looking to start the company and. Um, needed people, you know, needed somebody who knew something about Bill, you know, the building industry and such. So I joined, um, uh, at the very beginning of the company before it got any funding or anything, which in retrospect was a crazy move.

Uh, , it was definitely, Comy had a lot of like classic Silicon Valley style things about it. Um, I know some smart buildings companies kind of start a little bit, maybe more from the industry, you know, like somebody builds a tool and then they decide that other people should have access to that tool or whatever.

We started with like a bunch of young people, uh, pitching the, you know, classic Silicon Valley venture capitalists getting some money and just going for the whole wild ride. And if you've ever watched that show Silicon Valley, like it was legitimately [00:08:00] like that enough that I watched the show just for therapy, like

It was a lot. It was a lot. Um, but you know, I was an immediate fan of Comfy. Um, for those that don't know, I think it's kind of worth it, like just explaining the way that it came out. Anyway, what it was in its original state was an app that you had on your phone or your desktop that allowed you to, um, it was connected to the building management system through Backnet, and it would allow occupants to have a very carefully curated bit of control o over the temperature of their specific workspace.

So we were using whatever zones were already in a building that were, had been designated by the B m s, but, you know, kind of giving people a little sandbox. So we talked about it as like a nest thermostat, but for commercial buildings. Um, and it was really helpful from a, from the perspective of. , it helped people with comfort for sure, because it had a machine learning algorithm that would [00:09:00] learn to keep the spaces cooler or warmer, depending on the preferences of the folks who sat in those spaces.

Um, but also an energy perspective. It would, when it didn't see any feedback in a particular zone, it would relax the dead band and allow the space to float more, um, you know, between a wider, uh, sort of range of temperatures. So it was a, it was a really lovely way of sort of tuning, you know, commercial HVAC to the actual demand of the people and a very, you know, very limited.

They couldn't just say, oh, I want it to be 60 degrees in here all the time, and just blast the air conditioning. It was, you know, within the sort of balance Anyway, it was so, I loved it immediately because I found it to be a really useful sort of balance of occupant control. and, um, you know, automation that could allow us to tune buildings.

Of course, the, the, it was a lot easier said than done as it turned out. Um, and, you know, we, we [00:10:00] had a lot of success. We did managed to get it into a bunch of buildings. We had a lot of great clients and they still do. Um, but as we've built out, I think that that specific technology of sort of the occupant control of thermal comfort, we, we added on more features that were sort of more related to the broader occupant experience for folks in buildings.

And those were just kind of easier to sell people on and easier to kind of manage either the, you know, the b m s interconnections were challenging the, just, you know, it's kind of more, I mean, that's one of the things you learn with in a startup world and it's, it is built for, is like to just see how something works in, in reality.

And I think it was a little bit more expensive than we were hoping it would be to actually integrate it in, you know, through a lot of building management systems. And we just ran into, into lots of buildings for, it looked for a while, like we would have, you know, good interoperability and then something would happen and we [00:11:00] would be back to square one and, you know, clients would get frustrated and all that.

So it was, I think we proved that it was possible, but then the company. Yeah, I guess long story short, we, we, uh, we, we sold to Siemens, as you mentioned, . So now they still exist and they kind of do a broader set of workforce, um, not workforce, workplace, um, optimization thing. So yeah. So that was, I guess, yeah, sorry that was the very long version of the story of Comfy, which we can talk more about.

But I do like to make sure people understand like, why would someone go from working on sustainability and buildings into like, working in Silicon Valley and that's why that happened. Um,

[00:11:41] James Dice: Well, this is, that's exactly why I wanted to talk to you on this podcast. You know, you know, I think it was a couple years ago when I first reached out and I was like, well, I, I. Love that, you know, combination of your experience and your foray into smart buildings. It's so cool. So yeah, continue. You

[00:12:00] have a couple of other.

[00:12:01] Lindsay Baker: yeah, so, so I guess that is, I mean, , it's a long story, but it really helps to explain why I ended. Next at as the head of sustainability at WeWork. Um, and that is because WeWork, uh, was doing really interesting things around software and data for real estate. Um, they cared a lot about sustainability, but they didn't really wanna take the approach with sustainability that a lot of people had pitched them on of like, I will come and make sure that all of your WeWorks get lead certified.

And I was like, ah, that's cool, but let's see if we can do something really interesting with sort of the data and infrastructure of WeWork and really change the nature of real estate and sort of, you know, try out some of these things. WeWork was a client of Comfy and they were really into it because, you know, it was this. you know, tech infused real estate kind of play. Um, the famous story that I can now sort of share is that they tried to [00:13:00] acquire Comfy, and, and it was, you know, WeWork, if you know about how they tried to acquire companies for a while. We didn't, we didn't take the bait. Uh, and so , uh, that's where the, the relationship kind of started.

So I ended up there and was there for about a year and a half, building a really cool sustainability program. I was super proud of, really amazing people. But then unfortunately, when WeWork collapsed in the, at the end of 2019, uh, we were all pretty much, well almost all let go, um, as a part of the big layoffs that happened.

So I got a, I went on a spirit quest as the pandemic started, uh, and, you know, thought about a bunch of things, thought about what I wanted to do in my. and really came back to the importance for me, uh, of, um, of being an environmentalist in the building industry that we, you know, the building industry is a critical industry to decarbonize a critical industry for us to sort of reimagine and execute the a, a better, uh, future [00:14:00] in, and it, like lots of industries, uh, needs people who are fully engaged and kind of understand how it works in order to shift it.

And, um, I love the people in the building industry that are trying to change it. I think they're all really fascinating folks and, you know, they're just kind of my community that I started out in. So, um, and the opportunity to join the international Living Future, I. Came up during the, all of these, um, wanderings I was doing, and I was fortunate to be able to join as the c e o, the organization's about 10 years old.

So it was kind of an opportunity to join this organization that I knew of as being kind of the vanguard in some ways of the green building community. Um, and um, yeah, I think frankly I was kind of done with the Silicon Valley world, WeWork plus Comfy. I was feeling a little bit like I wanted to try a different sort of angle on transforming things, but.

I think [00:15:00] when it comes down to it, my career has really been this series of different experiments on the market levers that can really shift the building industry in a big way. I, I've always been interested in that question, like what can we find that might disproportionately impact, you know, and, and really like, um, shift practice and, you know, lead was that for sure.

Um, when I was working on that, the technology angle I think does and should be a pretty, you know, can, can be a major lever and does manage to do that. Sometimes WeWork was kind of that type of thing for sure. Um, and yeah, now I get to do that work from a very sort of different angle of, of, uh, the Living Future Institute, which has lots of different ways that it's trying to affect change, but definitely that mission to really fundamentally restructure a lot of things about how we build towards, you know, better future.

[00:15:55] James Dice: Awesome. Well, we'll talk about that in just a second. I [00:16:00] did wanna circle back on two things. One is your podcast. I'd love for you to give a shout out about that. Uh, we'll definitely put the link to it in the show notes, but can you talk about that for just a second?

[00:16:10] Lindsay Baker: Yeah, sure. Well, so during my Spirit Quest Times, and also at the beginning of the pandemic, I started a podcast in part, um, because, you know, like when you do, when you don't get to see other human beings , it seemed like a nice way to keep things going. Um, uh, I started it with my, my co-host, uh, Kira Gould, um, who's a, an author and communications person in the green building world.

Um, it's called Design the Future, and we interview women who are leading, um, in various ways in the world of sustainable buildings. Um, so it's planners and architects and engineers. Um, we have, uh, oh, all sorts of folks doing different things, nonprofit leaders, et cetera. And it's across a lot of broad sort of categories.

I'd say, like if, if [00:17:00] you're more of a smart buildings person, there's definitely some folks who are doing really interesting technology. Work. We just had DaVita Hertzel from Klima on, well, I guess they're not really as smart buildings anymore as they first started out to be, but nonetheless, like cool tech that people should know about.

Um, and uh, yeah. So that's our podcast if you wanna check it out. Um, design the future. Uh, podcast.com is how you find us. And we post, you know, like every couple weeks or something, just conversations with badass women.

[00:17:33] James Dice: Awesome. Um, I did want to hit comfy again real quick because I have a, a question for you, and it might be a little bit drawn out. I kind of wanna s. What you said around the different use cases that you guys, you know, ended up building. So you started with this probably very difficult from an integration standpoint and cybersecurity standpoint.

Um, use case, which was we're going to create a mobile app and give [00:18:00] that, put that in the hands of the occupant That also sits on, you know, has a device, sits on the network, integrates with the HVAC control system. Um, and then it, what sounds like what happened was you realized like kind of like, oh shit, that's a little bit more difficult, you know, long time to value, kind of expensive.

Um, which a lot of people that are listening to this are probably like, yes, of course. Um, and then it sounds like you said, okay, well we have an app, right? What, what are the other ways we can provide value to tenants? Um, and now I think, so that was, that ended in, or you stopped working there in 2018. So it's been like five years since that, um, you know, Acquisition by Siemens, and now today, I don't know how much you pay attention to this, there are probably 25 applications that are like looking at this.

And they started in the opposite direction. So they said, okay, let's give them a mobile app and now what can we do? And then you see them go in the opposite direction, which is [00:19:00] eventually they might realize, oh, maybe we can start to connect into the BS . Right. Um, and so I'm wondering if you just have any thoughts on like, um, in general that market category, that category of products and like what it is today versus what it was back then when you guys were kind of the pioneer for that occupant application, occupant engagement application category.

[00:19:24] Lindsay Baker: Yeah. Well, it's nice to be thought of as a pioneer. I think that's super cool. And, and I guess I will say, I think one of the things that I take away from that, or why I think we were maybe a pioneer is that we, we had a particular diversity on our team that I think is really helpful for smart building technology companies that we had, um, folks who knew buildings and building systems pretty well, like very, very well.

Um, you know, in, in our early, um, team sort of dna. and we had really world class computer scientists, um, who knew how to build [00:20:00] machine learning algorithms to a pretty ridiculous degree. So I think one of the things, this is gonna sound a little bit pretentious to say, but my colleagues on the computer science side of, of comfy were some of the best computer scientists in the world.

They, they were really like, these are people who were building Facebook before, um, you know, and people who were, who have many, many degrees in these things. So it, it wasn't like, let's build an app. That would be cool. And it was very much like the, I just felt incredibly lucky that a few. Super, well trained, brilliant computer scientists wanted to work on this issue of HVAC in buildings.

I was just like, all right, we gotta keep these guys around as long as we possibly can. See what kind of interesting stuff we can build. Um, I dunno if any of them are still with us. I think they've probably moved on to different, potentially easier, uh, technology problems or, you know, machine learning applications and things.

But it was a moment in time [00:21:00] where, where we could do something really difficult that way. And, um, you know, I think we all kind of knew it was really challenging too. That's another thing worth saying is that, um, the nice thing about Silicon Valley is that we never could have even gotten comfy off the ground if it weren't for venture capital.

Sort of giving us the chance to have a few years of runway to like fail and try again and sort of work out all, all the gnar of like the early learning curve. . Um, and, and so I hope we have more precedent for that. More and more companies that are doing something that, you know, for your listeners, it's gonna sound crazy and then you just, just give them a second.

Just give them a second cuz somebody else is gonna give them a hundred million dollars to figure out whether it is possible to do that thing. And I think we as a, you know, smart buildings community need to kind of just hold our breath and see what happens and if, if we can overcome some of those barriers in the case of comfy.

Yeah, it was a little hard to get over all of the barriers and it was ambitious, but [00:22:00] I, I just wanna say like, I think, I think that these folks deserve the opportunity to try and I feel really thankful that we had the opportunity to try. Um, I, I am loving the fact that there is more buy-in or more sort of traction for occupant facing technologies in for buildings.

I think that's, um, really exciting. Um, and. um, really necessary. I think that that is the art, you know, for these kinds of technology companies is to figure out, I mean, we were just always talking about it as a sandbox. Like you get to pick the sandbox of how much access they have or how much they can control, or when they can control things or which buttons you want to enable or disable.

But, um, buildings are fundamentally there to provide shelter for us. They are there for the occupants. That's why they exist. And so for us to sort of imply that they don't really need to be involved at all in anything about the way the building runs [00:23:00] is, is just, it's just, uh, probably wrong in the long run , you know, and certainly a shame to have that attitude.

So I'm, I'm liking watching it happen, but, um, but yeah, it, it can be hard to go in the direction of like building a sort of a consumer facing app and then trying to integrate into BMS systems afterwards. I think we were, we were fortunate that we kind of tried the hardest thing first, you know,

[00:23:24] James Dice: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Um, so, oh, and by the way, so you said already of 'em, still around? I know At least, uh, Steven is still around. Give a shout out to Steven. He's, he's a member of the Nexus Pro community and I see him on Zoom every now and then, but he, he's, he is still around. Hello

[00:23:45] Lindsay Baker: All right, good. Yes. Hello, Steven. I mean, really, like Steve's probably like, yeah, he, uh, he doesn't like shock about it too much, but was in fact an intern for Mark Zuckerberg when Facebook was just starting. Fun [00:24:00] fact. and, you know, yeah. Is, is an amazing, an amazing person and engineer in every way.

So, yeah, like I said, I'm glad to hear he's still like, I think, and I think that the other, um, two gentlemen that like put in a lot of work, Abe and Andrew on the sort of initial, um, comfy sort of backbone, um, are still really doing things that they discovered that, um, as sort of problems and opportunities, um, cuz all three of them were, you know, and are I think computer scientists who are really driven to, to solve big problems, you know, um, climate problems, et cetera.

So it's, it's, um, it's great when you can find an opportunity for folks like that who have such high skill levels to kind of plug into climate solutions in some way. So yeah, I felt really lucky to, to get to be there.

[00:24:49] James Dice: Totally. So one question on WeWork before we get into living buildings. So you mentioned kind of a lot of what you were doing as kind of like, maybe [00:25:00] this is my words, summarizing what you said. I don't know if he said this exactly, but like kind of like super forward looking when it comes to technology.

I'm wondering if there's anything, and you look back on that time. that you think was a good idea that hasn't quite made it into the actual industry practice yet. Like what can we learn from the, you know, the big ideas that you guys had while you were there.

[00:25:21] Lindsay Baker: Oh my gosh, that's such a good question. Okay. I guess there are a few that I was really excited about. Um, one of which I would say that has some smart buildings implications to it for especially around sensors, is that we were starting to figure out how to provide. , um, outdoor work environments that, um, so it gives a lot of WeWork.

They'll have, you know, a patio or a, a rooftop or something like that, that people can work on in, and it actually is pretty expensive to, to, you know, fit out a, a roof or some kind of outdoor space. Um, and people don't oftentimes like [00:26:00] to work outside because it's loud or because they're, it's too much glare on your screen or whatever.

Um, but then the pandemic hit and we all realized how great it is to actually be able to program your outdoor space. And I think for real estate providers that have access to some outdoor space, , it made those buildings a lot more valuable for folks that wanted to be able to have a meeting outside or something like that.

How, so we were working on these ideas around how to, how to monitor and really achieve a better level of environmental quality for an outdoor workspace, uh, such that you could actually imagine people working, um, you know, in, in an outdoor space for a long period of time. Good wifi, good glare control, all of those kinds of things.

So I think that kind of stuff still really, you know, it's, it's, the demand for it is still going up because of just our different approaches to, um, commercial office space now. Um, and, you know, in the, in the [00:27:00] face of probably. Um, you know, virus issues, et cetera. But also just I think, a really beautiful thing to think about when we're kind of thinking about the future of work and the future of cities and why do people wanna come into a commercial office anymore anyway.

Um, the idea that, you know, you may not have access to a lovely patio where you could sit outside and feel the, you know, breeze on your face and enjoy being next to a little whatever, edible plant garden or something like, that's all, that's all really valuable and might be a draw for fe for folks trying to get people to come back into the office.

So I loved that. Um, oh man. But there are more mundane ones. I mean, we really were just trying to figure out how to use technology to kind of tune the spaces more dynamically. I mean, that's still, I think, kind of the, for me, it. , um, I don't know, like a, like the medium term holy grail here that like, wouldn't it be great if all of the spaces that we've [00:28:00] built, all of these buildings in downtown areas especially that are supposed to be for working, they use, they, they, they had the capacity to provide the kind of environments that each of us wanted and they could sort of dynamically control themselves to that no more and no less, no more resources needed for that than, than, uh, than we need to.

And then the added aspect of this that I get excited about is the idea that what if a building, the more it was able to do that, the more it was able to do a really good job of providing a great work environment for people, the more valued it would be in the real estate market. And that's like a total disconnect.

Still the sort of question of how do you. Um, those, how these buildings, you know, to actually, like, how do you get that data to sort of bubble up to the level of an asset valuation? Um, but the more we have, you know, sort of e s g metrics coming into play, the more the smart building stacks kind of evolve, I think we'll get to that point where someone [00:29:00] could literally walk into a building when they're trying to decide where they're gonna put their office and see or, you know, get on their phone.

Like people really love this building. People really love the light in the building. People really love, you know, whatever the cafe next door. But like that stuff like there, there would be a way to kind of bubble up that data such that that building gets to be charging a little bit more rent for doing a really good job at like providing a nice workplace for people.

Um, so we were kind of hoping to get there and yeah, I hope someone does.

[00:29:33] James Dice: Totally. I love that answer though. Let's, I think that's a good segue into living buildings. So maybe just start with why after your Spirit quest, which I think maybe we could record a whole second podcast, maybe a different genre on what you discovered during your spirit quest. Um, maybe, we'll, we'll get there at the end if we have time.

Um, but, but maybe just [00:30:00] talk about kind of why, why you decided this was the next stop on, on the journey to Lindsay Journey.

[00:30:05] Lindsay Baker: Yeah, sure. Um, you know, I think it was in part when I left, we. , uh, I was getting a lot of people reaching out about chief sustainability officer jobs in like manufacturing or, uh, consumer products or other things like that cuz there aren't a lot of people who are qualified for those roles. Um, since it's kind of the new field.

Um, and I started thinking like, oh, okay, well sure I could help some other industry. But, um, just kept coming back to how much I love working with buildings. I like, I like engineers and architects a lot. I like this sort of, this continuous tension that we have around how to, you know, make people happy and comfortable without, um, you know, without chaos ensuing, I don't know that, um, I, I just love, I love working [00:31:00] with folks in the building industry, so that was kind of the first decision for me was that I wanted to be in the building industry, but it was also this time, you know, in the pandemic when you're kind of like, I was first of all, Very much feeling the reality of, um, climate change.

I mean, we had some bad wildfires in California, um, towards the beginning of the pandemic that were really pretty devastating. Um, and also, you know, just kind of opened a lot of people's eyes, eyes to the importance of air quality, et cetera. So I think it just, you know, it just, it feels like home to me to work at the intersection of climate and buildings and, um, and to sort of figure out what levers we can use to change that.

Um, uh, you know, so then I had this choice like the, the head hunters for heads of E S G in a real estate company, you know, like focus on one particular portfolio and try to really grain it. And I thought about a few of those. I think I, I think if the right one had come along, I might have. [00:32:00] But at that point, unfortunately, and, and this was something I had been starting to feel at, you know, when worry about with WeWork, companies were really just doing it because they were legally required to.

And I, and I just didn't have the patience for it at the time. I wanted to, to be with the people who really believed like, no, this is the right thing to do. Uh, we're doing this for our grandchildren, we're doing this for our children. You know, like, um, and not because it was becoming sort of like, oh, this is just what we do now.

We hire ahead of E S G, you know, so, so you kind of, being with my people I guess, was the last aspect of that decision, and I just wanted to kind of be surrounded by the folks who really, who really fundamentally are, are staring this problem in the face and wanna work for the rest of their lives on trying to do as much as we. you know, to provide a good future for our kids. And that's just, I absolutely get that in working at the institute. Um, now it's a, it's a really wonderful group of people who are, who are really [00:33:00] dedicated to that. And yeah, I, I, I don't miss Silicon Valley at all in that way, . Not to say that there's no one in Silicon Valley who, you know, who approaches it that way, but, you know, being in the nonprofit world, you kind of know we're all here for the

We're all here for the planet for sure.

[00:33:15] James Dice: love it. Okay, so maybe for people that haven't heard of the Institute or living buildings in general, can you just talk about what they are and sort of what the Institute does kind of surrounding this concept of living buildings?

[00:33:29] Lindsay Baker: Yeah, sure. So, uh, international Living Future Institute, we're about a, a 12 year old nonprofit. Um, started off in the Pacific Northwest. Um, really working on, um, this idea of the de definition of, of a living building. We, uh, we created this concept called the Living Building Challenge, which is a certification program, but more so it's kind of a, we say it's a philosophy, it's an advocacy tool, and it defines [00:34:00] what it would look like if a building were truly.

Positive in its impacts in, in the environmental realm, in the health realm, and in the social realm. So it just started off, I think, kind of as a thought experiment to say, could buildings actually give back more positive of the world than they take away, uh, in these three different areas. Uh, so we have a certification program that we run that kind of structurally looks a lot like lead in the sense that you kind of, you know, you register for it and then we give you a bunch of resources and then you can certify and get the plaque on your building.

Um, but it's very different from lead in a bunch of ways, including the fact that it, you, we, you, we have a set of imperatives. It's not so you don't get to pick and choose all the different things that you do. You gotta do all the things pretty much. Um, and it really is defining. know, what, what would it look like if your building were regenerative?

So you have to, you have to produce more energy than you consume. You have to clean [00:35:00] all of your own wastewater. Those, all of these things that are really, um, pretty challenging. So not a lot of buildings have achieved it, and that's not really the point. We don't necessarily, uh, mind that it's a really hard thing to do.

We have that as sort of the anchor of our programs as an institute and our larger work is to inspire folks in the building industry and to provide tools for them to really pursue ambitious changes in their practices, in their products, in their buildings as best they can, as fast as they can. , um, towards these positive outcomes.

So we have a membership community that folks can join. We have educational programs. We also label products, and we have our declare label that's a transparency label for building materials that's primarily around health to, um, expose the question of whether these, but different, uh, building materials [00:36:00] are, um, contained any hazardous chemicals that are known to be bad for human health.

So that, that kind of thing. Um, so, so it's, it's kind of, um, yeah, it's definitely an ecosystem strategy. We work across, you know, building projects, uh, product to people, designing it out into the industry, and then also with organizations. We have our, our dress label, which is sort of a transparency label for, for firms around there, social impact work.

So yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's great. It's a community of 40 people. We're, um, you know, all over the country just sort of working on these different. Again, it's the levers for change. It's just sort of what is, what do we need to create in our market to enable people to act fast and act in line with, you know, with their values for, for all of these different, the whole world, I guess, of, of, uh, of sustainability and, and social impact in buildings.

[00:36:57] James Dice: Awesome. And [00:37:00] before we hit record, we talked about how your world and the smart buildings world, they might be two separate communities. There might be a little bit of overlap. Can you talk about how, from this context inside the institute, how you think about smart building technology? Then that sort of whole ecosystem that I guess is kind of where Nexus Plays.

Nexus kind of is in the middle a little bit, but how do you think about technology as it relates to creating a living building?

[00:37:29] Lindsay Baker: Yeah, I mean, actually maybe it goes back to like my. My story about my house in the sense that like, I, I think I can actually pull off a pretty sustainable home without a lot of technologies. But there are some technologies that we need. I think living buildings, they typically do have some pretty cool technologies in them.

Um, dynamic facades and, you know, lots of sensing and lots of sort of interesting. Um, [00:38:00] Combinations of like manual and digital systems to optimize the buildings as well as you possibly can. The, the thing I like about it, and it was actually wonderful, what someone in a living building that I was touring recently said that what they like most is that they think that, um, li their living building is kind of equally deploying ancient technology and super, super modern technology.

And some of the ancient technology is like thermal mass, like burning into the side of a hill in order to, you know, achieve uh, right, like better temperature, um, yeah. Um, equilibrium. So I won't go into the definition of the terminal mass, sorry, but you know that, so like that kind of stuff. But then they also. um, interlock sensors on their operable windows for the HVAC so that if they decide to open their windows, the HVAC turns off and it's a, you know, not very commonly used, [00:39:00] uh, technology that is really helpful for optimizing a building. Um, so it's, it's that kind of stuff. So there's, there's a lot of, you know, intelligent lighting is a really, um, frequently used, uh, technology in living buildings.

So, so that's how I like to think about it, is, You know, across the whole sort of, um, community of folks working on living buildings, they approach the question of how to get to sort of net positive energy or net positive water in different ways. And some of them use kind of, you know, um, pretty simple methods that are a bit more low tech.

Um, and some of them really get pretty tricked out and use really amazing technologies that are new. And I think because we're more kind of goal oriented around what it is that we're trying to do, net positive in particular, um, it's become a, a cool learning community for people learning how to, you know, how they might pull that off.

I mean, also stuff that I'm sure your [00:40:00] community doesn't really think about. Also, the kinds of technologies that come up in living buildings can be pretty hilarious and great. Like one of the, one of the newer ones, um, that is still going through certification. The headquarters of p AE engineers in Portland, Oregon.

They have a. Technology that separates. So from the urinals, they've got a, the P water goes into a, essentially a, a system that allows them to harvest all the nutrients outta the P and then take that, those nutrients, um, in crystallized form to local farms to help with fertilization. of, uh, of the plant. Of, yeah.

Of like, uh, yeah. So like, it's a whole, it's like this whole hilarious and amazing technology system that they have in their basement that's harvesting, uh, resource out of the building that can be used to help with, you know, like, uh, agriculture. So like that kind of stuff. Like you wouldn't really get people thinking about that kinda [00:41:00] technology unless you were really trying to pull off kind of some high performance in many ways.

So that's, uh, yeah, I love that about it. It's, it could get real, um, it can get real wild.

[00:41:13] James Dice: Yeah. That's funny. I thought you were gonna take that in like a. more traditional, sort of like a lot more boring to be frank, uh, direction, which would be like you said about the WeWork project, which is like tailoring the building systems too, like, you know, the humans, which I feel like is probably part of it, but I didn't expect that a whole other part talking about separating urine from water and things like

[00:41:39] Lindsay Baker: Yeah, because it, I mean, yeah, like, I think the reason I like that one so much is because it, it, it's really people who are managing a building, asking themselves a question, what do we have here that might be of use to the, to the community around us that we could somehow figure out a way to like, have a positive impact around.[00:42:00]

Uh, so, so yeah. So that's the mindset that people bring to living buildings. It's like we genuinely wanna do good. Also, we have a building. , how's this gonna work? How are we gonna do that? And it happens all the way from like, what wood are you procuring for the structure of your building and how is that contributing to, you know, indigenous land ownership to like this kind of stuff with Pee

It's really, it's really pretty fun. Um, and you know, I think that a lot of the stuff that we've been working on for years has become more mainstream. We were really early on in electrification, decarbonization work. Uh, the Living Building Challenge has always, always been all, all electric. And so we've, I think people kind of learned some important lessons about how to do that, uh, working on living buildings.

Um, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I guess, I guess I could go on, but I think, I think it's

[00:42:51] James Dice: that's kind of what I was gonna ask you is you talked about the levers for change. How do you think this, having this very stringent. , [00:43:00] you know, minimum set of performance and outcome criteria. How do you think that is sort of changing the industry as a whole?

[00:43:09] Lindsay Baker: I think it just helps us to understand what's possible, to be able to see it and experience it in real, in like in, in real life. Um, it helps you feel like you have more options for how you're going to design and build. Um, so it's not necessarily to say that, um, you know, mass timber works for everybody, but living buildings, you know, are typically mass timber buildings because of the, um, constraints that we're putting on the project teams and, and the requirements of the system around the amount of embodied carbon they can have.

So it's, it's. I know. It's, it's those kinds of things that there, like, it, it really kind of just asks the question of, of, of how you can, um, how we can build in fundamentally different ways. Another way of thinking about it that your [00:44:00] listeners may have thought about before is this idea that I learned at Google around the sort of the 10 x change.

The idea was basically like, you know, from Silicon Valley that it can be oftentimes just as much effort to make like a 10%, uh, improvement on a, on a particular system as it is to, to, to make a 10 x improvement to that system. Because when you rethink the fundamentally and sort of ask yourself a different scale, um, you can make that level of advancement much faster.

So we're people that like the idea of kind of the 10 x. Solution over the, the, you know, the, the one x, the two x solution to a problem. And it's, yeah, it just opens up all sorts of things, right? When you're, I mean, we've all heard the, like that bit of anecdote, like when you really fundamentally decrease your HVAC loads in the [00:45:00] design of a building, then you can, you may invest a lot more in the envelope and then you save a bunch of money on the actual mechanical systems themselves, cuz they can be sized much smaller.

So that's the kind of thing I think that you see with living buildings is just like re like the real aspiration, getting to absolute, you know, zero carbon just, um, sometimes changes the game in ways that, you know, um, yeah, get us there faster.

[00:45:28] James Dice: Totally. So, so what are those, can we walk through each of those quickly? So you, you mentioned positive energy, positive carb. When you mentioned electrified, you mentioned, uh, what else did you mention? The, basically something around the envelope, right? And am

[00:45:44] Lindsay Baker: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:45:45] James Dice: What are all these, um, minimum requirements?

[00:45:49] Lindsay Baker: minimum requirements, well, one, the, the other big one that people oftentimes struggle with with living buildings is that we have a program or a, a thing called the Red List, [00:46:00] which is a list of chemicals that are typically found in building materials that are not allowed in living building.

Um, and you know, it's things and these PR products, uh, or sorry, I should say chemicals. They're not products. They're chemicals. Um, they, uh, are all known to be harmful to human health. Um, so the well-documented many, many peer-reviewed studies. We have a pretty elaborate system for adding chemicals to this list that involves a lot of analysis and technical committees and things.

So that list, um, is then operationalized in the living building Challenge as, um, a essentially a set of requirements to build buildings that don't, don't, uh, ta poison people . And, and that turns out to be really challenging as it turns out because mo, a lot of building materials these days are made with products.

um, have some, uh, chemical that we know to be bad for human health. [00:47:00] I hope that's not a surprise to any of your listeners because we kind of hear about something in the news every day. You know, some, something has been poisoning us for the past few decades that we didn't know about. So, um, we take that approach specifically with the building industry to say that you need to build a building that, that, that is only made with materials that, that are safe.

Um, and yeah, you'd be really impressed to see what people come up with in the ways that they manage to kind of, um, find things that can, that can kind of help to avoid that. Um, but there's also requirements around, um, equity and sort of access to transit, community engagement, um, community involve. Uh, that, um, and supply chain issues that are really more around, um, sort of equity impacts of buildings.

So the ways that buildings have an impact on the economic livelihoods of folks that may be, you know, near them or involved in the construction of them. Um, so just really cool stories about ways that people have managed to bring, [00:48:00] uh, workforce development programs into their, into the construction of their buildings to make sure that the, the buildings themselves are creating good jobs and creating career paths for folks that hadn't had opportunities for really, um, you know, um, more high paying jobs, et cetera.

Um, so I won't go into, so, so not all of the imperatives are as cut and dry as like zero. Energy, zero carbon, that kind of thing. Um, but they are sort of across this, um, yeah, they, they're, they're all basically saying you have to do some good in the world, in, in these different categories. So, yeah. And then that, you know, it's similar to lead in the way that it kind of has these different sections that talk about the different impact areas of, you know, energy and, um, uh, materials, water, landscape, et cetera.

That those are all, those are all sections that we have. We call them petals, like the petals of a flower. [00:49:00] Uh, but it's basically that, that idea of the different categories. And then we have, you know, similar program for products. It's called the Living Product Challenge that looks at all the same sort of traits, but across the, um, diversity of decisions that you make when you design and, you know, uh, get a product out into the world as well for, for building specifically.

[00:49:21] James Dice: Got it. Got it. And then for the organization's piece you've mentioned, this is buildings, products, and organizations. And the organizations is just, you know, everyone in the ecosystem can get certified as a company.

[00:49:34] Lindsay Baker: Yeah, it's a, it's a little different right now. What it is, is, um, we have a label called the Just Label that is, um, it's really more of a transparency label, but you can show your performance over time like a nutrition label, but for your firm. So like a lot of architecture and engineering firms, product manufacturers, folks like that choose to basically post their just label as a way of saying, this is where, you know, this is [00:50:00] where we are on our journey towards being a just organization.

This is how diverse our staff is. These are our policies around, um, the kinds of. Suppliers that we use for, uh, products that we're purchasing, the, um, you know, policies that we have around, um, equity and diversity in our workplace. Lots of stuff. Um, but it's, uh, it's basically just for social impact right now.

And we've got a few schemes around how we might be able to kind of build that out more holistically across, um, environment, health and, and equity. Um, but right now it's, it's just in that area cuz we sort of saw the need for that in our industry. So it's a really nice thing. I think, um, in particular it helps people find, uh, firms that are sort.

Interested in social impact and, um, that they wanna work with for project teams, basically. Um, and it is [00:51:00] something that we ask people to, to do as a part of the living building challenge, as well as to sort of be transparent about where you are on that journey. So all very interconnected, these programs in different ways, but yeah.

Yeah,

[00:51:15] James Dice: I'm a engineer systems thinker and it's, you guys are definitely thinking about this system as a whole.

[00:51:22] Lindsay Baker: I mean, yeah, to the point that sometimes people don't entirely understand what we're talking about, but we're working on just making it a little bit easier to understand.

[00:51:31] James Dice: i'd, I'd rather it become complex for a reason, and then you have to explain it later rather than be too simple. Um, so I wanna ask you like a two part question here, which is, when you think about the organization over the next, like five years, like where are you headed? But I also want to ask you that from the standpoint of like, we've been talking about climate and decarbonization, we've been talking about technology, obviously by nature of this [00:52:00] audience and this community, we've also been talking about human health a lot and human health and human equity and human just happiness instead of our buildings as well.

Um, the experience. So where should we be like headed as an industry? And I'm, I'm making this open-ended on purpose because I want to kind of hear. Kind of what you think we should be thinking about most over the next several years?

[00:52:26] Lindsay Baker: Yeah. I mean, the thing I'm ambitiously hoping for for us is, That I think the building industry can be the first industry to show the world what it looks like for an industry from within itself to transform itself in line with a sustainable future. Um, and and so concretely what I mean by that is that I hear from folks every day saying, Hey, we wanna do [00:53:00] something like Lead, but for banking , or We wanna do something like Lead, but for like fisheries or something, you know, and people, people took the, the model of how, how lead showed up in the building industry specifically.

But more broadly what the building industry has managed to do within itself to say, we're gonna. , the constraints of our planet, the problems that we face as societies, the ways that we are destroying our bodies accidentally through all the stuff we make. And we're gonna try to, we're gonna try to figure out how, how is the, how's our industry gonna respond to that?

How we're gonna rise to those challenges. How are we gonna change our practices? Who's gonna do what, what laws do we need? What technologies do we need? And we're, we're really getting after it. I'm really proud of how much progress we've managed to achieve in the past few decades, um, as an industry of really trying to take those issues seriously.

So I think for the next five years, it needs to really feel like it's coming [00:54:00] together. And we should be able to, you know, the fashion industry should be able to look over and be like, we wanna do what those guys are doing. The building industry seems to have figured it out. They've got all the right different folks working together in the right different ways, and they are, they are changing.

and what better time than in a time where a lot of us in the building industry are really fundamentally rethinking what we are here for because of the ways that work is changing and commercial real estate and cities and downtowns are changing, it's a really good time for us to ask ourselves like, what are we here for?

What do we wanna stand for? How do we want all of this to work? And I don't mean just sort of like, what's the next, you know, like, how are we gonna get all these heat pumps in the building? I mean, like, let's rethink the purpose or like the, you know, pros and cons of a triple net lease. Like, is that a thing we wanna keep doing or No, because we can rethink that.

We have permission to change this stuff. [00:55:00] Um, we, uh, created it, right? Or like our bosses who have since retired did, and you know, they're not around. We get to change. And so as an industry, I think I, that's what I'm looking forward to is, uh, is, is. For all of us to feel a sense, not just that we are transforming ourselves and figuring out how this new industry's gonna work, um, but for us to know that folks are watching, they wanna know what the building industry's doing differently, um, and how we're gonna change.

And, um, and we're, we're role models for that. Um, so I don't know. That may be a little bigger picture than you wanted to talk about James, but that's kind of what I'd like to see, um, is, is that type of transition.

[00:55:40] James Dice: I love it because you don't know this, but the previous episode that we published before this episode comes live is talking about the current market conditions and talking about how it's a little bit doom and gloom in real estate right now, and that if you're trying to install technology in real estate, it's really not a great time for all these [00:56:00] different reasons.

And I think that's a great way to reframe where we're at right now, which is one of the things that we need to sort of rethink and maybe start from scratch on what is, what is the purpose that we're all here to do.

[00:56:15] Lindsay Baker: right. I mean, if, if, if your purpose is to sell technology into commercial real estate, then yeah, it's probably a pretty depressing time. But if your purpose is to try to figure out how do we use all this incredible wealth of technology that we have at our fingertips these days to help people live happier, healthier lives in the buildings that you know, that, that are necessary parts of like, you know, Human life then you're fine.

Like shelter's gonna change. The use of different buildings is gonna change, but there's a lot of, it needs to be done and it needs to be done really fast. I mean, you've seen probably some of these articles and, and the media recently that like, tech jobs aren't as great, but climate jobs are on the, are on the [00:57:00] rise.

Um, and it's because, yeah, I mean I certainly don't hope, I hope no one feels right now, like they don't have a job to do or something useful to be contributing to. Cuz it's, it's, uh, it's pretty real. We got a lot of work to do.

[00:57:13] James Dice: That's a great segue into the last, second to last question I wanted to ask you, which is, I was just at AHR Expo like three weeks ago, and there's a subset of the AHR Expo. Which is like the big HVAC expo, right? Um, you know, tens of thousands, dozens of thousands of people. And, um, there's a subset of that that's talking about technology and talking about controls and smart buildings.

And I'd say the main theme was attracting talent, um, in all of those smart buildings focused sessions. And this is this place where I feel like, you know, we, before we hit record, we talked about how the, like the green building or sustainable building industry is sort of [00:58:00] separate but overlapping with smart buildings.

That sort of separate group is sort of way ahead in areas of diversity and d e i and really just promoting and hearing from diverse voices. And since you've been in both I'd, I'd love to hear some reflections and sort of some. You know, maybe some advice on how the people in this industry can sort of catch up with the people in the sort of green and sustainable buildings side of the industry.

It's all one industry. We're all the

[00:58:33] Lindsay Baker: yeah. , right, right. We are, but it's true. I mean, I will say, um, it has been some of, some of the moments that I have felt most uncomfortable, um, as a woman in my career have been in rooms that were basically smart buildings, rooms, you know, that that was sort of the, who was there kind of, um, demographic.

And I have thought a lot about why that [00:59:00] is the case. Because first of all, I think smart buildings, jobs are really great jobs and they're really great jobs for folks. Um, coming into the workforce, underrepresented backgrounds, folks who may not have college education, all of that stuff, like we should really be a prime option for them.

And by the way, we should be a prime option for people of the generation that's just kind of coming up in their early twenties now that really care about climate change and they care about health because of the pandemic and all of that. Like, we should be a really great place. So why doesn't it always feel that way?

I think there's a couple reasons. One is that it can feel really hierarchical and, um, and that there can be this attitude. I mean, certainly I was asking for it with Comfy because we were a very disruptive technology in many ways. But nonetheless, like, you know, we, we need like the generations that are older, if they [01:00:00] really want young folks in the workplace with them, if they really want folks to come up. in the roles that, that they took on. They need to respect where folks are coming from. They need to respect their boundaries. They need to respect their gender pronouns. They need to respect the ways that we don't really wanna have our bodies commented on in a professional context at all, ever. And it's not okay.

Like that respect has to be there intergenerationally. And it hasn't always been in the, in the sort of building, engineering and controls world. Um, and I know that it's not always purposeful, but it takes a little bit of effort sometimes to learn like what makes somebody feel comfortable. And I think that, um, people are gonna have to do that work to be appealing as like bosses and employers for the next generation coming up. Um, because yeah, they, they care about it. I mean, it's important to remember like a lot of generation, you know, the boomer generation, you could, you could [01:01:00] take a job because you knew that it was gonna provide a pension. . Well that sounds awesome. We don't have that , like generationally. There are many, many fewer pensions available to like, you know, especially the Gen Z people that are, you know, younger than me.

Like they're not crazy when they're trying to make sure that they're going to a good job. They have sometimes just really different decisions to make, you know, than, than the, the, the folks that are getting ready to retire did when they started off in their career. So just trying to listen and be empathetic and be respectful of, uh, the different perspectives folks are bringing.

I think that's, that's probably the, the big thing. But, you know, I think also green building as a community has been, um, maybe more diverse in part, still more on the gender side, like just a lot of women, you know, um, still pretty white, but a lot of women, cuz we do like to solve sort of big system systemic problems.

You get to kind of think about a lot of different stuff. So I think increasingly for smart buildings, the more that you're kind of engaging, not just with like, [01:02:00] just specifically, you know, air handling, but. More diverse issues of, you know, um, uh, workplace services and ways that to, you know, otherwise bring delight to folks in buildings.

Like, I think it'll, that'll also probably help. Um, but yeah, it's, um, I'm, I'm hopeful and ambitious about it cuz I really do think like some of my, some of the best jobs that we have in even just the broader definition of like climate jobs are, are building controls for sure.

[01:02:35] James Dice: Yeah. Well, I appreciate you just. Kind of giving your advice, but also just sharing your experience. I think a lot of people in this audience will feel heard and validated with your experience. It's just something that's like the elephant in the room at a lot of smart buildings, conferences and conversations.

Um, and I know a lot of people feel negatively about that. [01:03:00] Um, but it's just, it's just a kind of a breath of fresh air to hear it talked about. And also we can point to good examples where, you know, we can be more like that community, right? And what are they doing differently? And I think those conversations are super helpful.

[01:03:14] Lindsay Baker: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[01:03:16] James Dice: Let's close out with, um, my, my favorite last question, which is, are there any books, TV shows, documentaries, podcasts, et cetera, any type of media really that has had a big impact on you?

[01:03:29] Lindsay Baker: Yeah. Okay. So I think, um, to be honest, the thing that's impacting me most these days is like a small set of science fiction related TV shows, um, including The Expanse. The The Expanse is the one that I would like. If you're just, if you're a person that likes to think about the future, Just watch it . It's a really good show, but in particular, I think, um, science fiction, there's been a lot more people writing about this recently, like [01:04:00] watching science fiction is really good.

If you need, first of all, like a little bit of a sense of. I don't know, maybe dealing with your climate anxiety if that's a thing that you have. Um, because the world of science fiction authors, like people really try to think, okay, what is it gonna look like in the future? And I think that that helps us imagine how we wanna be useful today.

Um, but it also just kind of like, is a mind-blowing experience of like, trying to do the work of envisioning something that hasn't yet come to path. Um, and that's something I've always believed is pretty important. Like, you know, if, if you, I think this is true of both smart buildings and of, you know, sustainable buildings.

um, and, and all of their intersections. The more we can envision the future that we're trying to create, the better we will be able to articulate it today and make it happen. And so science fiction can kind of like get all of those, you know, like creative juices [01:05:00] flowing, . Um, plus it's like super fun and, you know, um, entertaining.

And sometimes the acting is just horrible. And, you know, like the monsters are really bizarre and it's, it's a nice, fun way, but it's also sort of like a, um, I don't know, a stimulating way of kind of imagining our future.

[01:05:18] James Dice: Brilliant, the Expanse. We'll, we'll put the link in the show notes and I'll definitely check it out soon. Aro. Thanks Lindsay. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm glad we finally made, made time for this.

[01:05:29] Lindsay Baker: Oh, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. This is, this is, yeah. A ton of fun. And I'm just so appreciative of the work that you're doing to bring all these ideas together. So thank you for doing it.