Typically made from petrochemicals, carpet and its adhesives can offgas. It is also a challenge to recycle them, increasing the chances that it will be incinerated or disposed of in a landfill. Because carpet has a limited lifespan, its life-cycle performance is key.

BuildingGreen recommends modular carpet that demonstrates lower life-... Read more

Exterior shade or screening devices are generally much more effective at reducing solar heat gain than their interior counterparts.

BuildingGreen-Approved Shading

BuildingGreen approves exterior window and glazing attachments that reduce solar heat gain and glare or redirect daylight, providing important energy benefits while... Read more

Hello Green Gurus! We are diving deep into our carbon metrics this year and are finalizing some of our emissions factors for our Scope 1 and 2 emissions and in a few more months Scope 3. I'm hoping this brain trust has some recent knowledge to share on this topic. What we've found is there's a fairly big variance in what we've seen in published... Read more

Are you ready to share the story about your best projects?

AIA COTE Top Ten Awards is a great way to get recognition for your best work and the call for submissions for the 2024 cycle is now open!

The awards cycle has shifted, and the deadline for the 2024 awards is October 26.

So NOW is the time to pull together... Read more

How much will it cost to achieve LEED v4 certification?

“We’d love a green building, but can we afford it?”

“We’re required to be LEED Silver, but we’re not sure how to get there under the new rating system.”

“Sure, we’re interested in LEED, as long as it doesn’t cost extra.”

LEED v4 and cost uncertainty

With... Read more

Hi all,

Due to the eclipse, Nadav and I will be out on our usual call day, April 9th, and we anticipate others may as well. We will be moving the call to Tuesday April 16th at the usual time (2-3pm ET). For this meeting, we'll be holding a whiteboard session about MEP2040, the development of plans to achieve it, and tactics to getting... Read more

Opal Mao Mannella-Durante

We've gotten some requests recently, so it must be time to update our salary survey. For those didn't participate in the past, we last did one in 2015, and collected some really interesting data about compensation for SDLeaders.

Our first step in getting this started is to recruit a few volunteers who are interested enough in the data we... Read more

The Resilient Outcomes Working Group grew from a session at the 2020 Winter Summit in Gulf Shores AL, and we are still going strong.  We are currently focused on three primary objectives: 1) bringing awareness to resilient design through a presentation at the GreenBuild 2024 Resilience Summit (we'd love to see some peer network friends at our... Read more

I'm in search of anyone who's done a LEED ACP Pilot Credit. It's unclear to me whether using one of these pathways replaces the way the base prereq or credit would function in the rating system being used by a project seeking certification or if it's a strategy to achieve Innovation in Design credits only. The documentation I've been able to... Read more

Thank you BuildingGreen for yesterday's fun news and much needed chuckles.  I really appreciated the GOOP article the most! I mean, dare I say, a kegel powered elevator - absolutely brilliant!

If you have not seen the April Fool's edition, take a look at the talent and time that was put into these stories.

https://www.... Read more

Another Break-out by Firm Size.

Guiding Questions:

SDL Best Practices by Firm Size

What's working and what's not? How are others integrating successes?

What strategies are effective in each of these areas: ongoing education, research, knowledge sharing?

How can we structure our green team across... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Integrated Design Meets the Real World.

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


1. Define the integrated design process and describe what makes it different from the conventional design process.
2. Describe the charrette process and list... Read more

Hi All,

I want to share this report, released today, that I and some other folks on Green Gurus have been working on.  The report dispels the myth that Zero Energy Buildings cost more (specifically in Massachusetts) and it goes further, making the case that Zero Energy Buildings are actually great investments.  Take a look, tell us what... Read more

Hi folks,

Some of you have seen me do a 5-minute presentation on an initiative to divert urine from wastewater. That team is now developing a building-scale urine treatment technology with support from the National Science Foundation's Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) award. 

In order to learn more about the sustainable... Read more

Hello SCL peeps, 

Thank you to all the people who filled out our 2021 event survey. Your feedback did help us narrow down the options, but it was still inconclusive about whether there’s enough interest in doing an SCL-only Summit. 

To stay on schedule with our planning (and to make sure the event will pencil out financially), we... Read more