Leading Page into a carbon-neutral building future

Many architecture firms have signed on to the AIA 2030 Challenge to create carbon-neutral buildings by then, including Page. The accepted industry process of identifying and documenting improvements in building performance has been a laborious and intensive one. Now, a sustainability team led by Page thought leader Jill Kurtz has identified a way to integrate a performance driven approach into the sustainable design process with an Autodesk software program.

Autodesk was so impressed with their innovative use of Insight, an energy modeling and simulation tool within Revit, that they published a feature story on the process. Then, they sat down with Jill to find out why she chose her current career path and what motivates her.

Jill frequently tells people, "I think I have the best job at Page because no one else gets to focus on something that I think is the issue of our generation, which is climate change." Another rewarding element of her work is she knows her “why.” Jill knows she wants to leave this place better than she found it, this place is too precious, and this work is too important to not be focused on anything else.

When asked for her career story, Jill shares an ah-ha moment about post-graduate work in India. She and her colleagues had to bathe in buckets—if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have enough water for dinner. It was then she realized that for most of the world, thinking about sustainability isn’t an option.

One of her favorite parts of this job is turning skeptics into supporters. "There’s a huge opportunity. People think they understand sustainability, or they think it just looks one way, but if I can really try and dig down to understand what is the problem that they’re trying to solve, can I use something that our team can do to help them?"

To learn more about how Jill is making this world a better place, read the article on Redshift by Autodesk and check out the video.