Championing the Changemakers
Championing the Changemakers in Sustainable Design & Building
Image: Piranka
(Photo: American Communities Project and Project Four Twenty Seven; The U.S. Drought Monitor is jointly produced by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Map courtesy of NDM; U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture / Public Domain. License: Public domain; U.S. Geological Survey Landslide Hazards Program. License: Public domain.)
Feature article + CEU Spotlight Report
Assessing Climate Hazards: The First Step in Resilient Design
The tools for conducting a multi-hazard exposure analysis are available if you know where to look.
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WELL v2 AP Study Guide
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Know what you need to know, where to find it
Photo: Benjamin Benschneider
News Analysis
Grounding the AIA Materials Pledge in Data
With a Common Materials Framework soon to be released through Ecomedes, mindful Materials is mapping product labels to industry commitments.
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Live Webinar - ESG for AEC
Join in as we dig into green building & ESG! How can green building and corporate ESG work together? Learn five different ESG reporting systems and understand the concept of materiality. Discounted for premium subscribers.
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News Brief
Codifying Social Justice in Sustainable Development
The Sustainable Development Code now offers guidance on how jurisdictions can address injustice in the built environment.
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News Brief
Reducing Whole-Life Carbon Brings Fringe Benefits
By pursuing five circularity principles, project teams can add financial and non-financial value to buildings, says the UK Green Building Council.
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News Brief
No More New Schools Near Highways in New York
With the SIGH Act, New York State is addressing unjust siting of schools near major roadways.
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News Brief
A Boatload of Building-Related Incentives in Inflation Reduction Act
Architects and engineers will be able to claim energy-efficiency tax deductions when working for tax-exempt clients.
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Antique electronic decorative lamp in factory (Photo: voyata)
Product Review
Energy Storage without Lithium
Salient Energy is developing a zinc-ion battery that avoids some of the safety and supply chain concerns of current lithium-ion systems.
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Aerial view of 2015 flooding in Harris County, Texas. (Photo: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
Resilient Design
Resilience is the capacity to adapt to changing conditions and to maintain or regain functionality and vitality in the face of stress or disturbance. It is the capacity to bounce back after a disturbance or interruption.
LEARN THE BASICS
- Washington D.C. Releases Resilient Design Guidelines
- Standard Effective Temperature: A Metric for Thermal Comfort and Resilience
- DC Power Supply Integrates AC and Renewables
GO DEEPER
- An Advocate’s Guide to Resilience Regulations
- Focus on Resilient Housing
- The Four Core Issues to Tackle for Resilient Design (And the Programs That Can Help)
- When Hurricane Harvey Hit, the Texas Medical Center Stood Ready
RELATED TOPICS
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Maintain Your Credentials
Assessing Climate Hazards: The First Step in Resilient Design
The headlines are everywhere—from heat waves in Europe to wildfires in the Western U.S. to tidal flooding in Florida. In this age of climate change, just as there’s an urgent need to reduce carbon emissions and other greenhouse gasses, we also need to adapt and invest in resilience.
Constructing Change: The Contractor’s Commitment
Health and wellness are in high demand in sustainable design. Soft daylight, superb indoor air quality, enhanced thermal comfort, great ergonomics … all these design elements and more are becoming standard for students, patients, and office workers. There is a stubborn gap between green design and green building. But a group of industry leaders is out to close it with a program called the Contractor’s Commitment to Sustainable Building Practices. In this course, you’ll learn all about the new commitment—who’s signed, why it’s important, and the impact it’s already having on the industry.
Is Using Smart Glass Smart?
The sun streaming into our buildings can be both a benefit and a nuisance. Controlling its glare and solar heat gain in order to maximize energy efficiency, occupant comfort, and views to the outdoors is difficult. In commercial offices and all-glass buildings, the impacts are multiplied. Low-e glazing and exterior or interior shading systems are most often used to manage daylight, but there is another option—electrochromic glazing, sometimes called smart glass, switchable glass, dynamic glazing, and other names (in this report, we’re going to call it “smart glass” and are not covering thermochromic and other light-blocking glazing technologies).
Waste Not, Want Not: Case Studies of Building Material Reuse
The construction sector’s take-make-waste approach to materials needs an overhaul. Materials and construction account for an estimated 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions annually. At the other end of the life cycle, demolition in the United States annually generates 90% of some 600 million tons of construction-sector debris. Getting trashed alongside are the cultural, economic, and environmental values those materials embody. Indications are, though, that this staggering, decades-long profligacy is about to change.
No more red lines: Undoing Our Legacy of Urban Segregation
Although disparities between predominantly white and predominantly non-white neighborhoods go back hundreds of years, 20th-century government-sponsored discrimination was a key turning point in segregating our cities, creating the maps we have today. In fact, it all began with maps—maps released during the New Deal era by the Federal Housing Agency (FHA).
The beneficial intersections of Energy, Resilience, and Health
How can the returns of sustainable building strategies with less quantifiable benefits, like resilience and wellness, be paired with more predictable returns of energy efficiency to calculate an overall return on investment? Where are we in the market in terms of sustainable building codes, and how much do we need to improve beyond code to get to high-performance, resilient, and wellness-oriented designs?
The Building Green guide to thermal insulation
The BuildingGreen Guide to Thermal Insulation provides detailed guidance on insulation products and practices, including recommendations on what insulation to use and what to avoid. It's a treasure trove of information for architects and designers, builders, and anyone who is actively considering the impact of insulation on the quality of your indoor environment and the world.
Spec this not that
Designers and specifiers from numerous leading firms are figuring out that it is possible to identify healthier products and materials and still create gorgeous, energy-efficient, occupant-friendly buildings—without busting budgets or getting overwhelmed by complex health and chemical data.
Lighting Design for Health and Sustainability: A Guide for Architects
What do we mean when we say sustainable lighting? In this PDF report, we take a closer look at lighting as an essential element in quality environments that support health and wellness while reducing energy use.
