| 
Jared Krieger is settling into his new role co-leading the 200-employee office of architects Gensler as the architectural firm expands its physical footprint and returns to a more robust in-office work environment. During 16 years at Gensler’s Washington, D.C. offices, Krieger participated in the design of such notable projects as Marriott International’s new global headquarters which opened last fall in Bethesda, Maryland. Now advising clients on hybrid office designs and changes to the permitting and regulatory environment in Massachusetts, Krieger joins Jeanne Nutt in leadership of the 33,000-square-foot Boston offices at One Beacon.
Q: What do developers need to know about the Boston Planning & Development Agency’s new review requirements for resiliency and sustainability?
A: Two or three years ago, it was more about checking the box on resilience and sustainability. The code has caught up to where the world needs to be. Boston will be far ahead of where many cities are in North America with stretch codes that are coming on July 1 and Jan. 1. The conversation we used to have was: Can we design a building under the current code and get ahead of the code? Now, it’s more about what’s the right thing to do. And the right thing to do keeps the building competitive. [A current client] made the decision to design a Passive House building and get that certification. It makes the asset that much more valuable. If you’re a developer who wants to hold the asset, it’s going to be more efficient for energy costs. I can’t see a fund or asset manager or developer coming in and wanting to buy a building that isn’t energy-efficient and meets the latest sustainability standards.
Q: How does the volume of design work this year in the Gensler Boston office compare with similar coastal metros, and what does that indicate to you about the outlook for the region’s commercial real estate?
A: We are certainly busy here in Boston, which is great. It’s more about how diversified the cities are. There’s no secret that spec office and spec life science in Boston is slowing. A city like San Francisco is very heavy on the technology side, and with tech slowing in San Francisco, the city is impacted by that. We’re seeing other cities where the tech market is growing: Raleigh, Atlanta, Austin and San Diego.
Q: How is the drive to reduce embedded carbon affecting the choice of building materials and designs on commercial and multifamily projects?
A: It’s huge. We’ve been hearing about life cycle costs in buildings for a very long time. But people have to get up to speed on what embedded carbon means in the life cycle of a project. It takes a lot of energy to harvest raw minerals and resources out of the environment and manufacture and process them. Things like concrete and steel have an incredible amount of embedded carbon. A year ago, we launched a new green specifications initiative. Our CEO wrote a letter to 300 of the largest manufacturers in the world that we work with, asking them to work with us and help make this happen: Making sure they are willing to disclose their full manufacturing life cycle, and we got an immediate, overwhelmingly positive response.
We’re no longer going to keep materials in our library without environmental declarations, so when [clients] are picking out metal and bricks, they know the energy costs just to produce those materials. When you look at percentages of materials we use, concrete and steel in the superstructure of the building are the worst offending materials you could possibly have on a project. But there aren’t significant alternatives. We’ve got an incredible amount of mass timber projects that we’re designing right now. It has gotten more competitive, and they have a significantly smaller carbon footprint. We also have concrete manufacturers partnering with us, changing the mix and using different materials, to make a positive impact on the environment.
Q: How much momentum are you seeing for mass timber in commercial projects?
A: It has absolutely become a differentiator in the marketplace. We have two headquarters projects, including the Under Armour headquarters in Baltimore, and a confidential 3 million-square-foot headquarters. And we have some residential projects looking at mass timber. It has moved well beyond the academic sector.
Q: How has Gensler’s policy on hybrid work evolved since 2020?
A: We have 53 offices worldwide, including 33 in North America, and transitioning to hybrid has its ups and downs. Now we’ve got a pretty big office presence. Yesterday the office was completely packed. We had three client meetings going on at a time. We had a client testing different seats they want to put in their space. When we built our [7,000-square-foot] expansion space here [at One Beacon] a few months ago, we focused on flex space. There are lots of stand-up and pop-up spaces, and then you have the heads-down workstations. The biggest thing we’ve learned is investing in universal technology. Anyone working at any of our computers and plug and play, and it remembers your settings.
Q: Boston has seen few office-to-housing conversion proposals to date, despite record office sublease inventory and rising vacancies. Do other metros’ strategies with office to housing conversions have lessons for Greater Boston?
A: It’s a conversation I’m having a lot of. We’ve met with maybe 20 developers and investors and fund managers in the last three weeks, having similar conversations. The cities that have provided incentives are where they are actually solving the problem. There’s a clear logic in the surplus of older office stock making sense for conversions, and it comes down to a dollar-and-cents conversation. Boston could look to Calgary as a really successful example. They hired Gensler a few years ago to study about 25 buildings in the city. They were looking into enhancing and improving the housing situation. They have a significantly high vacancy rate in the city, and a similar housing problem to what we have. After doing the study, they introduced some significant incentives: up to $75 Canadian dollars per square foot, or about $55 U.S. dollars. That’s huge. And in the city of Calgary, if you are willing to convert an aging asset to residential, you basically can get rubber-stamped through the zoning process. In Boston that could save you 18 to 24 months, and that speed to market is an incredible amount of money.
Professions Krieger Would Choose If He Weren’t an Architect:
- Hockey player
- Bar owner on a tropical island
- Superyacht bosun
- Designer for Animal Planet’s “Treehouse Masters”
- Movie location scout
