Abundance by Design - Rocky Mountain Institute

RMI Integrative Design TeamDesigning the IntegrationMONSTER HURRICANES. GROWING OBESITYamong Americans. High oil prices.These sound like wholly unrelated issues, and formost people they are. But seemingly disparate challengesoften have the strands of a common solution. Acutting-edge green business in, say, Florida might behoused in a facility that promotes a healthier workinglife while offering safe and secure shelter fromstorms—and be designed to use no fossil fuels, reducingboth their cost and their propensity to cause “globalweirding.” Similarly, innovative lighting, cooling,and ventilation a kilometer beneath the South Africanveld can both boost the competitiveness of thatnation’s platinum exports (whose foreign currencyearnings are vital to development) and improve thehealth of HIV-positive miners. The lessons we’velearned in redesigning refugee camps as whole systemsoften transfer nicely to rebuilding after the IndianOcean tsunami or Hurricane Katrina.All of RMI’s research and consulting creates andapplies integrative design, but the RMI IntegrativeDesign team tackles projects that don’t fit neatly intothe sectors of energy or green building. It’s not just ashoebox into which problems that can’t be classifiedinto “energy” or “real estate” are tossed in the hopethey’ll self-assemble into a solution. Rather, across avery wide range of applications and industries, RMI’sIntegrative Design Team envisions across boundaries,casting a wide net to capture new ideas that solvemany unique challenges at once.To deliver the holism that its clients’ unusual problemsrequire, our Integrative Design Team draws onthe knowledge and perspectives of the entire Instituteplus hundreds of outside experts.Such breadth is vital to serve some twenty-twobusiness sectors—a range that would tax the inhouseresources of even the largest consulting firms.The Team might tackle anything from the redevelopmentof a community’s economy to a study of the linksbetween management culture and eliminating waste atindustrial plants, from greening a supply chain toredesigning a multi-billion-dollar heavy industrialplant—and, as a key byproduct, rearranging itsdesigners’ mental furniture so they’ll subsequently dowhole-system design optimization on their own.During 2004–2005, highlights of the Institute’sIntegrative Design Team’s work included:• Helping design a new microchip manufacturingplant (“fab”) with Texas Instruments (TI). Fabs’ cost,complexity, and delicacy make operators risk-averseand prone to “copy exactly” previous designs, repeat-8