The AIA New Orleans 2030 Committee is running RISING21 this week, November 11th and 12th from 1:30-5:30pm ET. This is the second year of these sessions that aspire to advance awareness and knowledge around climate and access to affordable energy among practitioners from the AEC industry. We invite architects, MEP professionals, interior... Read more

My firm didn't have representation at the winter summit, but I've just read the report (thank you, RoseAnn!), and was really glad to see there was conversation around mass timber. I'd love to talk with anyone who was involved in that roundtable to get a deeper download about the discussion. We've been doing a lot of mass timber buildings and... Read more

I'm curious if anyone can share their strategy on indoor air quality for the return to office. Is this something that is prioritized at your firm from a wellbeing standpoint and with the current health crisis at hand? Lendlease is looking into options to safeguard our employees/occupants as we move back into the workplace and I'm researching... Read more

Congratulations on the site launch!  One problem, though... you appear to have overlooked the home page orientation video. Currently there's just a placeholder image that doesn't actually do anything. Did your team end up producing a BIT User video?

Welcome to the quiz portion of Mind the Gaps: Making Existing Buildings More Airtight!

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


Identify key performance problems related to leaky building enclosures.

Examine the benefits of making existing buildings more airtight, such as... Read more

Hello,

As with most people I feel some what helpless about what the next 4 years will bring. Heather Clark, Senior Director for Building Sector Climate Policy at The White House thinks that a big bill will be presented in the new year and one of the small items in there will be the axing of the Inflation Reduction Act. What she made... Read more

Hi folks,

We've arranged a room where we can gather for an hour and check in during the Thursday afternoon reception time at Living Future. If you'll be there, come join us!

Thursday, May 2 at 5:30, Skykomish Room (#604, 6th floor)

The group will be mostly Sustainable Design Leaders, as that's by far our largest group, but... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Saying Goodbye to the Office—and Hello to Housing!

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


Hi! Just saw this White House press release stating that federal suppliers will need to report on scope 1 & 2, and relevant scope 3 emissions and climate-related financial risks as well as set science-based emission reduction targets. The cutoff for disclosure requirements is $50m in federal contracts. Curious whether this affects any... Read more

Hi SD Leaders: I'm hoping that you guys can be a great resource for a family member who teaches at Carnegie Mellon University, Professor Marvin Sirbu. Marvin teaches and does research in the Energy and Public Policy department and each year leads a class that takes on a challenging real-world problem to arrive at innovative solutions. This time... 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

A new article addressing whether PFAS finishes on upholstery fabric actually work (Spoiler alert - they don't) has been published and can be found here:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/24723444231159856

This is authored by the fine folks at Green Science Policy, Arlene Blum's group that is the source of the Six Classes of... Read more

Hi folks,

BSR/ASHRAE/ICC Standard 240P, Quantification of Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Buildings, is out for Public Review until March 18. It covers what construction activities have to be tracked and reported and provides placeholder values to use during design. If you have input or suggestions on what would be needed to make... 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

Can furniture be hazardous? You bet it can…

From flame retardants in foam cushions to unnecessary stain and dirt repellents on upholstery materials, everyday... Read more

Hello Sustainable MEP Leaders!

I have an exciting announcement today, fall Peer Network events are now open for registration! You can see all the event details and register here!

Based on feedback we received from past events and the most recent surveys, we decided against doing one long week of events for this fall and instead... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Rethinking the All-Glass Building.

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


1. Describe eight reasons all-glass buildings are so popular in architecture today.
2. List the four elements Arup examined in their modeling of the effect of... Read more