Materials Transparency: Choosing Better Products for Your High-Performing Building
High performance buildings products create sustainable buildings but often contain materials that also create adverse effects, such as natural resource depletion, pollution, and exposure to harmful chemicals. As a result, transparency is becoming a primary objective of ambitious teams who want both high efficiency and healthy buildings.
Embodied Energy and Carbon: Calculating the Life Cycle Impacts of Buildings
It is becoming increasingly apparent that the impacts of buildings extend far beyond operational energy and carbon. As the thermal standards of buildings improve, attention will shift toward wider life cycle impacts including material production, transport, construction waste, on-site activities, material replacement, maintenance and finally the end of life of the building. These life cycle stages have a considerable impact, yet they are often neglected.
Plenary, Part I - Beyond Energy: The Concealed Environmental Impact of Buildings and Residents
When it comes to environmental impacts of buildings, operational energy (and to some degree, carbon) attracts the most attention. This is likely because buildings currently account for one third of the world’s energy use, and this figure is projected to double by 2050 – presenting both a huge challenge and a great opportunity to improve the sustainability of the built environment.
Buildings in the Age of Electric Vehicles
In 2013, eight states signed a memorandum of understanding that commits them to work toward getting 3.3 million zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) on their roads by 2025. These states – six in the northeast – and others are implementing market transformation programs to increase adoption of ZEVs, many of which are plug-in electric vehicles.
Net Zero Water: Not a Dry Topic
Construction often negatively impacts the natural balance of water cycles. Even regions with historically abundant quantities of potable water are depleting aquifers, while record rainfall provides destructive amounts of storm water. The Living Building Challenge developed the “Net Zero Water” requirement as a response to the growing water crisis.
The Systems View: How the Energy Blockchain Will Unlock the Next Industrial Revolution
Since the emergence of Bitcoin in 2008, awareness and conversations are expanding concerning the internet-like transformation of our economic, business, and legal systems. With an entirely new data infrastructure model to manage our money, assets, and identity, we face a new beginning and ample opportunity.
WELL, LEEDv4, and the Quest for Material Health
This session offers a three-part consideration of healthy materials. Part 1 investigates why built environment professionals should and do care about this growing topic of concern, and explores the history of chemicals of concern, their prevalence within the built environment, and what we have done to date to combat their unintended consequences. Part 2 explores the overlap between LEEDv4, the Living Building Challenge, and the new WELL Building Standard, particularly in regard to indoor air quality and materials procurement.
New IAQ Metrics to Avoid Being Stupid, Sick, and Tired
Our poorly ventilated homes and buildings are making us stupid, sick, and tired—at a cost that is staggering. Improvement of today’s ventilation standards can increase human productivity with a value that is more than 100 times the associated cost of increased ventilation. Thus, a new home-design paradigm that places human health, well-being, and productivity is desperately needed. This session examines the impact of IAQ on our health and productivity, and defines a new set of IAQ metrics.
Materials Transparency: Choosing Better Products for Your High Performing Building
High performance buildings products improve energy efficiency to create more sustainable buildings. However, the materials used to make these products can also create adverse effects, such as depleting natural resources, causing pollution, and exposing us to harmful chemicals. In recognition of these realities, product ingredient transparency is becoming a primary objective of ambitious project teams who want both high efficiency (even net positive) and healthy buildings.
Building Local, Buying Local: Advantages and Challenges of Sourcing Materials from New England Forests
New England’s 33 million acres of forest present an opportunity to reduce the embodied energy of building materials through shorter shipping distances and have the added benefit of directly supporting the socio-economic sustainability of local communities. See the design advantages and challenges of sourcing local forest products via a case study of structures including the DCR Walden Pond Visitor Center, the Hitchcock Center, and the UMass Integrated Design Building.