Perkins Eastman’s Annual Sustainability Report Connects Metrics to Actions

This is the first in a series of posts expanding on our 2026 State of Sustainability.

Our annual State of Sustainability recognizes the inroads we made in 2025, such as meeting our 100-percent target of energy modeling our projects, and measures our efforts to reach our 2030 goals. It honors our achievements—we were operationally carbon neutral in 2025 for the third year in a row—and inspires us to do more, with 292 certified projects to date and counting. Co-CEO Nick Leahy sat down with Principal and Director of Sustainability Heather Jauregui to discuss how we translate the numbers into actions.

Nick Leahy: What stands out most in this year’s report?

Heather Jauregui: For the first time, we are reporting on the embodied carbon footprint of the work we are doing. We tracked a 15-percent reduction in relation to the Carbon Leadership Forum’s benchmarks for eliminating embodied carbon in buildings, materials, and infrastructure. While there is plenty of room for improvement, we’ve been able to quantify this so we can continue to make measurable progress.

Leahy: Now we need to help clients and stakeholders understand what embodied carbon is, why it is important, and how design and thinking about material choices will lead to better outcomes for people and the environment.

Kaye, a 31-story residential tower in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood, earned LEED Silver Certification and a Fitwel two-star rating. Photograph © Seamus Payne

Jauregui: Somebody once told me that being a sustainability professional feels like a glitter bomb is constantly going off—and the glitter bomb is all the metrics and all the different ways we measure sustainability in our work. Focusing on metrics and measurements that mean very little to our clients instead of translating and tying those targets to what our clients value most—health, productivity, and quality of life— is sometimes to our detriment. Making sure that we are integrating our design approach through the lens of what our clients want is just as important as nailing down the targets.

From a big-picture perspective, how do you see sustainability as integral to our Human by Design ethos?

Leahy: People, planet, and the environment are symbiotic. Generally, people underestimate the value of the built environment and its impact on all aspects of our well-being. For us to thrive, the planet must thrive. Once we understand design in that way, it’s clear that sustainability is fundamental to it.

Jauregui: In my view, the relatively recent advent of metrics, targets, and new technologies has pulled us away from fundamental, passive-design strategies—and the human connection to nature. But my feeling is that we are returning to those roots—as many architects did in the 1970s, when the energy crisis of the time sparked the passive solar movement. They baked passive principles into their designs, and those principles were based on vernacular ideas and brought into contemporary use.

Leahy: We can go down a rabbit hole with the metrics, but we would rather focus on the basics.

Jauregui: Right! And that leads me to my next question: Data tells us that the climate is in crisis and planetary resources are finite, but it also reminds us that human ingenuity is infinite. How do you see this ingenuity at work within our practice?

Leahy: There is a curiosity about constantly improving the work, trying to dig down to get to the root of the problem.

The UC Davis Coffee Center, the nation’s first state-of-the-art coffee research center, is LEED Silver Certified. Photograph © Gary Belinsky

Jauregui: Curiosity is one of our strengths, but we also want to ask the right questions. Yes, we can replace our vinyl wall base with a more sustainable rubber wall base, but what if we eliminate the wall base altogether and reduce the quantity of materials that are used to begin with? Isn’t that smarter?

Leahy: Ingenuity is about people too. It comes from within, and it only comes from collaborating with our colleagues. That’s what I like about our studios. I’ve always thought of them as theaters of inquiry.

Jauregui: How do we leverage that inquiry to accelerate our progress? We are four years away from the AIA 2030 Commitment goal for carbon neutrality. The industry is behind. We are behind.

Leahy: It’s really about a mindset. Every project that comes into Perkins Eastman should go through a rigorous process that has very strong sustainability goals from the start. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to grow, learn, and make an impact. As Buckminster Fuller said, “The best way to predict the future is to design it.”

Jauregui: It is a cultural challenge, not a technical one. If by or before 2030, we get to the point where every project is starting with a passive-design approach instead of applying it afterward, we will be in a much better place as an organization and industry.

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