East meets West Coast

Gensler designed 22 million square feet of buildings in China.

While the downtrodden U.S. economy is keeping green building at bay, firms from San Francisco to Seattle are responding to want ads coming from overseas. And Asia especially can’t seem to get enough of West Coast talent.

Whether it’s design consulting or full-scale construction projects, firms up and down the West Coast are getting in on the Far East’s desire to grow and build sustainably—whether it is offices, housing, mixed-use development, public works projects or rebuilding after natural disasters.

Growing capital
West Coast firms—with big enough pockets to take on the risk—are tapping into overseas projects that are varied in size and scope. San Francisco–based Gensler, is designing whole communities in China—and the country’s tallest building, the Shanghai Tower—with a total of 22 million square feet currently under construction in China. CH2M HILL, headquartered in Denver but with offices along the West Coast, just completed two massive vocational schools certified by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program; two desalinization plants; and new water sanitation systems as part of a $51 million U.S. government investment in the tsunami rebuilding effort in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

A group of Portland firms are donating their green-building expertise to reconstruct schools destroyed in last year’s Sichuan earthquake. And Seattle-based architecture firm Zimmer Gunsul Frasca (ZGF) is creating sustainable designs for Chinese hospitals and mixed-use developments.

The reasons for venturing far from home are as complex and as varied for each firm as the Asian market itself. But company leaders stress that making forays into Asia have less to do with winning big-money bids and more to do with the opportunity to innovate and educate. Conceptual know-how, especially in green building, is something Asian developers still actively seek from the West, so design firms say.

For the principals at several West Coast firms, the demand for their sustainable building techniques in Asia transcends a perception that Asian clients simply want the next best thing. Despite what the rest of world might view only as modernizing, Asia is embracing sustainable design as a necessary tactic for attracting and retaining global business while reducing energy use, resource use and pollution.