Team,

As you all probably saw, Boston is discussing using both CEI (carbon emission intensity) and EUI as basic scope of work.  Maybe the more surprising thing is China announced a new building code next year to include carbon emission analysis as a basic scope of work for all buildings.   New buildings in 2022, among other things,... Read more

Do you have the authority to start using only EVs in your renderings?  Let’s normalize and accelerate this change!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_production_battery_electric_vehicles

Why are we showing gas cars in renderings of our green buildings?

Friends, I reviewed the firm's 2019 AIA 2030 data with a Principal, having organized the data in such a way that we could manipulate it. I included the average EUI and weighted EUI, since the latter gives a truer picture of where we are as a studio. In the past, the assumption was we would raise all boats with efforts to improve our practice in... Read more

Greetings, all:

AIA COTE Advocacy is working with AIA Gov't Affairs to assemble a directory of COTE-friendly AIA Members who are passionate about environmental advocacy and VOTERS in targeted congressional districts. We are organizing in-district meetings after the mid-term elections focused on the members of the Senate Energy &... Read more

Cabinets are often made from unsustainable wood bound with adhesives that offgas formaldehyde and finishes that have high emissions or contain PVC.

BuildingGreen-Approved Cabinetry

Approved residential cabinetry has:

Hi,

I believe a while back there was communication about a hard hat recycling program. Does anyone have any information about a hard hat recycling program? The contractors in the midwest have finally switched to the new style of hard hats with the chin strap and are requiring all subcontactors to comply by July 1, 2024. I'd like to... Read more

Hello Green Gurus!

Here is a [LINK] to an updated version of the letter, including all the signatories we had as of last Friday - thank you all!

This message is really geared for your firm's social media/communications team, so if you aren’t that person, please share this message with them! With that said, all of you (whether your... Read more

Hi Folks - sorry for the late notice, but I just heard about this two days ago and needed to get confirmation that I could share the request with htis group.

The opportunity is for business leaders in energy, efficiency, construction and design (i.e. all of us!) -

As you know, the flow of the historic federal infrastructure and... Read more

Hello SCL, 

If you didn't attend last week's SCL Summit, then I'll sum up one of the major takeaways: SCL members NEED TO COMMENT ON LEEDV5. The stakes are high, particularly around waste. 

Luckily, Amanda Kaminsky is making it easy for us. She has drafted a sample comment based on our discussion at the Summit. 

If you have... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Why Post-Occupancy Review Is the Future of Design (And How It Can Serve You Now).

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


1. Explain the importance of post-occupancy evaluation (POE) for occupants and the opportunities in POE for architects.... Read more

In the Passive House session at the Winter Summit, I spoke about a Massachusetts DOER report that found that meeting the new energy code in MA (passive house or better in most cases) is cheaper for some building types than traditional construction. Some of you asked to see the report. It was a power point show. On page 34 of this slide deck... Read more

Hello Green Gurus,

Here is the information for this month's Peer Networks Webinar, Jobsite Sustainability Tracking Tools. We hope you will join us!

Register HERE.

Jobsite Sustainability Tracking Tools
Tuesday, May 18th, 2021
2pm - 3pm ET (11am - 12pm PT)

Description

‘You can’t improve what you don’... Read more

Received answers from below questions from NIST Andy Persily

1. Is there a preferred bookends range of CO2 for both “optimal” energy and human performances?

Andy: No

2.Is the ASHRAE ventilation of 1000-1200 ppm average, probably not based on performance, suggesting current ventilation rate is sub-optimal with cognitive... Read more

At Living Future last week a woman from Google asked about cost comparisons and I shared that the City of Santa Monica conducted a study analyzing the costs of a prototypical mixed-use project for a Living Building vs. LEED v4 Platinum vs. code compliant (Title 24, part 6). I thought this group might be interested as well so here is the link... Read more

We have a client for whom we are designing a very high performance manufacturing facility, and they want to communicate their building's performance both dynamically and in real-time within their lobby for guests and staff.

We would like to mine the wisdom of this group to see what recommendations we can muster regarding high quality... Read more

Hello All,

Through a regional School of Architecture, our firm has been connected with a very intriguing startup that has been engineering a new rooftop wind energy technology. They are developing a system to economically capture the increased wind flows at the edges of commercial building rooftops. They have engineered this system,... Read more