Cultural Shifts: Corgan's Varun Kohli on High Performance, Good Surprises, and Principles for Design
By Julia Gamolina
A fierce advocate for environmental and social sustainability, Varun creates and implements integrated design processes for significant projects globally. As the Director of Sustainability at Corgan, Varun provides leadership for high-performance projects and strives to maximize environmental sustainability and social equity while addressing climate change adaptation and resiliency. Varun served as an advisory group member for the AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE), has also collaborated with the Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture (CEA) researchers on novel pedagogical models for environmental design and has taught courses at Harvard GSD and RPI (CASE). He recently authored a chapter in “Energy Modeling in Architecture; A practice guide,” published by RIBA.
Varun also serves on the board of Pokhrama Foundation and leads the design for a net-zero school campus in remote northern India, that serves a community with limited access to education. The school is breaking social norms and is empowering children and especially girls by providing them access to K-12 education. Born in India and raised in Nepal, Varun came to the U.S. as an exchange student in a small Nebraska town. Having studied architecture in New York and London, Varun has delved into urban systems and its relationship to the environment. In his spare time Varun explores the outdoors in destinations around the world and believes that “we need to learn to dance with nature—not fight it.”
JG: You've spent many years of your career dedicated to mitigating climate change and to harmonizing natural and the built ecosystems. What is your priority right now?
VK: In the past few years, the impacts of climate change we are facing have become undoubtedly clear. Almost every part of the globe is feeling the impact in one way or another, be it storms, flooding, heat-stress or forest fires. As I write this, I’m in a small tourist town of Zermatt in the Swiss Alps which was recently inundated with heavy storms and flooding and the rail lines are still out of service from this mountainous retreat. Climate change resiliency and adaptation continues to be a priority for me and our Corgan-Echo team — our sustainability group — as we simultaneously work to integrate sustainable design in all of our work. Ensuring that we understand climate risks in the buildings we design and provide appropriate design response will be critical.
A big focus for myself and Corgan-Echo right now is to address atypical building typologies and ones that are notorious for high energy use intensity (EUI). Corgan’s portfolio of projects includes Data Centers and Aviation, which are complex projects with high level of equipment and IT energy loads. While some loads in such buildings are somewhat out of architects’ purview, we are working closely with our clients to find solutions for both operational and embodied carbon reduction strategies. And on that note, the third priority for us is to tackle embodied carbon in our projects. As we become more proficient in achieving operational net-zero carbon (NZC) buildings, our focus will shift to embodied carbon in our buildings, and not only for core and shell where the focus has been thus far, but also interior finishes and furnishings.
Karle Town Centre. Courtesy of Varun's Merge Studio.
Now let's go back a little bit — tell me about why you studied architecture, and how you chose where you studied architecture?
As a fifteen-year-old living in Nepal, I frequently visited New Delhi with my father and was intrigued by the skyscrapers in the city. I knew that he wanted to be an architect but couldn’t afford to go to college back then. I also enjoyed sketching and painting, and so architecture felt like a natural choice for my education and career.
Selection of my undergraduate school was a bit by chance when I arrived in New York and learned about City College of NY. I was a commuter student and worked through my undergraduate program, which at times was difficult. Nonetheless, the program allowed me to complete my undergraduate program with some exceptional professors like Anthony Crusor and Alicia Imperiale. It was in my fourth-year studio while I was designing a courthouse building that I veered into ‘green architecture’, as it was termed back in 1997. The logic was that most people coming to the courthouse probably didn’t want to be there. What could I do to make their experience better? That led me to think about natural light and fresh air, which in turn led to building orientation and form. It was this studio project that began to direct me in a direction that has become my become passion and my purpose in architecture.
“I’d love for us to collectively establish basic principles of design where natural ecology and the built ecology are intertwined.”
I’d love to hear more about how your focus on sustainability developed.
Having worked for a few years with firms like Beyer Blinder Belle, I decided to go back to school and home in on sustainable design. At the time, in 2005, there weren’t many programs specific to sustainable design and I found one that was well designed at the Architectural Association (AA) in London under the direction of Simos Yannas. The year and half in London at the AA formalized my focus on environmental sustainability and created a new path in my career.
Professionally and in a focused capacity, I started as a sustainability expert at SOM back in 2007. This was a bit of a novel position then and there were a few of us outside of the high-performance team led mostly by mechanical engineers in the firm. We were more attached to the design teams trying to integrate sustainable design processes in early phases of design. The notion of informing building forms and articulation as a response to environmental conditions is a way to create more harmonious projects and also allow for creativity. One of the projects we worked on was the Hill County SEZ Office Complex in Hyderabad (India) that won the Holcim Foundation Award. The building massing and façade articulation were a direct response to solar radiation which is a primary load factor in buildings in this climate.
I know at some point you also had your own firm. Tell me about this.
I started my own studio, Merge Studio, in 2010, with the idea of designing every project with fully integrated and driven by its environmental context and sustainable design. I ran the practice for about five years and worked on many projects, one of which was built in Bangalore and was my continuation of developing a sustainably driven office buildings in India. The project, branded Karle Town Centre – Hub 1 and 2 consisted of two buildings totaling almost a million square feet. It was competitive in cost with neighboring stucco finished office buildings and has become a desirable office location in the city.
Pokhrama Foundation Exterior.
Pokhrama Foundation Block Corridor.
Pokhrama Foundation night view.
How did you eventually get to Corgan?
After Merge Studio, my appointments were at HOK and Buro Happold, where I led regional sustainability teams and continued to build on the idea of integrated design solutions. The interesting point in my career was switching over from Buro Happold to Battery Park City Authority where I led design and planning for the authority and engaged in coastal resiliency projects. While I was aware of the resiliency work happening in lower Manhattan, it is when I joined BPCA that I realized the scale and complexity of this work and its impact on urban conditions. It also then dawned on me how quickly our built environment would have to adapt and change to accommodate rapidly changing climate.
When I was initially speaking with the leadership at Corgan, it felt as if all my professional experience had been preparing me for this task. It felt like a natural fit and the aspirations of the firm were, and are, aligned with my own — to integrate high performance design and sustainability in all our projects, allow for innovation, expand our knowledge, help our clients with their aspirations and support and lead our industry in dealing with sustainability and climate. It is an exciting place to be, and we have built up an amazing team under Corgan-Echo brand. Our team is working on many projects firmwide, and one I’d love to highlight is Wells Fargo Corporate Campus, a 850,000 sf suburban campus in Dallas which is slated to be net-positive energy campus.
I'd also love to hear about your work with the Pokhrama Foundation.
It started with a phone call from a childhood friend, Ajay Singh who had started the foundation to provide education to children in his ancestral village of Pokhrama, part of an agricultural community in remote northern India. Ajay asked me if I could help me design a school campus in Pokhrama. That was over five years ago. Since then, I’ve been engaged with the foundation, first leading the design and now as part of the foundation’s board of directors to assist with all aspects of the foundation’s work.
While we have designed the school building to be net-zero energy, it is the social impact of this work that is truly rewarding. The design of the campus was in sync with its environmental and geographical context, ensuring seasonal watersheds and existing agricultural water detention ponds were incorporated in the site plan. The architecture of the Junior Block — the first phase of construction — is fractured and pulled apart to allow for natural light, natural ventilation and ecology to flow freely throughout the building. This has allowed us to maintain the facility without any air-conditioning, and hence saving operational energy costs for a school that is focused on providing free education. With estimated EUI of approximately 10 Kbtu/sf/yr, the building has been designed to achieve net-zero energy with the addition of solar panels on the roof.
The children who learn here however are the real achievement of our efforts, especially girls who might not otherwise have had access to education, dare to dream and achieve their full potential.
“Nothing goes to waste and every effort, whether successful or not, continues to add to our individual wealth of experience, that eventually makes our unique personalities. ”
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges? How did you both manage through perceived disappointments or setbacks?
Challenges and setbacks are a part of everyone’s lives and are a part of our growth. While the setbacks can be initially terribly disappointing, I’ve always tried to find a positive perspective in those situations. The most important thing to keep in mind is that nothing goes to waste and that every effort whether successful or not continues to add to our individual wealth of experience, that eventually makes our unique personalities.
A challenging moment in my journey was the difficult decision to let go of my practice, Merge Studio, but I had realized that what I wanted to focus on (design and sustainability in large scale projects) was difficult to achieve with my small practice. What I learnt while running my own practice was invaluable and has allowed me to be entrepreneurial even when I’m part of a larger organization. The experience has also left me with great admiration for small architectural practice owners. It is no easy feat.
What have you also learned in the last six months?
Last year WRI issued a report titled ‘The Global Land Squeeze: Managing the Growing Competition for Land,’ that stated that our industry was not correctly accounting for embodied carbon in mass-timber (MT) used in construction. Having learned this has certainly generated a lot more questions on the use of MT. We put together a team of researchers and sustainability experts at Corgan to look at this more closely and have identified additional carbon emissions and will soon have a methodology to account for some these omitted carbon emissions in MT harvesting and fabrication process.
Also, a fun fact I learnt recently is that the moon is upside down when seen from the southern hemisphere.
Wells Fargo Corporate Campus, visualization courtesy of Corgan.
I love that! Who are you admiring now and why?
I’ve been reading Dan Doctoroff’s book, Greater Than Ever, and really beginning to admire his passionate drive in everything he’s done. He was the Deputy Mayor of Economic Development and Rebuilding under Mayor Bloomberg and he worked to revive New York back to economic prosperity after 2001 attacks. That required a vision, a drive, organizational skills and so much more, which Dan brought to the table. He had a role to play in many of the beloved projects in New York including the High-Line, Barclays Center, Hunters Point South and Hudson Yards. He later led Sidewalk Labs, a startup company focused on technology in urban development. In 2021 he was diagnosed with ALS and is now working to raise funds for researching the disease. Dan is driven to make things better and even the face of adversity while facing this terrible disease, he is working to find a solution.
What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And, what does success in that look like to you?
I hope to bring environmental and social sensitivity in every project, within our firm and outside. I’d love for us to collectively establish basic principles of design where natural ecology and the built ecology are intertwined and that every place is designed. I hope that I can continue to help align economic success with environmental and social sustainability and that we all begin to see tangible value in advancing our communities and societies through better built environments. It sounds a bit utopian, but we can certainly set some basic rules.
Success to me at this point of my life and career is driven by how much cultural shift I can bring in our industry to adopt core principles I have described above. At a more personal level, success is really how many lives we can touch and improve. The work I’m doing with Pokhrama Foundation is what I’d love to continue doing.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career?
Firstly, define your own values and stick to them. Whatever it is that makes you tick, build on that and stick with it. Secondly, think about the cumulative impact of your work. Remember that everything counts. Sometimes, we get bogged down with work that may not be most inspiring; in those times remember that everything adds up to something greater and that sometimes we just need to look deeper to realize the worth of what we do. And thirdly, be fluid. Sometimes, things take a turn which may not seem ideal at the moment, but know that there are always good surprises around the corner.