“The greenest building is one that is already built.” – Carl Elefante

MTBA Associates’ friend and mentor Carl Elefante has shared with our team many words of wisdom, tours, presentations at the Association for Preservation Technology International (APT), and other conferences, including Climate Positive in L.A. in February 2020. He is a co-founder of APT’s Sustainable Preservation Technical Committee, of which Mark Thompson Brandt later became Co-Chair. Brandt also invited Carl and Architecture 2030 founder, Ed Mazria, to present at the historic first joint session between the National Trust for Canada and APT. Curated and moderated by Brandt, the session was a seminal ‘call to action’ to Canada’s building industry and conservation community, to look more closely at EXISTING BUILDINGS in the race to decarbonization that is now required for our planet. That was 2017, five years later, Brandt is an APT Fellow and Recognized Professional; Carl is a Senior Fellow at Architecture 2030. Both are founding members of the Climate Heritage Network CHN.  

Carl’s article for the latest issue of Architecture Magazine is centered on the US; it can easily be read for Canada as well. It encourages the industry/profession to increase the focus on deep green retrofits for existing buildings and places. And, much like Brandt’s article in 2016 for the U.K. Journal of Architectural Conservation, he tells us that we can design poetic and passionate places by preserving and intervening in, and adding to, our existing built resources. Working with blending new and old produces unequalled richness. As Carl says, “Try it. You’ll love it.”

Both Brandt and Elefante are finding that, after more than a decade of preaching this mantra across the continent, retrofitting existing buildings is beginning to get the attention it deserves. Let’s accelerate that attention!

The pursuit of instant perfection is not as interesting as the process of gradual renewal … what renovation is about.” – Jo Nagasaka