Design with a Carbon Conscience: Estimating Embodied Carbon at the Planning Level

Transform your practice by taking responsibility for the carbon footprint of your work. This session reviews existing tools and frameworks, from planning scale to site and garden design, integrating metrics from both architecture and landscape design, including Sasaki's new Carbon Conscience: Embodied Carbon Planning Tool incorporating both architecture and landscape at the site planning level. Panelists will share their findings from translating primary research into accessible tools and best practices, with examples from planning, architecture and landscape projects.

Lighting the Way: Strategies for Achieving Life Cycle Goals

Sustainability in lighting is usually linked to energy use only, but it is time to face the real challenges of quantifying the impact of design decisions made throughout the product life cycle. While we may not have complete information on life cycle impacts, we cannot afford to wait until comprehensive information is available to inform our specification decisions. This presentation will provide a framework for weighing operational energy use, embodied carbon, and material impacts.

Today's Acceptable Ventilation is Unacceptable

Current ventilation standards are based on odor instead of health. One cannot smell healthy air. Ventilation standards disfavor air quality in smaller residences and multi-family dwellings while excessively ventilating larger homes. Ventilation impacts our health, cognition, sleep, and disease transmission. This session provides background on today's ventilation standards and recommendations for creating healthy indoor environments. The Covid Safe Space IAQ calculator for reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmission in buildings is introduced.

Leaving the Mesozoic Behind: From Fossil Fuels to the Future via Carbon-Neutral Buildings

New York State’s carbon-neutral policies and on-the-ground programs are the leading edge in the Northeast and provide a model for all communities. Come be informed and inspired by NYSERDA’s upcoming Carbon Neutral Buildings Roadmap. As part of Governor Cuomo’s Green New Deal for New York, NYSERDA has been spearheading the development of an overarching framework for decarbonizing New York’s buildings by 2050. This presentation will outline the policies and programmatic areas that will achieve radical reduction in the carbon emissions of buildings.

Low-Carbon Concrete & Steel Structures

The carbon emissions associated with the production of concrete and steel are significant contributors to the climate crisis, but these materials will remain over the next decade when much of the greatest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions must be made to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Structural engineers can directly influence the emissions related to these materials on their projects through design and procurement optimization and best-practices.

Piloting, Scaling & Committing to Healthier Materials

When it comes to toxic chemicals, there is an urgent need for market transformation. Occupants, tradespeople, and fence line communities are being contaminated by the chemical manufacturing industry, which raises concerns about environmental racism and injustice. We can support these communities by reducing and eliminating classes of chemicals from our buildings. 
 
This session presents four entities who have stepped up to the challenge: MIT, Colby College, Shepley Bulfinch, and Thornton Tomasetti.

Schools of Thought

At Bristol County Agricultural High School, the campus is the classroom. The site is an arboretum; buildings are structured with timber, encouraging conversations of carbon and land use. Composting toilets manage human waste using no potable water and promote conversations about soil health. Rainwater is harvested for irrigation and becomes part of an ongoing conversation about water use. These strategies prompt questions about resources and waste, energy, and water use and quality.

Project Management from Afar

Project management from a remote location is common to some and unfamiliar to others. For those previously unfamiliar, Covid-19 has accelerated the industry’s transformation towards remote management becoming the norm. For those with experience, there is always room for improvement to both avoid pitfalls and maximize the success of the project.
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