Prefabricated, or modular, buildings can provide environmental advantages over conventionally constructed buildings. They are built in factories where manufacturing and cost can be tightly controlled, so materials are kept out of the elements, there is less waste, and thermal properties and air sealing can be enhanced. There are also fewer... Read more

Hi all, 

I'm posting this on behalf of Wyck Knox of our office. He can be reached at knox@vmdo.com: 

"I’m on the editorial board of the Green Schools Catalyst Quarterly, the only peer reviewed journal dedicated to sustainable K-12 schools. (http://catalyst.greenschoolsnationalnetwork.org/gscatalyst)

One of my tasks in that... Read more

Hi Gurus!

This query just came from GSA via the Large Firm Roundtable. It seems that one way we can help is simply to route this to the best concrete and asphalt suppliers we know of, so they can respond.  

Can you pass on some information to the large firms sustainability roundtable? GSA, and the White House, just announced new... Read more

Jake Gehrung
 

Hello,

This is not my area of expertise but our contactor has suggested central heat pump hot water (CHPHW) is $1m more expensive than gas fired domestic hot water for a 150 unit multi-family residential building in Massachusetts. The Building Decarbonization Practice Guide is extremely helpful but, from their comments, it is all coming... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Sustainable Sites: Primers from Environmental Building News.

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


1) Describe how invasive plants can harm an ecosystem, and why native plants are generally less work and less expensive.
2) Explain the... Read more

As I prepare to search for summer interns, I'm wondering what colleges and universities have programs for sustainability in the built environment. Are there any that you all know of? I am trying to find alternatives to the traditional architecture programs that we track. Thanks

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 SD Leaders! 

I'm Nadav, president at BuildingGreen and facilitator of the Sustainability peer networks. I'm really excited to finally have this network for champions from smaller firms up and running! 

I do a lot of workshop facilitation, design process support, and consulting and training related to sustainable products. I... 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

Hi MEP Leaders,

We had a great conversation in our last monthly call about the function and purpose of this group, and what we can best do together. You can see detailed notes from that call here. And we'll soon be sending out a reminder about the October call (Tuesday, Oct 8, 2pm eastern).

One of the ideas from that conversation... 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

I am looking for anyone that specializes in this area, see the principles below.

http://universaldesign.ie/What-is-Universal-Design/

We have looked at HOK's Neurodiveristy document which is great. Are there other resources like this, or other designers/consultants you have worked with?

TIA

Kristen

Kristen... Read more

Hello SCLers, 

We have heard from many of you who are in the midst of budgeting for conferences and travel for 2024. Although we aren’t quite ready to open registration for our 2024 events, we hope providing some details will help you reserve funds to join us. 

Next year, we are planning two in-person events open to SCL:

... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Five Reasons to Be Optimistic About Solar Energy!

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


Describe three ways how PV decreases environmental impact while increasing sustainability and health measures for communities.

Discuss PV life-cycle... 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