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.

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.

In recent years both Boston and New York City have officially declared racism to be a public health crisis. In this moderated panel discussion, you'll hear from a group of diverse speakers that represent various aspects of the building industry. Through the lens of building science, consulting, outdoor spaces, healthy materials, policy, and medical backgrounds, we will explore and unpack how race, geography, and economics intersect in the area of healthy housing.

As buildings become part of the climate change solution, more building professionals and their customers want to know how they can reduce carbon emissions in home retrofits. The presenters conducted a research study to answer this question by assessing the net carbon impact of insulation and air sealing upgrades when accounting for both embodied carbon emissions of materials and operational carbon reductions associated with weatherization upgrades.

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.

Bowdoin College is currently constructing a pair of connected campus buildings, both with mass timber structures. Located in the Pine Tree State, the project is ironically using timber sourced overseas.

Windows and glazing play a disproportionate role in a building's performance compared to other parts of the assembly.  As we strive to meet our 2030 and 2050 climate goals the design strategies for both our new and existing buildings must be closely evaluated.

We will present the IAQ monitoring program at the Finch Cambridge passive house development, first year results, and lessons learned at Finch and in attempting an IAQ monitoring program at another site.  IAQ monitoring in all common spaces and some apartments includes CO2 and radon, and in all apartments and common spaces total VOCs, temperature and humidity.  We will share the first 18 months of IAQ data for Finch and findings relative to temperature, CO2, humidity, and total VOCs.

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.

Wood-insulated panels (WIPs) combine CLT with rigid exterior wood fiber insulation (WFI) to create a consistent, uniform panel with continuous exterior insulation. These panels can be used to fabricate shell systems, delivering a structural/thermal/moisture enclosure solution for use in new construction and retrofits, and the wood cut-outs from these panels go into the WFI "hopper" in a cradle-to-cradle cycle. This session will present the results from OPAL Build's pilot project, a 1000sf schoolhouse in Belfast, Maine.