A design competition for professionals and students, the Lifecycle Building Challenge is sponsored by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the American Institute of Architects, and West Coast Green. The competition is focused on design for adaptability, material reuse, and minimizing lifecycle impacts from products.

Registration and participation is free. Submission deadline is August 30 2009.

From the website:

Lifecycle building is designing buildings to facilitate disassembly and material reuse to minimize waste, energy consumption, and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Also known as design for disassembly and design for deconstruction, lifecycle building describes the idea of creating high-performance buildings today that are stocks of resources for the future.

• Create designs that facilitate local building materials reuse
• Consider the full lifecycle of buildings and materials — from resource extraction through occupancy and, finally, deconstruction and reuse
• Focus on quality and creativity of designs and concepts
• Develop strategies that maximize materials recovery
• Reduce the overall embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions of building materials through reuse
• Decrease environmental and economic costs
• Address real world issues

Enter the third year of the Lifecycle Building Challenge competition, to shape the future of green building and facilitate local building materials reuse. Submit your innovative project, design, or idea for reducing to conserve construction and demolition materials and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by designing buildings for adaptability and disassembly.

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I've been involved with the AIA Top Ten Awards Program for a long time. In the early years, when Gail Lindsey started it as an informal program to generate some recognition for a handful of green projects, Environmental Building News was one of the very few media outlets available to provide that publicity. Later we participated in conversations with the national Advisory Group of AIA's Committee on the Environment (COTE) as they worked to refine the metrics and formalize the program. In recent years, BuildingGreen has provided technical support to the AIA Top Ten Awards. Because we manage US DOE's High Performance Buildings Database, which also hosts the Top Ten online submission forms, we've supported those submission forms — updating them with changes each year, providing technical support to applicants, and then editing and preparing the winning projects for publication on the www.AIATopTen.org website.

As we edited and published the winning entries each year, I thought it would be great to sit in on the jury process and learn more about how they make their selections. So when I was invited to join the jury for 2009, I was thrilled. I'd finally have a chance not only to observe the process, but to participate!

The jury that assembled in March to pick the winners was high-powered and diverse. Before diving into the projects themselves, we spent a little while talking about each of our priorities and intentions. That, in itself, was a fascinating conversation.

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From the Father of Green Chemistry to that guy from This Old House, a couple dozen videos of speakers and presentations from Greenbuild '08 have been posted at Greenbuild 365, "USGBC's interactive green building learning portal."

Among them, there's a very special episode in particular. You may have heard that our own Alex Wilson received a Leadership Award from the USGBC during Greenbuild. (Okay, the story's getting old, but the quality keeps getting better.) Check out Mister Wilson now!

This is the really slick two-minute video that was projected onto the giant auditorium screens just before our own Alex Wilson was given a USGBC Leadership Award during Greenbuild. Get a sense of our offices in the historic Estey Organ Factory... see some of the faces behind the work... and meet Roxy Wilson, the Retriever...

Preston Koerner, over at Jetson Green, posted his "Top 10 Tidbits from Greenbuild 2008." Check out numbers 2, 4, 6, and 7:

2. The LEED AP Program undergoes major overhaul and the GBCI talks about LEED Green Associates, Legacy LEED APs, LEED AP Fellows, and the other family of LEED APs (ID+C, BD+C, Homes, O+M, and ND).

This item links to a post our own Tristan Korthals Altes wrote here on BuildingGreen.com's blog.

4. BuildingGreen soft launches a new online information resource on residential green building and remodeling called GreenBuildingAdvisor.com.

That's us.

6. The USGBC gives 2008 Leadership Awards to Alexander Karsner, Alex Wilson, Scot Horst, Ted Strickland, CB Richard Ellis, San Diego Gas & Electric Sustainable Communities Program, and the founding members of AIA COTE.

Alex Wilson! BuildingGreen's founder.

7. BuildingGreen announces their seventh annual list of green building products with the 2008 Top-10 Green Building Products

That's us, too.

Seriously, it's great to be a contributing cog in an organization that was a major player in defining the green building movement at its inception and is still at the forefront after all this time. Here's to the next 23 years.

Posted live from Greenbuild.

This has been long in coming, and judging by the response of the audience this afternoon, I'm not the only one who thinks so. Yes, I work for the guy, but I'm no sycophant. He's one of the most focused, dedicated, knowledgeable people I've ever known. A press release sent out from the USGBC today said this:

Executive Editor of Environmental Building News, Alex Wilson, received the award in the Education category. For more than 25 years, Wilson has been bringing unbiased, reliable information, tools and resources to the building industry. He is the author of numerous books and textbooks on sustainable building, and has written hundreds of articles for publications outside of EBN, including Popular Science and Architectural Record. He served as the executive director of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association and on the board of directors for the USGBC, and is currently a trustee of The Nature Conservancy — Vermont Chapter.

Take a couple minutes to listen to this... it's audio of the announcement and a very short film (kinda like the Oscars). The recording is poor but understandable, and lasts less than three minutes. Check out the enthusiastic crowd response.

Unlike the tale of woe I told last year, this time I got to see the award given. It was great to be on hand to witness the well-deserved moment.

(The following are photos of the movie... which, argh, were the best shots I got.)

Link to BuildingGreen press release

Michael Wentz being interviewed after the presentation

BuildingGreen was given a nice shout-out in the introductory remarks, described as "one of the most important partners over the years" of the Top Ten awards, with special thanks given to Michael Wentz for his extensive assistance.

COTE has ten measure of sustainability that it considers:

1. Sustainable design intent & innovation: Sustainable design is an inherent aspect of design excellence. Projects should express sustainable design concepts and intentions, and take advantage of innovative programming opportunities.
2. Regional community design / connectivity: Sustainable design values the unique cultural and natural character of a given region.
3. Land use & site ecology: Sustainable design protects and benefits ecosystems, watersheds, and wildlife habitat in the presence of human development.
4. Bioclimatic design: Sustainable design conserves resources and maximizes comfort through design adaptations to site-specific and regional climate conditions.
5. Light & air: Sustainable design creates comfortable interior environments that provide daylight, views, and fresh air.
6. Water cycle: Sustainable design conserves water and protects and improves water quality.
7. Energy flows & energy future: Sustainable design conserves energy and resources and reduces the carbon footprint while improving building performance and comfort. Sustainable design anticipates future energy sources and needs.
8. Materials & construction: Sustainable design includes the informed selection of materials and products to reduce product-cycle environmental impacts, improve performance, and optimize occupant health and comfort.
9. Long life & loose fit: Sustainable design seeks to enhance and increase ecological, social, and economic values over time.
10. Collective wisdom & feedback loops: Sustainable design strategies and best practices evolve over time through documented performance and shared knowledge of lessons learned.

While each of the ten projects excelled at more than one of these attributes, they were each presented in conjunction with one measure. The award winners are not ranked.

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