As the nation strives for carbon neutrality by 2050, the role of the building sector is both critical and often overlooked. As clients, manufacturers, designers, engineers, constructors and operators, we know that the most cost-effective carbon saving solutions are those in the built environment, and that those solutions can dramatically improve quality of life and address longstanding inequities. We also know that “environmental surfing” for daylight, fresh air, passive heating, and natural cooling is key for our sustained health and the health of the planet.

The Design for Freedom Initiative is raising awareness about the pervasiveness of forced and child labor in the construction supply chain. The materials that go into our buildings are heavily reliant on slave labor.  We’ll explore the risks and highlight ways you can shape your practice to address this pressing humanitarian issue as part of your social equity goals.  Learn about the tools and resources available to use in advocacy, internal operations, client conversations, and pilot projects.

What lessons can you learn from completed new construction passive and net zero affordable projects? How can we bring costs down with further experience and tools? Learn from a design build firm experienced in passive and net zero affordable projects.  Hear best practices, what works, and what hasn’t been working. Hear about typical bottlenecks in delivery of affordable high performance housing and how open-source tools can bring down cost, design and analysis barriers.  Learn what incremental costs have been seen on eight Passive House multifamily affordable projects in Massachusetts.

Throughout our experience in the K12 Practice Area, we have seen and measured how daylight can positively affect students’ performance and general wellbeing, but how can we keep good daylight levels under the pressure of a tight schedule and the aggressive performance goals of a Net Zero Energy project?

With so many ways to retrofit a building, how can owners identify the right scope of work? What about the right timing? Even the most well-intentioned building owner may leave carbon savings on the table, choose the wrong ECM or retrofit solution, or spend more than they should on a retrofit. Despite the urgency today to electrify and decarbonize as quickly as possible, we can and should stop, think, and plan to optimize retrofits and maximize savings, while investing in health, workforce, and equity.

Take a deep dive into what three projects in the Northeast have done to minimize embodied carbon. The example projects have each taken different approaches: one project focused on concrete in an ICF building, one focused on envelope choices and how to meet Passive House requirements while reducing embodied carbon, and one used Life Cycle Assessment to decide between renovation and new construction for existing school buildings.

Buildings and deforestation together produce 50% of global carbon emissions. This session will address how climate-smart forestry and sustainable agriculture can store carbon in ecological landscapes and generate wood and plant-based building materials that reduce embodied carbon in buildings. Key topics include a proposed strategy to double carbon sequestration by global forests, and an assessment of the validity of biogenic carbon claims with an expanded Life Cycle Analysis.

Integrative design and lean PM have the potential to mimic agile development; benefitting from fast iterations and innovation, but often don’t in practice. Owners are demanding increasingly high performance and firms won’t be competitive if they can’t pivot, transform and adopt the habits and disciplines of startup culture. What would firm management look like if we: 1) valued our staff as our prime assets, and 2) adopted a practice of continuous learning and improvement?

The Lloyd Center for the Environment is an environmental education building on a coastal nature preserve. This building is pursuing the most stringent environmental certification – LBC – and it is being constructed by students from Greater New Bedford Vocational Technical High School.

Multifamily Passive House new construction can be built today for low incremental cost and dramatic energy reduction. Join us for a review of eight affordable passive house projects, demonstrating that Passive House buildings in the Northeast are regularly achieving 60% to 80% lower energy use per square foot than code-built. Learn what has been hardest, what has been surprisingly easy, and what teams would do differently next time from two affordable Passive House projects built in Massachusetts: SquirrelWood in Cambridge and Harbor Village in Gloucester.