News

Thanks to 13 major occupational carcinogens, 10,000 Canadians per year suffer from cancer, a recent report from the Occupational Cancer Research Centre claims. Many of these hazards are associated with buildings and the construction industry. The 13 (with the estimated number of cancer sufferers) are:

Despite the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, many cities and states across the country have been moving forward with ambitious climate commitments. Boston plans to be carbon neutral by 2050. In that same year, New York City has pledged to cut its emissions by 80%. Washington, D.C. hopes to slash its carbon in half by 2032.... Read more

In theory, district-scale energy systems are the future. But there’s a big problem: it is very difficult to model them—which in turn makes it difficult to design them. That’s now being rectified with the Urban Renewable Building and Neighborhood optimization (URBANopt), an EnergyPlus- and OpenStudio-based simulation platform being developed by... Read more

For the past 18 years, BuildingGreen has recognized green building products that significantly improve upon standard industry practices. This year we are focusing on the world’s greatest challenge: reducing the environmental impacts of greenhouse gases. The following products do so by conserving energy, reducing emissions, and managing carbon... Read more

A proposed rule from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would limit which scientific studies can be used to make regulatory decisions, according to an analysis by Lisa Friedman of The New York Times. The Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science Proposed Rule calls for full transparency of underlying datasets, including the... Read more

Protecting roads, railways, and other public infrastructure from rising seas is going to be expensive. A recent report from the Center for Climate Integrity and Resilient Analytics is the first to tally the costs—an estimated $400 billion over the next 20 years. “Protecting America from climate change will be the most all-encompassing... Read more

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has introduced “LEED Positive,” a vision for regenerative design driven by the LEED rating systems. Unveiled at Greenbuild 2019 in Atlanta, the new, long-term vision has several waypoints:

Whole-building life-cycle assessment (WBLCA)—a way of calculating the environmental impacts of buildings based on the materials used—is a growing area of interest for the building industry, thanks in part to rating systems like LEED and the Living Building Challenge. But there’s a trove of data it doesn’t account for.

Most current WBLCA... Read more

Sustainability has to be for everyone or it won’t get real traction, suggested former U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking at Greenbuild 2019 in Atlanta.

Connecting the two most daunting issues of our planet—climate change and economic inequality—Obama noted, “It’s hard to figure out how we solve sustainability and deal with climate... Read more

Since 1997, The American Institute of Architects’ Committee on the Environment (COTE) has been giving its Top Ten awards to the world’s most sustainable building projects. That’s more than 200 projects with information and insight on how teams met their environmental goals. And Varun Kohli, head of sustainability and analytics at... Read more

In a sign that the backlash against toxic stain and dirt repellents is growing, Home Depot has announced it will be phasing out carpets and rugs coated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The new ban, effective December 31, 2019, is part of a larger chemical strategy that began in 2017 and also includes limitations on triclosan,... Read more

Concrete is one of our most versatile building materials—and one of our worst carbon polluters. Manufacturing the main ingredient, ordinary Portland cement (OPC), accounts for approximately 5­%–8% of anthropogenic CO2. With carbon in our atmosphere reaching critical levels, we need to find cement alternatives, and fast. There are few... Read more

The durability of self-growing bricks. Augmented reality for electrical and plumbing installation. The cost-effectiveness of low-voltage lighting. These are some of the innovations currently being tested at Co|Lab, a new building project from HITT Contracting, designed by William McDonough+Partners.

“Our goal for Co|Lab is to be our... Read more

“All structural engineers shall understand, reduce, and ultimately eliminate embodied carbon in their projects by 2050.” Simply worded but dauntingly difficult to achieve, that is the Structural Engineers’ 2050 (SE 2050) Challenge.

Structural elements like concrete and steel are a massive source of so-called embodied carbon—the... Read more

It’s the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine.

–R.E.M.

It’s not just coming: it’s here. Climate change has crept up on us. Farms, entire ecosystems—even whole nations—are collapsing. Our food and fresh water supplies are gradually shrinking. More and more property and land are being destroyed. People are going to... Read more

Sakhi Arora contributed to this report with interviews from her Master’s thesis: “Understanding and Integrating Biophilia in Work Environments for Achieving a More Human-Centric Model: From Theory to Practice.”

Charles Garnier’s Paris Opera House.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.

The Ancestral Pueblo’s Mesa... Read more

Almost 95% of the construction materials used to create any given building come from only 400 to 600 raw materials and 75 to 100 composite building products, according to Grace Farms Foundation. Yet supply chains are so vast and convoluted that they can mask many instances of human exploitation: forced labor, human trafficking, and child labor... Read more

Life-cycle assessments and embodied carbon are gradually becoming a bigger focus in the architecture world. But even for project teams that carefully track carbon impacts, rarely does the accounting include the site’s landscape design. A new tool called Pathfinder helps teams fill that gap and create projects that sequester more carbon in the... Read more

Linoleum is regarded as one of the most sustainable options for resilient flooring, and for good reasons. It’s made from natural materials—typically a combination of linseed oil, pine rosin, wood dust, cork, limestone, and colorants attached to a jute backing. And linoleum is a versatile flooring that has been manufactured in some form for more... Read more

The United Nations recently called for people everywhere to make the transition to zero-carbon buildings. Now, a new report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) finds that making this transition is feasible from a regulatory standpoint in several countries that have historically put little emphasis on energy efficiency or renewable energy.... Read more