Vanessa Hostick, a sustainable design leader in HOK’s Kansas City studio, was named one of Sports Business Journal’s “5 Architects to Know.” The Nebraska native has dedicated her career to lessening the impact of buildings on the environment.
Excerpted from Sports Business Journal:
Vanessa Hostick got her professional start working on government projects in Washington, D.C., where sustainability goals were baked into every plan. She learned to use sustainability efforts — more efficient light or water fixtures, for example — to save money, which then funds more expensive changes, a ploy she now uses to fund bigger sports venue sustainability initiatives, like solarpower arrays. Sports venues can negatively affect the environment in many ways, but given their cultural prominence, they can do the opposite, too.
“It’s a million square feet at a time,” said Hostick, a native Nebraskan. “There are these huge impacts, and you touch thousands of people.”
Her favorite clients have been the ones that came to her because their municipality or university had sustainability requirements they needed to hit, before ultimately embracing the pursuit of a building with less impact on the planet.
Sometimes that’s achieved by creating urban density, which Hostick and HOK did in their work on the Little Caesars Arena district in Detroit. And Hostick’s interests are expanding beyond just the health of the planet and into how buildings can impact athletes’ physical and mental health. It’s another way of thinking and designing that’s quickly growing in importance, and in which only the surface has been scratched.