Sustainable Principal Jean Hansen of HDR Architecture

The Green Building Matters Podcast with Charlie Cichetti

Jean is HDR’s Sustainable Principal for the firm globally. She is based in San Francisco, California with 30+ years of experience in interior design, departmental planning and sustainable design. Ms. Hansen is responsible for advancing HDR's sustainability initiatives in project and research work for healthcare, commercial and institutional environments.

She served on Kaiser Permanente’s High Performance Building Committee to develop national sustainable design standards, led a team in the development of a USGBC Volume Build Pilot Program for Wells Fargo Bank in 39 states and was a green consultant with the University of New Mexico’s new Children’s Hospital and Critical Care Pavilion. She led sustainable research in the textile industry for Kaiser Permanente and co-authored a white paper on the research, titled, Future of Fabric: Healthcare. She was a core committee member in the development of the USGBC’s LEED Healthcare rating system and more recently is a pilot committee member in the development of the HealthProduct Declaration (HPD). She is past president of IIDA (International Interior Design Association) for the Northern California Chapter, IIDA Fellow and past board member and secretary of the USGBC Northern California Chapter.

Jean is working on or has worked on over forty LEED projects, developed sustainable guidelines and led sustainable research for healthcare organizations and manufacturers, provided sustainable training for a variety of clients, including the U.S. Army and in-house staff; she has inspired many to pursue LEED Accreditation, and integrated sustainability into multi-million dollar projects. Her clients have ranged from Federal agencies such as the U.S. Army, the Department of Veteran Affairs, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and NOAA, to universities such as the University of California system, Stanford, and numerous healthcare organizations and furniture manufacturers.

Show Highlights

• Jean shares her expertise on how to design healthy buildings with emphasis on product specs and protocols that won’t harm humans or the environment.
• How to guide corporations to answer the question “Where should we put our energy and our money first?”
• Green Guide for Health Care and LEED Healthcare.
• Jean’s work with numerous organizations to create sustainable products and a questionnaire for product transparency.
• Valuable tips on building awareness on safe product materials and warnings.
• Knowing the difference between manufacturers vs distributors when selecting materials and products.
• Protocol for selecting healthy materials for facilities.
• Jean talks about another lens that really needs to be added to sustainability to take it to another level.

“It's not too late for anyone to consider learning and adopting sustainability for whatever type of work you're doing because luckily the green building movement or the sustainability movement in general needs people with any and all skills. I say that with all truthfulness and sincerity, and there's always a way to combine sustainability to any and all phases of our work. Your voice is incredibly important and we can only be stronger when we're stronger together.”

- Jean Hansen

Jean Hansen Transcript

Jean Hansen’s Show Resource and Information

• Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken:
• The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
• What the Robin Knows by Jon Young
• Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• HDR Architecture

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