Design for Resources
Good design depends on informed material and resource selection—balancing priorities to achieve durable, safe, and healthy projects with an equitable, sustainable supply chain to minimize possible negative impacts on the planet.
Learn more about the AIA Framework for Design Excellence.
Reproduced with permission of The American Institute of Architects, 1735 New York Avenue, N.W.; Washington, D.C. 20006
Design for Resources
Deep Dives
Get up to speed on complex topics. You can also earn CEUs and download PDF Spotlight Reports.
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What Makes a Product Green Today?
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Lots of manufacturers call their products "green," but are they? Here's our guide to the high-performance attributes that matter.
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Whole-Building Life-Cycle Assessment: Taking the Measure of a Green Building
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Why we will never understand the true impact of our buildings—and how we should try to anyway
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Green Design: What’s Love Got to Do with It?
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Beauty, place-making, and even love are motivating many green designers, who see these values complementing core sustainability tenets.
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The Potential of Prefab: How Modular Construction Can Be Green
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Offsite modular construction not only cuts costs and construction times but also benefits people and the planet.
Quick Takes
Jump straight to the essentials with these short explanations of green building concepts.
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Demystifying Climate Change Lingo: From Scope 3 to SSP
Explainer
Climate change is complicated, and the terminology can also be hard to decipher. Here’s a short glossary of a few relevant terms.
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Understanding Emission Scopes in the GHG Protocol
Explainer
The GHG Protocol’s three emission scopes acknowledge the complexities of supply and demand while also encouraging sector-wide alignment, consistent transparency, and support for science-based decarbonization targets.
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Building Decarbonization: How LCA and EPDs Fit in
Explainer
Life-cycle assessment and environmental product declarations reveal embodied carbon and other impacts, but it’s important to know their limits.
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Building Decarbonization: Learn the Lingo
Explainer
Building decarbonization 101 for architects, engineers, and sustainability consultants cutting emissions from building materials and operations.
Product Guidance
Unbiased information from our product experts helps you separate green from greenwash.
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Resilient Flooring
Product Guide
PVC-free and recycled-tire-free flooring, including linoleum and composites with low or no indoor emissions
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Tile
Product Guide
Porcelain tiles that meet third-party environmental standards, and BPA-free adhesives
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Concrete
Product Guide
Producing cement, the primary ingredient in concrete, generates significant amounts of CO2, mercury, and other pollutants, so maximizing its performance and finding substitutes when possible can improve the environmental footprint of a building.
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Ceiling Systems
Product Guide
Low-emitting acoustical and specialty ceiling systems made from sustainably sourced materials
In The News
We break news down to the essentials and provide expert analysis.
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Biophilia a Hallmark of COTE Top Ten for 2020
News Analysis
2020 AIA COTE Top Ten winners feature daylight, indoor/outdoor spaces, extensive plantings, and exposed wood.
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A Review of the Current Net-Zero Energy and Net-Zero Carbon Certification Programs
News Analysis
Until recently, there was only one game in town when it came to net-zero energy and carbon. Now there are several certifications.
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A Review of Healthy Building Rating Systems
News Analysis
WELL or Fitwel? Or just LEED? Here’s how to decide on a rating system for occupant health.
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AIA’s Framework for Design Excellence: A Hook for Firm-wide Change
News Analysis
With design awards on the line, architecture firms are starting to require sustainability tracking across all projects.
Perspective
Thought-provoking opinions from the most trusted minds in sustainability.
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The Green Building Movement Is Dead. Long Live the Green Building Movement!
Op-Ed
The green building community needs a lot more collaboration and a totally new theory of change—and we need it now.
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A Tribute to Robin Guenther, Green Healthcare Pioneer
Op-Ed
Robin Guenther advanced new standards for hospitals that were adopted by the larger green building community and integrated into leading rating systems.
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Net Zero Has Failed. We Need a Universal Carbon Standard for Buildings.
Op-Ed
The building sector’s current “net-zero” standards are not credible, not scalable, and don’t eliminate emissions. There’s a better way.
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This is the Universal Low-Carbon Building Standard We Need
Op-Ed
The building industry’s current net-zero-energy and net-zero-carbon standards got complicated for a reason, but they don’t have to stay that way.
Learning Resources
Syllabus supplements and CEU content, with automatic reporting for AIA and GBCI.
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We Must Decarbonize Existing Buildings by 2050—but How?
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Curbing carbon emissions requires that we address our vast stock of existing buildings. Here’s how to make the case and get it done.
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Choosing Certifications & Ecolabels: From Projects to Products
Webcast
The presenters, Brent Ehrlich and Paula Melton, share what they learned about today’s certification landscape while writing BuildingGreen’s Guide to Building Product Certifications & Ecolabels, distilling some of the information available in that guide to help attendees start to make sense of it all.
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ESG for AEC: Does it Change How We Approach Green Building?
Webcast
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting is an increasingly common expectation throughout financial sectors, and the real estate industry is no exception.
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LEED and Life-Cycle Assessment in Buildings
Webcast
Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a way of understanding the environmental impacts of something, starting with raw material extraction and ending at a landfill or recycling plant. You can use LCA to identify the hot spots—that is, the worst impacts of the thing you’re analyzing—so you can reduce or eliminate them.
