Alex Wilson is about to begin the session presenting the Top-10 products added to GreenSpec and/or reviewed in Environmental Building News over the past year... and because I can, vested by the power of the internet, these are them, just for you, even before the standing-room-only crowd of a couple hundred here in the room gets to see them.
Last night we and the GreenSource folks had an intimate, half-crazed private party for 350 invited green builders at the Funky Buddha—a curious and amazing place of several connected rooms filled with murals, sculpture, candles, conversation niches, and atmosphere. Drinks and laughter were the order of the evening. It turns out that I'm not as young as I used to be.
Nadav, along with John Boeker of 7Group and Victor Canseco of Sandpebble Builders, is a panelist for a session at Greenbuild '07 convened by Larry Strain of Siegel & Strain Architects that's going on right now—"Green Guideline Specifications: Taking it Public, Making it Real." Here's how it looks.
Tuesday afternoon the Materials & Resources Technical Advisory Group (MR-TAG) for LEED hosted a public session for stakeholder input into the ongoing process of reevaluating LEED's certified wood and biobased products credits (see EBN Vol 15, No. 6). The MR-TAG, which I chair, had commissioned a team from Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Sylvatica to provide background research and tools to support the decision-making process.
Well, I'm in—standing at the back of an auditorium that seats 6,000... at an event that does seem to me now like it will exceed 20,000 attendees. The registration lines this morning were astonishing, a mythical beast with multiple tails snaking up and down the expansive corridors of this sprawling structure. I tried to take pictures, but it was one of those scenes that a lens just can't convey.
Bill Clinton's keynote is this morning, and it's likely to be a madhouse.
We may already have a winner for the best, smartest booth swag at Greenbuild '07: the "rethink the dress code—CLO.08" t-shirt from Big Ass Fans. Technically, these shirts may not be booth swag, since they 'cost' the very special Greenbuild price of a one-dollar donation—which funds are met in kind by the Big Assers and used to support ASHRAE Research on Standard 55: Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy.
Big news from Member Day at Greenbuild '07—the LEED ratings programs are... going away.
I'll be updating this post in the next hour or so after listening to the session again, but it boils down to this: there will be a "bookshelf" of credits, and when a project application is made, a custom rating system will be generated.
There's a lot more development, public comment periods, and hair-pulling to come, but they hope to roll this out in less than two years.
Because not everybody gets the idea of integrated design and delivery yet, I'm glad AIA National and the AIA California Council collaborated on Integrated Project Delivery: A Guide... and even more glad that they're making it available as a free-to-download pdf.
GreenerBuildings put together a nicely thorough intro to Greenbuild '07. Their article "What Greenbuild is Bringing to Chicago" includes us:
