Championing the
Changemakers

Friends, I'm helping with the 2023 COTE Top Ten Award and would love some input from this group on 2 things: 

1) Now that the AIA Design Excellence awards use the Framework for Design Excellence as their entry criteria, what do you see as the next gen for the Top Ten? If you could change 1-3 things, what would they be? If you submitted... Read more

SDL folks,

I wanted to make sure that you all saw that the call for presentations is open for AIA Houston’s Gulf Coast Green conference.  GCG is the leading sustainable design conference in the region and has historically had some great participation from this group.  The theme this year is Sustainability + Technology.  Details here:... Read more

Hi, all. We missed you at the standing check in today. We have a couple of questions for the BG team:

1. What is the timing criteria you need for Best Practice content? We need to back into a deadline on submissions and believe your critical path timing will help define ours.

2. Can you elaborate on what LEED User/BG content may... Read more

Hi all, 

I just wanted to post a quick message to introduce myself to the group. My name is Jeff Geisinger, and I'm an architect with Utile in Boston. We're a 50-ish person firm with a pretty broad project base, including affordable multifamily housing, institutional buildings, commercial interiors, and urban planning/public realm work... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of The Urgency of Embodied Carbon and What You Can Do About It​​!

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


Define “embodied carbon” and explain why embodied carbon is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, which threaten health and safety... Read more

Hello Sustainable Community Design 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... Read more

As if you weren't worrying enough already, here's a little something that I ran across through monitoring activity on the American Society of Healthcare Engineers discussion boards:  https://www.id-hub.com/2018/10/17/hospital-plumbing-reservoir-resistance-interview-amy-mathers/, "Hospital Plumbing as a Reservoir for Resistance".  This is both a... Read more

I’m writing to see who would be interested in collaborating during the month of December on a position paper that would be given to the incoming Biden administration, outlining things that firms in our industries (i.e. architecture, engineering and construction) would be excited to see advanced as part of Biden’s Build-Back-Better (BBB) program... Read more

They say that Louisianans are often late to the party but enjoy catching up.  The state, which had been stuck on ASHRAE 90.1-2007 (commercial) and IECC 2009 (residential) and has just adopted legislation jumping to IECC 2021 / IRC 2021, and commits to automatic upgrades with each 3-year code cycle.  This means we join CA, OR, WA, MA, and VT--... Read more

This just in from Berkeley Earth. The definitive report on 2023 global temperatures. Lots of incredible graphs to peruse but the news is pretty incredible. Actual temperatures far surpassed predictions. "At the start of 2023, we foresaw only a 14% chance that 2023 would become a record warm year, and only a ~1% chance that 2023 would reach 1.5... Read more

If you use the mindfulMATERIALS library to easily access material transparency documentation (if not, check it out!), please take 5-10 mins of your time to fill out this quick survey and help guide the future of the library.

The mindfulMATRIALS Collaborative is an industry-led initiative, visit www.mindfulmaterials.com to learn more. ... Read more

consider supporting Varun Kohli for AIA Board At-Large seat

If you are a voting delegate for the AIA, please consider casting a vote for my friend and COTE colleague, Varun Kohli, FAIA; he's running for the At-Large seat on the AIA national Board of Directors.

Varun is a former COTE Leadership Group member and he understands... Read more

Fluid-applied roofing materials can be added to an existing roof to extend its life and provide reflective characteristics.

BuildingGreen-Approved Roofing

Products listed by BuildingGreen have VOC levels below 50 g/l and reflective surfaces to reduce heat gain.

Energy Star requires initial reflectance of 0.65 for low slopes... Read more

Does anyone up here do or have familiarity with anyone who regularly does NEPA EIS? If you need a definition for the acronym, please see here: https://www.epa.gov/nepa/national-environmental-policy-act-review-process#EIS. I've been asked if I know anything about it, to which the answer is no, but I'd like to get smarter about it and I'm hoping... Read more

All,

Some of my colleagues and I have been working to promote interest in mass timber construction for K-12 builidngs.  As part of that effort we redesigned a large high school using mass timber in lieu steel, and conducted a whole building life cycel assessment to measure the reduction in embodied carbon.  We also conducted a program-... Read more