Conventional roofs contribute to heat loss, heat islands, and excessive stormwater runoff.

BuildingGreen-Approved Green Roofs

BuildingGreen approves systems with appropriate planting media that can be created from regional materials and may be blended for specific characteristics, such as:

Hi everyone,

Thanks so much to those of you who presented at this years AIA Show & Tell, and thanks again to ZGF for hosting! Here are the slides for some of the presentations. Please do not share the slides outside of the networks unless they are marked "PUBLIC." Hope you enjoy!

They do, seriously.  They are fine people with tons of information, and without them, all of us Architects would be, well, out of luck.

So, we first want to say THANK YOU to all of our contractor friends who took part in our Contractor Coffee Talk on Tuesday. THAT WAS AWESOME!

We learned things like:

Hi everyone - in doing a carbon footprint for our firm, does anyone know if buildings that we design as Architects considered scope 3 emissions, or are they beyond the boundary of emissions? LMN's buildings, despite best efforts, are cumulatively multiple orders of magnitude above our scope 1 and 2 emissions. We have never included these... Read more

A couple Minnesota cities are considering adding electrification to their sustainable building policy (required for new construction receiving City financial assistance). Concerned that the market isn't ready for a full-on mandate, they are considering a more moderate approach of requiring developers/design teams to conduct an electrification... Read more

Hi all,

Thanks again to those who presented at the AIA Show & Tell! Here are the slides for some of the fascinating presentations we saw. Please do not share the slides outside of the networks unless they are marked “PUBLIC.”

There may be more to come; if you presented but did not yet provide permission for your slides to be... Read more

Our all-volunteer Advisory Board helps BuildingGreen identify the most critical topics for our coverage, and directs our research as we investigate these topics and bring them to our readers. Their distinguished and varied service in the field of environmentally responsible building is an inspiration.

Hello! 

We have several projects that are either pending ILFI Zero Carbon certification or the owner is planning to purchase offsets to cover construction emissions. Thus far, I have not considered this in our corporate footprint reporting. However, we are including A5 emissions whenever feasible and multiplying that performance over the... Read more

Hi all,

We are looking to study Passive House on a couple small multifamily projects. Our understanding is that WUFI Passive only integrates with SketchUp at this time. Our BIM manager has been trying to find an example of a firm that works in Revit and uses WUFI Passive, to point him in the right direction on workflow. I offered to ask... Read more

Hi All!

Our company recently rolled out a corporate Green Team of volunteers across the company working to drive sustainability initiatives at their respective office locations. I wanted to reach out and ask who has a Green Team (or similar name) at their company and learn more about how different Green Teams are structured within the... Read more

Under a high carbon scenario, most of North America will be 2 degrees C hotter by 2050. Meantime, we're designing buildings that will still be around in 2050, to codes that don't yet factor in chronic risks associated with climate change. I want to explain these risks to my colleagues; I'm hoping some of our green gurus can help answer the... Read more

Hi All- I'm posting this question for my ZGF colleague Chris Chatto.  Somehow he wasn't initially included on the SDL list as it moved from Wiggio to BuildingGreen's (Green Gurus) site.  Happy New Year, Lona

Hi everyone –

We could use your help in developing a determining a “red list” premium for a feasibility cost... Read more

Hello all, 

Any Fitwel experts out there? I have a 30,000 sf boutique hotel + spa client who would like to certify under the Fitwel rating system but Fitwel folks are telling me that no scorecard is currently available to hotel clients (can't use mulit-tenant or resi, that a hotel scorecard is under development). Has anyone used Fitwel... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Eight Tips for Passing the LEED v4 AP BD+C Exam.

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


1. List important tables and calculations from the reference guide.
2. Explain what's pertinent about credit options and documentation.
3. Detail... Read more

Hi all,

We have a project in New Orleans that needs to meet the GSA Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) requirements and submit EPDs. For our concrete, there is only one manufacturer that meets the requirements and is more than 50 miles away (according to EC3). Does anyone have tips on attempting to talk to local concrete manufacturers about... Read more

Hi All,

Has anyone successfully adopted a Revit to ClimateStudio workflow with their new export tool? Right now we are using cove.tool because it works reasonably well with iterative Revit modeling, but are itching to try a more accurate and nuanced alternative.

Thanks for any and all experiences!
Misha