The Healthy Materials Summit Is This Wednesday! Register Now

By Alexander Landa


2016 has gone by a bit too fast. It feels like the Green Building Showcase and Greenbuild 2016 were just last week. Well, as this year starts to wrap up and we make plans for the holiday season, make your work week a little less pen-and-paper and join us for the Healthy Materials Summit this Wednesday.

To make things better, if you attend the morning session you can earn four AIA and GBCI credits towards maintaining credentials!

So much is going into this summit. We have awesome speakers, engaging workshops, and a fun networking session at night. Here's everything you need to know about the Healthy Materials Summit this Wednesday:

Video: Why healthy materials are important – Blake Jackson

Speakers:
Gregory Norris – ILFI
Doug Brown – BASF
Rebecca Callahan Klein – Global Health Exchange
Monica Nakielski – Partners Healthcare
Brent Ehrlich – Building Green
Barbra Batshalom – SPI (Silver Sponsor)
Denny Daragh – Forbo (Gold Sponsor) 

Components:
Supply And Demand Hackathons
Healthy Materials 101
Afternoon Add-On: Living Building Challenge Materials Petal Workshop

Thoughts of the Leaders:
Why you should care about healthy materials – By Steven Burke
Get excited about healthy materials – by Blake Jackson
Grey Lee wants to see you at HMS!

There are lots of cool people going to the Healthy Materials Summit next week. Aside from our sponsors (who can be found here) and our speakers above, we have attendees coming from a wide variety of organizations:

Forbo
Shaw
HDR
Tremco
Triumph Modular
SMMA
Bruner/Cott Architects
The Green Engineer, Inc.
The Elbaum Group
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
Satoria
Conservation Solutions
A. Jandris & Sons
Flow Tech, Inc.
Hueson
Ellenzweig
Tro-Design
Wilson Architects

We hope to see you Wednesday! Please register here to attend this unique event.

Attend the ABX Pre-Mixer: Living Building Challenge On November 14th

By Alexander Landa


We invite you to join Amanda Sturgeon and ILFI's Boston Collaborative for drinks and appetizers at our pre-ABX reception. Amanda will give a brief overview of the Living Building Challenge (LBC) and be available to answer questions. Amanda's overview is especially timely with the recent rollout of the new 3.1 Standard

In this exciting time of rapidly increasing innovation, the LBC continues to raise the bar and lead the way in regenerative design. This is your opportunity to hear directly from Amanda and network with other green professionals!


Amanda has been with the International Living Future Institute for over 5 years, initially overseeing the programs, then as Executive Director and now as CEO. She joined the Institute following a career as a licensed architect with fifteen years experience designing and managing some of the most sustainable buildings in the Pacific Northwest. Amanda was a founding board member of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council and a recent board member of AIA Seattle. Amanda was elected as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 2013 and a LEED Fellow later the same year in recognition for her extensive advocacy and volunteer service to the green building movement. She was named as one of the top ten most powerful women in sustainability in 2015 as a recipient of the Women in Sustainability Leadership Award.

Register for this Pre-Mixer here

Skanska Boston Headquarters
101 Seaport Blvd
Boston, MA, 02210

The Massachusetts USGBC Chapter is hosting multiple sessions at ABX! Please see here to find out what sessions we're involved in, and to register for any that interest you.

UMass Boston University Hall Tour 10/20 Recap

By Aminah McNulty


EPMA hosted a tour of UMass Boston's University Hall. We were joined by project architect Jason Pollutro of Wilson Architects, civil engineer PARE Corporations and sustainability consultants from The Green Engineer. A group of 21 sustainability professionals made the tour a lively, engaging and interactive discussion about the latest strategies and technologies showcased in this project. 

A highlighted feature of the project is the large copper clad wall wrapping around the main auditorium of the building connecting the interior and exterior of the building in one sweeping gesture. In addition, the seating upholstery of the building's seating highlights the succession of color found throughout the lifespan of copper. 


We toured the main atrium, music performance authority, black box theater, 500 and 200 seat classrooms and the penthouse floor of utilities. It was noted that all the building's utilities were designed for the top floor as part of a resiliency plan against flood events and sea level rise. 

A big thank you to EPMA's Lindsey Machamer for organizing this tour and sharing her expertise on the engineering of the project. 

Also thanks to UMass Boston for hosting us and to Pare Corporation for sponsoring the event.



SMMA Member Profile: Martine Dion of SMMA

By Caitlin Forbes


Martine Dion, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Martine’s commitment to sustainability began on a fifth grade “green” field trip when, in encountering a landfill, she realized that pollution directly impacted community health. Since then she has been invested in creating a cleaner world, both personally and professionally. As SMMA’s Director of Sustainable Design, Martine provides energy efficiency, sustainability, and LEED consulting services to clients. Martine has been in charge of the implementation and coordination of sustainable design practices for the firm for the past 17 years and has largely contributed to its consolidation and expansion across the firm’s A&E dis.

Much of Martine’s background in sustainable design aligns with the origins of the USGBC. When she moved to Boston she immediately connected with its sustainable network, many of whom were originally brought together by the BSA COTE Committee. This group of sustainable advocates eventually came together to form the USGBC MA Chapter. As a founding Director on the USGBC MA board, Martine helped establish the organization, creating its bylaws and expanding it to support an executive director and staff. She remains an active member of USGBC today.  Martine also currently serves as a Director on the NESEA Board. 

While her sustainable projects have varied over her twenty-four year design career, Martine sees her work at K-12 schools as career highlights, such as her work at Winchester High School. Martine believes that green schools are crucial tools for encouraging youth engagement in sustainability and energy conservation because they can uniquely supplement a sustainable curriculum. The school facility can be an active tool for learning – a photovoltaic system informs a science class even as it contributes to fossil fuel reduction; green vegetated roofs and school gardens often bring the classroom outside, connecting the students to nature and inspiring them to invest in protecting resources.

Looking forward, Martine envisions her design career continuing to support sustainability across five crucial areas: education, community health, materials transparency, zero-net energy, carbon neutral and performance based design

 

Did You Know That Green Buildings Promote Human Rights?

By Alexander Landa


According to an article by the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, it turns out that there's a solid connection between human rights and the built environment. Essentially, humans should be guaranteed at least a bare minimum of living in a quality environment; there's a case to be said that there would be legal ramifications should a person not be surrounded by buildings that meet certain health requirements.

This dilemma is emerging, though. These provisions are historically meant to say that a human should be safe in the natural environment, not the built environment. The USGBC and other organizations are working to amend this to include indoor requirements as well.

A major claim by the article is that humans have the rights to the environment, health, housing, water, and sanitation, and that this is all affected by the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) as well as the outdoors, natural environment.

There's a bright side, at least! The report also details that green buildings are combating this, as these designs are meant to address and fix many IEQ issues, considering anything from indoor air quality to lighting and acoustics. This means that LEED buildings are essentially built and designed with IEQ in mind.

Information was taken from Josh Gellers, PhD at GBIG/Journal of Human Rights and the Environment.

Healthy Materials Summit 2016 Afternoon Session: Living Building Challenge

By Alexander Landa


There's a lot going on with the Healthy Materials Summit next week. Between networking sessions, workshops, panels, speakers, and more, you'll have busy day for sure. From 1PM-5PM, Shawn Hesse and ILFI's Dr. Greg Norris will be speaking at the ILFI Living Product Challenge.

This event will feature an Understanding the Living Product Challenge presentation delivered by Dr. Norris, to be followed by a free Cocktail Reception courtesy of Mohawk Industries.

The production, use, and disposal of products – in buildings and beyond – is the major way that humanity is unwittingly fraying the web of life. The Living Product Challenge was launched by the International Living Future Institute in April 2015 to further pursue a materials economy that is non-toxic, transparent and socially equitable. Designers of Living Products must go further than typical manufacturers, using human creativity and ecological inspiration to design products that create positive handprints while shrinking negative footprints. These “handprints” measure the positive impacts that a product cause across its life cycle, such as harvesting more water and generating more energy than was required to make it. While a product's footprint can never be reduced to zero, the product can still be Net Positive if its handprint is bigger than its footprint. Getting to the goal of truly restorative products requires unprecedented levels of innovation and collaboration, across supply chains, industries, disciplines and lifecycles.

This session includes a brief overview of the Living Product Challenge and then will dive into Handprinting. It will explore what handprinting means for organizations today and look at positive real-life examples of successful handprinting methods. It will seek to inspire participants to join in the challenge, and to answer questions about how they can do so.

This is approved for 4 CEU's. (AIA, GBCI, LFA).

Learning Objectives:

  1. Understand what a handprint means and how it differs from a footprint.

  2. Understand the Living Product Challenge framework and how handprinting is a part of that system.

  3. Understand how product lifecycles can “give more than they take” and how to encourage positive impacts.

  4. Learn about the development and implementation of real-life organizational handprints.

The Healthy Materials Summit is a unique event that doesn't compare to anything else in the market. Please signup to become part of the premiere materials summit in the Northeastern US. Not only will you personally benefit from becoming an expert on healthy materials, but you will become a massive catalyst of change in the bigger picture. Future generations will be thankful that we're now focusing so much on our environment, and focusing on the literal building blocks of new designs will help to propel a safer tomorrow.

Earn Four Hours of AIA/LEED Credentials by Going to the Healthy Materials Summit Next Week!

By Alexander Landa


You know what's lame? Sitting at a computer watching a webinar that covers stuff you already know. You know what's fun? Hanging out at Google's Kendall Square HQ, learning about the increasingly important topic of healthy materials, and networking with other cool people. We can help! If you go to the Healthy Materials Summit morning session next Wednesday, October 26th in Cambridge, you can earn four hours towards maintaining your LEED and/or AIA credentials. That's right. If you're LEED certified you get four hours. If you're AIA certified you get four hours. If you're both, well, you guessed right – four towards each. That's all pretty awesome.

You can register here for the Healthy Materials Summit. By signing up for the morning session, you earn four credential hours. Sweet deal.

The Healthy Materials Summit will feature a half-day ‘un-conference’ event which invites leaders from the business, design, and institutional communities to get together to learn concepts, brainstorm strategies, and set a regional agenda for healthy materials. Our hope is this event will equip these diverse communities with the tools they need to move forward in a way which promotes healthy buildings and generates a demand for healthy materials regionally. Boston and New England are uniquely configured to lead the promotion of healthy buildings, as we are one of the largest cities in the US, we have the highest per capita percentage of designers in the US, our economy hinges on stakeholders who value and promote human health (hospitals, universities, corporations).We are one of the greenest cities in the world.

4 AIA Learning Objectives:

1) Understand the development within the industry towards healthy materials
2) Analyze the relationship between healthy materials and sustainability within high-performance design
3) Gain perspective on reporting mechanisms of HPDs and EPDs.
4) Be able to better understand the complexities of going redlist free.

Also for those who are LEED accredited, this is LEED/GBCI approved.

*You need to attend the entire four-hour morning session to get the full four hours towards maintaining certification.

Register here for the Healthy Materials Summit 2016

USGBC MA Sponsored ABX Session A25 – Integrative Design (LEEDv4 IP): Where The Rubber Meets The Road

By Alexander Landa


Coming up November 15th to 17th will be ABX 2016! As part of the Northeast's largest building industry conference and tradeshow, Architecture Boston Expo, the USGBC MA Chapter will be sponsoring multiple panels this year. This year, we're hosting multiple panels, so let's take a look at Tuesday's  second panel, A25: Integrative Design (LEEDv4 IP): Where The Rubber Meets The Road.

For firms pursuing the AIA 2030 Commitment, the Integrative Design Process (IP) can make or break success. How does a team measure its effectiveness? Does good collaboration yield better results? Is IP more than a kick-off charrette? Can IP be achieved in individual project teams if the overall firm culture and methodology isn't aligned with it? USGBC's LEED program now has a credit recognizing IP's importance, but will a LEED credit (again) cause hoop-jumping without providing more value? This workshop is a practical and applied look at how your firm can capture the value provided by institutionalizing IP. Successfully implementing IP requires a clear, shared understanding of what integration means in your firm culture, how individuals in different roles participate and alignment with consultants around your project delivery objectives.

This workshop shares road maps and strategies for embedding IP into daily project management practices. Participants will leave with actionable steps to take immediately. This session will be guided by Barbra Batshalom (Founder & CEO at Sustainable Performance Institute), who will also speak at the Healthy Materials Summit on 10/26.

A25: Integrative Design (LEEDv4 IP): Where the rubber meets the road
Tuesday, 11/15
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
BCEC Boston

Register here!

Recap of October 19th's LEED Exam Prep Course

By Alexander Landa


On October 19th, 2016, we held an exciting day-long prep course for a LEED accreditation exam. We had a busy day, a full room, a tasty breakfast, and a filling lunch. If you were one of the attendees, then we thank you! If you didn't get a chance to make it, then here's what you missed, and you can register for the next course on November 29th here.

The first half of the day saw Celis Brisbin going over the basics of LEED v4, covering what LEED is, the different titles you can obtain, what you can do with this accreditation, and more. If you're not familiar with LEED at all, then this is the workshop to learn everything from start to finish.

The afternoon session was lead by Matt Smith of The Green Engineer. He walked everyone through many of the specific topics that any LEED Associate needs to know, and what to expect on the exam. The end of the course saw both Celis and Matt going through practice questions; it was clear that the room paid attention and will surely pass!

If you haven't taken a LEED exam yet, then you should definitely attend our next prep course. There were college students and young professionals at this meeting, and they walked out much more confident, especially since they walked in with only ideas of what LEED is.

We hope to see you at the next course! You can also come learn more at the Healthy Materials Summit next week – please register here!



Grey Lee Is Excited For The Healthy Materials Summit Next Week!

By Grey Lee


I love the gathering at the Healthy Materials Summit. It is truly the cream of the crop in our practitioner community. These are the people making decisions and specifying products that will improve the health effects of the designs they are responsible for. The folks I meet at our Summit are truly concerned about the long-term effects of buildings on people. The organizing team of Blake, Steven, and Shawn are real stand-up gentlemen who have convened amazing speakers to help us dig in to the topic.

I always have great conversations and learn a ton. Especially now with the work we're doing related to the Living Product Challenge and the WELL standard, it's exciting to have such a critical mass here in the Boston area. Our community is leading the charge to improve the built environment!

What can we do to improve the effects of buildings on human health? Many employers are starting to explore this situation in order to attract and retain the best talent. Public health studies have identified the ways buildings and workplace design affect productivity and influence a brand. People don't want to be in a building that brings them down or makes them sick. People want to avoid repetitive stress injuries and the effects of long-term exposure to low-level toxins. We can make a difference.

Each year this Summit program to follow advances in the science of buildings and occupant health. Beyond ratings systems, we raise the conversation around wellness and the built environment. Is your organization tuning in to this? Do you have something to demonstrate?

I think you should come out for this one. Join us on 10/26 for a great program.

You can register here for the Healthy Materials Summit 2016.