News Analysis
EBN Advisory Board member Mike Nicklas led an international delegation of renewable energy experts in promoting sustainable energy at the Earth Summit last month. He and others were negotiating for inclusion of renewable energy and energy conservation measures into agreements being worked out for the United Nations... Read more
News Brief
The American Institute of Architects convention in Boston this past June was the setting for a changing of the guard in the American architectural establishment. The Institute’s first woman president took the reins, the Committee on the Environment became its largest and fastest growing committee, and the first installments of the Environmental... Read more
Feature
Carefully stake the building site and driveway, remove trees that are within the excavation area or too close, then erect a fence to keep heavy equipment off fragile soils and away from nearby trees.
Protecting trees and the local ecosystem when building on previously unbuilt land is a vitally important—yet often overlooked—part of environmentally responsible construction. Healthy trees and shrubs can reduce a home’s environmental impact and directly benefit homeowners in a number of ways:
•Enhancing comfort by shielding the house... Read more
Feature
Ozone depletion and global warming are two of our most serious environmental problems—and foam insulation materials containing CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) contribute significantly to both of these problems. The environmentally concerned builder or designer should make it a highest priority to avoid them. Even many of the non-CFC alternatives... Read more
Op-Ed
Introducing the first issue of our newsletter.
Buildings have a tremendous impact on the environment. In North America, buildings and the building industry account for about 30% of carbon dioxide emissions, 35-40% of ozone depletion, 20-30% of municipal solid waste, vast quantities of natural resource consumption, and dramatic loss of open space each... Read more
Feature
Susan Maxman is the first AIA president to make sustainable design a priority.
Q.Where would you say architects as a group stand on environmental issues?
A.Architects tend to be reactive rather than proactive. It is important that we take the lead on these environmental issues. The architecture schools in particular tend to be conservative. They just aren’t... Read more
Forum topic
We are cautiously rekindling the age-old debate: how are we balancing modeling software for design /visualization and performance analysis during early phase of design.
We are heavy SketchUp users for early design, and most of our staff have access to COVE tool for early performance analysis. Problem is, I’d rather use Revit to COVE... Read more
Forum topic
Has anyone worked with Vidaris for LEED certification and have a contact there? If you want to direct email me with feedback on the experience that would be helpful as well.
Forum topic
Hi folks,
We're currently scoping out a BuildingGreen report on how the global market for recycled/recyclable materials has changed over the years, and what that means for waste management practices in construction, and for the availability of recycled content materials.
This ties into the goal from the SCL Summit about LEED... Read more
Forum topic
Hi,
Are any of you attending this conference? Michelle and I are doing this low-carbon concrete/EC policy work and can't attend this conference on short notice - but if YOU are attending - we might ask a couple of small favors (collecting specific info from trade show etc)
AND/OR: if any of you have attended in the past - was it... Read more
Product Guide
Though BuildingGreen has long supported the use of electric hand dryers as a more environmentally friendly hand drying option, the majority of evidence appears to support paper towels as a preferred method of controlling the spread of potential pathogens.
And even the most efficient hand dryers contribute significant CO2 to the... Read more
Quiz
Welcome to the quiz portion of Mouth, Meet Money: Case Studies of Outcome-Based Design!
Important: This quiz covers all related articles within this topic. Scroll to the bottom of the article page to find links to all the articles covered by this quiz.
Learning Objectives
Upon completing this course, participants will be... Read more
Basic page
Testing web-to-lead to existing contact in Salesforce.
function timestamp() { var response = document.getElementById("g-recaptcha-response"); if (response == null || response.value.trim() == "") {var elems = JSON.parse(document.getElementsByName("captcha_settings")[0].value);elems["ts"] = JSON.stringify(new Date().getTime());document.... Read moreForum topic
Hi folks,
I wanted to let people know about this webinar--I've heard it's good. If you do catch it please let us know what you think. Jason has offered to do a private version for our Peer Networks as well--I'd love to know how interested people would be in that opportunity.
November 14, 2019 from noon to 1 PM Pacific Time
... Read more
Reports, Courses, Study Guides, Live Webinars
If you are interested in sharing this Guide within your organization and adding a copy to your library, please purchase the site-license guide.
The world’s most powerful customers are looking to rein in the excesses of their suppliers. Climate change is the likely catalyst for a recent uptick in calls for corporate transparency... Read more
Forum topic
Dear all,
A mechanical engineer on a healthcare project we are working on has asked for help in dividing the ventilation calculations between ASHRAE Standards 170 and 62.1; can anyone here help shed some light on it?
"This is the first time I am working on LEED for a hospital and I am not sure how the template wants me to show... Read more
Forum topic
Fellow Sages,
I was at an interesting lecture last night. Phil Bernstein (formerly of Autodesk, now at Yale) was speaking (in Lawrence, Kansas, at the U of Kansas) about AI and design/AEC ... you may know that he authored the 2022 book, Machine Learning, about AI and the AEC field.
Phil has a very interesting posture about AI... Read more

