Hafsa Burt is the President and Managing Principal of HB+A Architects, a firm focused on environmental sustainability and blending avant-garde design with a strong commitment to the bottom line. Hafsa’s approach to design and space management doubles down on reducing waste and improving workspace balance.
Hafsa is a frequent speaker on indoor air quality and how it relates to architecture and is considered an industry expert on healthy building practices. She has been awarded the title of ENR’s Top 20 Under 40 and the American Institute of Architects’ Young Architects Award.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Hafsa Burt shares what inspired her to become an architect
- Developing a building’s character with lighting and dedicated spaces
- Hafsa shares her team’s ten-year study on airborne diseases and how it impacts airflow in buildings
- What changes will architects be willing to make after a year of COVID-19 guidelines?
- The future of workplace management and space design
- Is the hybrid work-from-home model here to stay, or is it time for a new model?
- How will businesses begin to reduce the global footprint?
- Hafsa shares how to organize your work-from-home spaces for increased productivity and ease of mind
- How can you learn more about the architecture field?
In this episode…
What do you think is most important: functionality or trends?
Over the last year in particular, companies are quickly reimagining their workspaces and beginning to utilize functionality features over inspiring design. Hafsa Burt, President of HB+A Architects, believes in designing environmentally sustainable buildings where dedicated workspaces marry intentional design.
In this week’s episode of Watching Paint Dry, host Greg Owens sits down with President and Managing Principal of HB+A Architects, Hafsa Burt. They discuss functionality over trends, environmentally sustainable buildings, and how COVID-19 regulations will change office floor plans. Hafsa also shares her tips for creating a better work-from-home office layout and how students can learn more about the architectural industry. Stay tuned.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Hafsa Burt on LinkedIn
- HB+A Architects
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry Podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of 1000s of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:31
Hello, everyone. This is Greg Owens with the Watching Paint Dry Podcast. And we’re continuing our series of talking to facilities managers, building owners, property managers, and all the support services and people that support this entire industry. I just learned the other day that it’s a trillion dollar industry, just the commercial side of being a facilities manager, which is a tremendously large industry. And this episode is sponsored by my company McCarthy Painting. It’s a painting company where we do interior and exterior painting throughout the San Francisco Bay area for both residential and commercial painting. The types of projects we get into we just did, we’ve done work for Chase Bank, Autodesk, Google, Abercrombie, and Fitch, H&M stores, and many, many others, you can find out more information by going to McCarthypainting.com, or info@McCarthyPainting.com. I’m excited to have our first architect on this podcast, and Hafsa Burt of HB+A Architects out of Castro Valley. And this will be fun, because you do interior design, project, project design, project management, brand design and visual design. And so let’s just get started. And welcome to the podcast.
Hafsa Burt 1:59
Hi, how are you?
Greg Owens 2:00
I’m good. And how are you been doing in this in COVID your family and you this time.
Hafsa Burt 2:06
So we are big on efficiency, anything that, you know, we’ve been using efficient tools for communication or production in cloud and off cloud for years. So it was a fairly smooth transition for both work and family. You know, it’s a small studio, but we are extremely efficient and very, very technologically advanced in our communication and production tools. We’ve been, you know, using them and communicating via Slack, etc. So it was fairly smooth transition.
Greg Owens 2:34
Yeah, and we were talking about this a little bit before we got on on air here. They came from my company, and a lot of ways except for that they kept us from coming into buildings for the first few months of this pandemic. And then, you know, we we transferred over to zoom and things like that to do walkthroughs if needed. But lately we’re allowed to go in, in buildings wearing masks and that kind of thing and compare that in some buildings, they only allow us to come in and only certain trades at certain times. Right? Yeah. daggering the schedule?
Hafsa Burt 3:04
Yeah.
Greg Owens 3:05
I’d love to hear how did you get into being an architect? Was this something that at a young age that you wanted to start or older,
Hafsa Burt 3:15
I’m definitely not older. So I was always very good at physics. And later, you know, when it was time to decide for college, I kind of knew that this would be a good marriage between science and the arts, because I started becoming like getting, you know, interested in the arts, especially sculpture and painting. And so early in college, I did two years of sculpture, I was just very, you know, curious by nature. And so this seemed like a good marriage between the science and the arts. And, you know, and and with architecture, you can create experiences facially, and I think that’s kind of special. And also, we were given a toolset in college that lets you solve problems and innovate and kind of, you know, invent things. And that was, I think it’s, that was intriguing, and I was good at it. So that was the beginning.
Greg Owens 4:08
I’m always fine. And I’m always interested in people that have are creative. Were you like, at a young age? Can you draw like rabbits, and they look like rabbits? And that kind of thing? Or was that not the case?
Hafsa Burt 4:22
No, it was definitely not the case. So I could build stuff. But I could not draw until I was about 1617. And then I got into drawing and now I’m actually pretty good at it. Yes. But I think in terms of skills, you can always learn and get better at stuff. And I am a huge believer that, you know, you can always you can always learn and get excel at anything.
Greg Owens 4:44
Yeah, that’s so true. Because I’m 50 and I’m learning to draw rabbits right now. So you can actually watch YouTube videos or my friend who can draw she she’ll walk me through like things and I’ll just draw them for just to you know, expand my own brain in a way.
Hafsa Burt 4:59
Good for you. Yeah,
Greg Owens 5:00
yeah, it’s been it’s been fun because I always thought it was something that, you know, Oh, I can’t do that kind of thing. But like you just said, you can learn and build upon these skills. Right?
Hafsa Burt 5:09
Yeah, yeah. And also in our field in the construction field, I mean, I’m sure you have the same experience we are. So left brain, right with the logistics of the scheduling, and, you know, the codes and everything. So with you picking up a new skill to draw, it’s opening up your right side of the brain. And so that, so that’s good
Greg Owens 5:29
that you’re done. That was the whole point was this, see if I can, like, you know, I have some time. And I’m sitting here between zoom calls and things like that, what can I do? Or if I’m on a zoom call that somebody is just talking, can I doodle? Yeah. And doodle in a way that sort of productive lives there, right. And I want to go back to because I really love this the way design is morphed and changed in my lifetime. In a phenomenally so much better, I think way. And you talk to you touched upon it a little bit is how the place makes you feel, right. And, and a lot of what you are doing these days is when you walk into an office, it’s like no, this this space is designed to be social. And this space is designed to be work. And I’d love to hear your thoughts on on that. And then where your thinking is going in this time of COVID Yeah, so
Hafsa Burt 6:20
I’m a firm believer in like exploring, you know, project types to see how we can make them different from the standard. So as an example, you know, so a couple years ago, we did a three storey medical office building in San Leandro, and it was repositioning of a commercial office space into you know, to suit the doctor’s need. And when you walk in, it looks it has this hospitality appeal, it does not look like a clinic, the lobby, you know, has this floating ceiling that match the counter and the lighting, you can do a lot with lighting. And you can do a lot with custom fixtures that sort of stablished the brand of that business. So it does have a hospitality feel. And it doesn’t feel as much as a doctor space. And I’m a firm believer in that. And we also did, you know, renovation of the first African American doctor in San Francisco Marion Health Center in Bayview, and it’s a 1950s building, we couldn’t do much to the outside, but when you walk in the inside, the colors are so warm, and the space is so open that it does not feel like a clinic. And it serves the impoverished community and Bayview. And it’s so you know, when you walk in, you feel good. And so I think with spaces, you can kind of affect the productivity of people, you can affect the mood of people you can, it’s great to walk into interiors where you don’t smell the pain, even after several years, because the designer or the architect thought about your other DLCs and just the emissions of paint products beyond the aesthetics and what it’s doing for the health of the occupants, both on the mental and the physical side. That is
Greg Owens 7:50
so true these days, because I know I when I was first starting painting, we used tremendous amounts of high voc alkyd paint, and it would clear out offices and things like that if we painted right, and now people hardly even notice it. It’s so much fun, even myself, like if I travel and I go to another country where they use they still use those kinds of paints, like Oh, wow. or blue or the glue and carpets or whatever the case may be because and that’s a big learning curve for you in the architectural industry, because there’s so many things that are off gassing that you had to start looking at. closer with. Yeah, yeah. So
Hafsa Burt 8:31
we started actually working on that in 2009 11 years. And you know, I did over 100 presentations all over the west coast of New York City to about indirect quality, healthy buildings and the effect of you know, just the choice of materials it has on your occupants health. And, yes, so and, you know, back then we were using Legionnaires disease as a, as a case study for airborne transmission of cases that happened in hotels and 1011 years later, people are talking about airborne tendencies of COVID with this pandemic, so yes, so this is something that we were, you know, discussing a lot for 11 years, and sometimes people were like, Oh, it’s not urgent. Sometimes, you know, we just fell on deaf ears, but it’s very relevant to how our buildings, you know, just contribute to our health and the health of the planet, of course,
Greg Owens 9:21
yeah, no, both of those. And then even like in this time of COVID, making the employees or helping the employees feel safe about the buildings they’re walking into, right that people are looking at all these things. I know that I’ve talked to a few people on the podcast from Europe. And Legionnaires disease is a much bigger thought process in their mind than it is here in California where we’re so it’s such a dry climate, and our buildings are built and they’re much much newer than something, you know, it’s built in Europe that’s much older. And so that’s been actually a major concern over there during this time that nobody’s in the building the system. distill work, keep up keeping all that stuff to keep it clean. Yeah, interesting. What are you seeing now that we’re almost into a year of this pandemic? What are you seeing from your end as far as like changes to the workplace from an architectural standpoint?
Hafsa Burt 10:17
So I think with the short term memory, people will still be, you know, working in a hybrid environment. And with that said, most people, I mean, most of the calls that we’re getting is for, you know, improvements to their workspaces. And we don’t usually do small scale residential, but on the commercial side, and retail side, like I have a client who’s opening up a third wave, you know, retail space in San Jose, and they are beginning to ask, okay, so how can we prevent airborne transmission if it if this is a high traffic, you know, business and so we are looking into solutions where you can put a heat filter with a booster fan in the mechanical system, and improve the air quality and operate h HVAC systems and fan only mode. Also, you know, distancing, I don’t think it’s going to go away anytime soon, social distancing. So it kind of helps do allow space in between occupants. So they can, you know, easily flow in a one way traffic kind of load kind of similar to how airports are designed for heavy circulation.
Greg Owens 11:16
Yeah, yes. more space needed in the retail industry. Makes sense. Right. Like, yeah, and you mentioned, third wave retail. I’ve heard of third wave coffee. Well, yes,
Hafsa Burt 11:27
it is a third wave coffee shop coffee, and oh, yeah, it’s under construction and should be coming up in spring. It’s a very cool concept.
Greg Owens 11:37
Yeah. Hopefully we get they still eat. Even even just outside, right. I know that was kind of sad to see them take away restaurant seating outside even.
Hafsa Burt 11:50
Yeah.
Greg Owens 11:51
But now though, now that we’re back. That’s good. And then the days here in the Bay Area are absolutely beautiful right now. So hopefully, people are getting out there and going see nice restaurants and coffee shops and supporting Yes, yeah. Well, they
Hafsa Burt 12:02
sit in a pandemic. I mean, basic epidemiology suggests that, you know, you do need to isolate and quarantine the sick. So I think in terms of like those precautions, the state has been actually pretty good, because otherwise we could have had pretty bad spread. Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Greg Owens 12:21
And I’m watching people’s behavior on a regular basis. And yeah.
can see a lot of slips right here, where it were a resident company in a commercial company, that commercial industry has done a phenomenal job of like, really, following the rules and everything. I watched residential, it’s like they were having Christmas parties.
Hafsa Burt 12:43
Yeah, not get,
Greg Owens 12:44
it doesn’t matter what political views they had. They still had friends and family over and that kind of stuff. Right? Yeah. Yeah. The people. I think people feel like others are risky, or high risk, and but they’re close friends or not. But it’s like, it’s a numbers game. Right?
Hafsa Burt 13:00
Yeah. Yeah. I think we just need to listen to the science event. And, you know, take precautions, because that’s the same as the long room.
Greg Owens 13:09
What’s your and then once looking at the future here with COVID, and this sort of hybrid of people coming back to work in that kind of thing? What are you seeing? or What is it like, as far as the space is designed, though? Right, like, you know, there’s, there’s been a lot of push to having these collaborative workspaces and big open areas inside offices, or we do a tremendous amounts of dry erase paint, where people can collaborate on wall, what do ya What do you see coming in the future, as far as the designs go?
Hafsa Burt 13:43
So going back to, you know, high circulation areas, I think airports already set a pretty good example of one way traffic, and then you know, as though as many of touchless fixtures and automatic doors, you know, high high touch surfaces need to be eliminated. And, yes, space always helps, because people can socially distance. And I mean, zoom has a pretty good whiteboard feature that you get that helps with collaboration, we use it all the time in our client meetings, and also, you know, collaborate with each other. So I think in terms of like, you know, short term memory experience, people would prefer that it was like less touching and more distancing. And again, the the heap of filters in a track or the booster fan as a good way to keep the indoor air clean.
Greg Owens 14:29
That’ll help with the smoke in everything we had for going into fire season again.
Hafsa Burt 14:34
And that’s the other thing you know, at some point, our indoor air quality is pretty bad. But then at some point, when we hit the fire season, it’s gonna be the outdoor quality’s gonna be equally bad. So we I think we will start seeing more and more of these filters actually being implemented. Right now, the codes bandaid on a Merv 13. So, enviro 16 is a better option, but I think eventually we’ll start seeing more and more April filters with a booster fan. Even if it’s not mandated by codes,
Greg Owens 15:03
then what does Murph stand for? Again? You
Hafsa Burt 15:06
know, I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I can’t.
Greg Owens 15:09
But it’s a significant difference between the numbers in that. And then, and then I have the filters beyond all of those in a way. Yes,
Hafsa Burt 15:17
yes. Maurice 13 is mandated in March 16. a little better. But March 16, does require a booster fat,
Greg Owens 15:26
right? Because it’s pushed it the airs coming through much, much finer and finer filters, it needs to have some extra. Oh, yes. Through that, and especially with a HIPAA. Yes.
Hafsa Burt 15:38
And also, I mean, in airplanes, they have, you know, a higher exchange rate, air change rates. So that would help to, right. I think MVP guys are gonna be our best friends in terms of, you know, coming up with innovative solutions to say, Okay, what can we do in a space?