As promised at the SDL Summer Summet: Hennepin County Energy & Environment's new Project Manager’s Guide to Material Reuse in Commercial Buildings, with specification language, guidance for procurement, and case studies of successful reuse projects around the country. This resource is meant to help owners, architects, and contractors... Read more

Hello Folks,
What is your experience with successes and failures in the design process? As a starting point I have listed my Top 5 for success, and my Top 5 for failure. We'd love to see your reactions and look forward to the discussion when we all meet next week at our monthly check-in.

Top 5 reasons for when integrative design... Read more

Erika Heet is the Editor-in-Chief of BuildingGreen. She is the former Editor-in-Chief of Interiors magazine. She has held senior editor positions at Dwell and Architectural Digest, and is the author of two books on modern architecture. She has served on the boards of Greenbuild and the Sustainable Furnishings Council, as well as on juries for... Read more

Prefabricated, or modular, buildings can provide environmental advantages over conventionally constructed buildings. They are built in factories where manufacturing and cost can be tightly controlled, so materials are kept out of the elements, there is less waste, and thermal properties and air sealing can be enhanced. There are also fewer... Read more

Hi Everyone- as a follow up to the 5 minute presentation I did during the recent Virtual Summit-Palooza, I am pleased to announce that the Sustainability Action Plan Guidance Document created by the AIA 2030 Working Group is finished and released.  Please share!

http://content.aia.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Sustainable Sites: Primers from Environmental Building News.

Learning Objectives
Upon completing this course, participants will be able to:


1) Describe how invasive plants can harm an ecosystem, and why native plants are generally less work and less expensive.
2) Explain the... Read more

Hardware has to be durable and resist weathering to ensure that features such as doors function properly.

BuildingGreen-Approved Hardware

BuildingGreen approves hardware that uses post-consumer recycled metal content beyond what is standard in the industry. Products from manufacturers that have engaged in information transparency... Read more

Hi all,

We have a newly constructed, core/shell project having some hot water issues in the core restrooms.

There is a 0.35 Toto lav installed throughout. The hot water heaters are adjacent on each floor, located in the janitor closets. We did the math, and there could be a gallon of water standing and cooling in the pipe between... Read more

Friends of EPIC –

Hey, everyone. As some of you might have heard, we’ve been working for a while with Autodesk to get c.scale (the data model behind EPIC) built into Forma – Autodesk’s AI-powered planning tool. Forma is packaged within Autodesk’s AEC collection and most firms using Revit should already have access. This integration is... Read more

Hi Everyone - I'm posting this on behalf of Jeff Frost whom many of you know from his days as an SD Leader with SmithGroup and SERA and in his new role as head of Brightworks Sustainability's materials group.  I am excited to be working with Jeff on this concept of multi-attribute product scoring.  Cheers, Lona

Dear SDL’ers,

We’ve... Read more

AIA is looking for additional technical review jurors for their 2022 COTE Top Ten Award program particularly in the Water/Ecosystems and Energy/Discovery categories.  If you are interested please go to this webpage and complete the form.

Time is of the essence, so please complete the form no later than Friday, January 14, 2022.

Hi all,

Thanks for your patience as we've finally compressed this video file enough to upload it onto the forum. You can watch the recording of "Are We There Yet? A Sampling and Exploration of Project Process Diagrams" here.

Enjoy!

-Amanda & the BuildingGreen team

I wanted to post a reminder for you all that the Sustainable Design Leaders Summit will be kicking off with a Pre-Summit workshop in Seattle July 31st, 9am - 3pm. If you are interested in joining your peers for this workshop, please see the registration link below. Also, if you know someone in the Seattle area that would be good to have in the... Read more

This is a test for surveys.

Hi all, hope you're keeping safe and healthy. I'm thinking about protocols to put in place on jobsites related to COVID-19 in addition to our IAQ plans. Wondering if anyone's company has started to layout specific protocols, PPE, etc. and is willing to share.

What got me thinking was this article from Prof. Joe Allen at Harvard about... Read more

Hello,

We have a mass timber purpose-built rental project specifying flooring at the moment and are trying to find a healthy flooring option while managing acoustics with CLT floorslabs. We don't typically spec vinyl flooring due to the health concerns around PVC, but the project is budget-conscious, and our flooring supplier is... Read more

Are you a design or building professional who wants to learn more about sustainability—such as how to do energy modeling, improve the building envelope, or use renewables on a project? Now more than ever, it's time to join the sustainable... Read more