BuildingGreen.com LIVE - Events

"The drama of a 2x4 shot from an air cannon at glass windows"

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:15:00 GMT

Architectural testing concern HTL will be at GlassBuild America shooting missiles at windows again. The demonstration/demolition follows the Miami-Dade large missile protocol by shooting 2x4s at impact-resistant and non-impact-resistant windows. A press release from HTL quotes NGA Industry Events Director Susan Jacob: "There is nothing quite like the drama of a 2x4 missile shot from an air cannon at glass windows." Wish I was going! I checked HTL's website for some footage, but was left wanting. There's a link for client videos (and there's some top name clients in there), but they all seem to be password-protected. So it was off to YouTube to find this:

Another interesting short video — less than two minutes — was shot at last year's Glassbuild conference; a reporter from e-Glass Weekly played word-association with a few exhibitors. If this small sampling is any indication, the fenestration industry does not like the NFRC at all; was optimistic (as of last year) about commercial construction; and thinks green building and LEED are the future.

Greenbuild 2009 Expo Hall: Some Math

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:11:00 GMT

I tend to spend a lot of time in the Expo Hall at Greenbuild. On the Greenbuild 2009 website, the Greenbuild International Expo page says:

This year's expo hall in Phoenix boasts over 1,800 exhibit booths showcasing the latest in innovative products and services.

Were you there last year? That was 800 booths. Double that, and add some. At this writing, there are 1,057 exhibitors listed for this year; but let's assume that there will be at least the promised 1,800 by show time. Here's the expo hall schedule:

Tuesday 5:30pm - 8:00pm

Wednesday 9:00am - 5:30pm

Thursday 9:00am - 5:30pm

The Expo is open a total of 19.5 hours — which is 1,170 minutes... or 70,200 seconds. Divide those seconds by 1,800 booths. You have 39 seconds to linger at each one. If you visit only half the booths, the time goes up to 1:18 each. Check out the video on the main Expo page, though — our own Nadav Malin in a Fortune Magazine video shot during last year's Greenbuild Expo (as previously noted here on our blog).

Al Gore, Sheryl Crow kick off Greenbuild 2009

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:45:00 GMT

If you haven't already heard, the opening keynote at Greenbuild 2009 will be former U.S. Vice President, environmental advocate, and Oscar-, Grammy-, and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Al Gore. Gore's address will take place at Chase Field stadium; afterward, a little music from nine-time Grammy winner Sheryl Crow. The annual Greenbuild International Conference & Expo will be held in Phoenix, Arizona, this year, November 11-13, at the Phoenix Convention Center, just a block or two from Chase Field. Previous Greenbuild keynote speakers include former President Bill Clinton and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Greenbuild 2009 is also slated to have more than 100 educational sessions and workshops, a two-day Residential Summit, the World Green Building Council International Congress, tours of area green building sites, and more than 1,700 exhibition booths showcasing technologies and products. In addition to inventing the internet, Al Gore is on the Board of Directors for Apple Computer, and a senior advisor to Google. (Two of those things are true.)

Residential Green Building Opportunities within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:17:00 GMT

GreenBuildingAdvisor.com offers up another free webcast on June 29 at 4 p.m. Eastern. Rob Moody, consultant at Organic Think, LEED Faculty member, and partner in the National Center for Sustainability will be talking about current and future funding opportunities for green building projects courtesy the economic stimulus package. Rise above the recession! Register here. Find out about more webcasts from GreenBuildingAdvisor (like Trade Contractor Management for High Performance Homes, and Smart Strategies to Market Your High Performance Homes, and Inspiring Sustainable Residential Interiors...)

Northeast (U.S.) Natural Building and Living Colloquium

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:39:00 GMT

The Northeast Natural Building and Living Colloquium is a "conference" I go to every year. It's not everyone's cup of tea. No continuing education credits are offered. There's no high-power, big-project architectural, engineering, interior designing firm reps to hobnob with. There isn't a product expo in a cavernous auditorium. No suits, no ties, no shiny shoes. It takes place outside. You bring a tent to sleep in. Meals are provided (vegan). You get to be with good, mostly laypeople who care deeply about sustainability in the built environment, learning from world-class practitioners about things like strawbale, cob, cordwood, timber framing, straw-clay infill, permaculture, community-supported agriculture, small-scale living roofs, thatching, natural plasters & finishes, and more. You get your hands in the dirt. You go swimming. Evening presentations as good as any I've seen at mainstream green-building conferences — and often better — are given in a circus tent. Then, exhausted, you either relax around a bonfire or hit the sleeping bag to get ready to do it again the next day.

The sixth annual family-friendly Northeast Natural Building & Living Colloquium — Seven full days! — Sunday, July 26 through Saturday, August 1, 2009 — once again hosted by The PeaceWeavers :: Thunder Mountain — Bath, New York A hands-on event with an emphasis on natural building and sustainable living in the northeastern climate. From natural building and permaculture to water and energy conservation... from alternative fuels to sourcing your food locally... this event is for everyone concerned about how their lifestyle impacts our Earth.

[More]

The Lifecycle Building Challenge

Sat, 16 May 2009 16:43:00 GMT

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.

[More]

LEED for Homes: Tips for Successful Projects

Sat, 16 May 2009 12:24:00 GMT

Who could be more qualified than one of the principal authors of LEED for Homes to provide insight on the best ways to make the program work?

LEED for Homes, like other rating systems, is an assessment tool. This means that while it provides some "how-to" information (at the level of individual strategies or "credits"), it doesn't offer any guidance for how to approach the design and construction of a high-performing home differently than a conventional project. Ann Edminster will offer some of that missing guidance in this webinar.

It gets better. Not only do you not have to jet off to some city to sit in some auditorium during some high-priced conference to take this in... it's free. Just sign up and it's yours for the taking on June 2, at 2:00 pm Eastern (1:00 pm Central, noon Mountain, 11:00 am Pacific), right on your computer. A gift from GreenBuildingAdvisor.com. The presenter, Ann Edminster, is a longtime green building mover and shaker. In addition to being one of the main people who developed LEED for Homes (she was its co-chair through most of its making), she's also a past member of the LEED Steering Committee, and a member and past co-chair of the USGBC's Materials and Resources Technical Advisory Group. She co-authored Efficient Wood Use In Residential Construction: A Practical Guide to Saving Wood, Money, and Forests, has written bunches of technical papers and articles, and has been an invited speaker at dozens of regional, national, and international green building conferences over the past 15 years. She's the founding principal of the environmental design consulting firm Design AVEnues.

The most overlooked building material in the U.S.?

Thu, 07 May 2009 10:55:00 GMT

Even though there are extant and occupied earthen homes scattered throughout the northern states and Canada from the mid-19th century, raw earth as a building material is overlooked in most of the USA. See Richard Pieper's article, "Earthen Architecture in the Northern United States" and these photos of earthen houses in upstate New York that I took in 2004, following Pieper's trail. Those are the tip of the iceberg, of course. The Earth Architecture website notes, "Currently it is estimated that one half of the world's population — approximately three billion people on six continents — lives or works in buildings constructed of earth." The Adobe Association of the Southwest hosts a biannual conference, which is now just a week away.

The 5th Adobe Conference of the Adobe Association of the Southwest, AdobeUSA 2009, will take place May 15 and 16, 2009 in El Rito, New Mexico on the campus of co-sponsor Northern New Mexico College in Cutting Hall Auditorium. Engineering and Architect Professionals will be eligible to obtain Continuing Education Units (PDH) during the conference.

Check out the abstracts, including great-sounding titles like:
   · Adobe 2030
   · ASTM earthen building standards
   · Mechanical performance of nonindustrial building materials manufactured with clay as a natural binder
   · The Effect Interior Earthen plasters and Exterior Lime plasters have on Controlling Temperature and Humidity in Building Envelope

What other natural materials can we use?

Free Webinars from GreenBuildingAdvisor.com

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:56:00 GMT

On Wednesday, April 29, Alex Wilson presents The Future of Housing — "leading-edge strategies for achieving net-zero-energy homes, transportation energy use associated with where we live, the looming challenge of water, passive survivability as a residential design criterion, and thoughts on incorporating food production into the built environment. Today's economic crisis makes this discussion all the more important and points to the need to focus on our existing housing stock, which will also be discussed." Then on Monday, May 11, Alex is back with What's New in Green Products, in which he will "discuss how BuildingGreen assesses products for its GreenSpec directory of green building products and review some of the more exciting new products that have come across his desk recently. Though he has been reviewing and reporting on green building products for more than 20 years, Alex is still excited when he comes across innovative new products. This is a chance to share in that excitement." Tuesday, June 2, a great treat: Ann Edminster — nationally recognized expert on green home design and construction; a principal author of the LEED for Homes Rating System; consultant to builders, owners, developers, supply chain clients, design firms, investors, and public agencies — addresses LEED for Homes: Tips for Successful Projects. "LEED for Homes, like other rating systems, is an assessment tool. This means that while it provides some 'how-to' information (at the level of individual strategies or 'credits'), it doesn't offer any guidance for how to approach the design and construction of a high-performing home differently than a conventional project. Ann Edminster will offer some of that missing guidance in this webinar, highlighting the role of energy modeling, the value of teamwork both among design professionals and across the traditional design-construction divide, and some useful tools for streamlining the certification process." Also coming on Thursday, June 18: Navigating ANSI 700 with Michael Chandler, president of Chandler Design-Build of North Carolina and a certified Green Professional '08, NAHB University of Housing.

Free Weeklong Online Green Conference Begins April 20

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:28:00 GMT

All this week, webcasting service BrightTALK is honoring Earth Day by providing five days of free green building presentations. Many of the presenters are world-class. If you can't fit it into your schedule, the recorded sessions will be available on-demand later. Monday addresses Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability — the highlight is likely to be the Executive Director at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Center for Responsible Business, Jo Mackness, speaking on Corporate Social Responsibility and the Next Generation of Business Leaders. Tuesday is Water Management day, and there a couple programs that are particularly intriguing. Jonathan C. Kaledin of The Nature Conservancy introduces the Alliance for Water Stewardship, which is building an international certification organization akin to the Forest Stewardshp Council (FSC); and Linda Hwang, Manager of Environmental Research & Innovation at BSR (Business for Social Responsibility), will speak on Global Water Trends and the Corporate Response. Wednesday's topic is Green Building. There are ten presentations that day and half of them look like real winners — check them out — but if you only do one, don't miss BuildingGreen's own Residential Program Manager, Peter Yost, with a session titled Sustainability Requires Durability. [More]

BuildingEnergy's LEED 'Debate': "Least informative forum yet"

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:05:00 GMT

I wasn't able to attend last week's BuildingEnergy conference, sadly. Most particularly, I wasn't able to get to Tuesday night's public forum, "What's Right and What's Wrong With LEED," featuring panelists Henry Gifford, USGBC's LEED Technical VP Brendan Owens, Steven Winter Associates' Maureen Mahle, IBACOS' Duncan Prahl, and energy modeler Maria Karpman of Karpman Consulting. It was moderated by Nadav Malin. (Why was I so hot for that presentation? For a refresher, see Lies, Damn Lies, and... Another Look at LEED Energy Efficiency, and the terrific comments that follow it.) At least we can all hear about the forum second-hand. The Boston Globe's green blog — which they call "The Green Blog" — posted How best to determine a green building? with the opening line, "A rant or a mugging?" (That piece is an edited version of the one on Michael Prager's blog.) Read either or both of those to get to the "Least informative forum yet" reference. More goodies: Fred Unger's thoughts at NESEA's blog, and Sitephocus weighs in on the controversy. There's another blow-by-blow at Green Real Estate Law Journal, but the reporting is based on Michael Prager's piece; however, the final three paragraphs pull some threads together in a way that's well worth a look.

Venting about Sustainable Commercial Kitchens

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:29:00 GMT

Despite the economic downturn and the trend toward smaller crowds at building trade shows, Efficiency Vermont's 2009 Better Buildings by Design Conference was a great success and actually increased attendance this year. The enthusiastic response is a tribute to the sustainable building community at large and to Efficiency Vermont, which put on a conference that was well organized, informative, and pragmatically optimistic. The quality of the presenters and workshops was impressive. William Miller from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Steve Selkowitz from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Kevin Dowling from Philips Solid State Lighting Solutions, John Straube from Building Science Corporation, and others, spanned topics ranging from high-performance roofs to the latest in LED technology. I attended a commercial kitchen ventilation (CKV) workshop featuring Don Fisher, co-founder of Fisher-Nickel and the Food Service Technology Center (FSTC). Administered by Pacific Gas and Electric, FSTC is a pioneer in the testing of water- and energy-efficient commercial kitchen appliances. (Anyone interested in commercial kitchens has to visit www.fishnick.com). Fisher's presentation was geared toward experienced kitchen and/or HVAC professionals and discussed his company's work improving the efficiency of existing ventilation systems. For background information, commercial kitchens require massive CKV systems to remove heat and fumes generated by gas ranges, broilers, fryers, and — the biggest emitter — the grill (think of a large, white-hot barbecue burning indoors for 12-18 hours a day). [More]

2,000 Bikes at the Inauguration

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:12:00 GMT

The Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA), a Washington D.C. bicycle advocacy organization, along with America Bikes, the D.C. District Department of Transportation, and Dero Racks (they're listed in GreenSpec), provided free valet parking — for bicycles — at the presidential inauguration last week.

Cyclists were already in line before the 7 a.m. opening. All told, about 2,000 bikes were parked at two locations on either side of the secure area around the White House. By the middle of the day, one of the lots ran out of room and another enclosure needed to be improvised from security barricades to accommodate the volume. [More]

Videos from Greenbuild '08 at Greenbuild 365

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 23:40:00 GMT

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!

Touring the Greenbuild Expo with CNN

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 13:21:00 GMT

I'm not usually all that comfortable in front of a camera, but I had fun walking the Greenbuild 2008 Expo floor with a video crew from CNNMoney.com and Fortune magazine. We focused on four or five technologies in our tour, only two of which made it into the final two minute video (after a nice lead-in by Scot Horst of 7group). The CNN crew were looking for photogenic presentations, while I was looking for products I believe in to talk about. I'm pleased with how it came out in the end — though it would have been nice to cover a lot more stuff!

Tuesday	5:30pm - 8:00pm
Wednesday	9:00am - 5:30pm
Thursday	9:00am - 5:30pm