More than 100 experts and practitioners from across the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry converged in New York City last week for a full-day discussion on breathing new life into existing structures. Hosted by Simpson Gumpertz & Heger (SGH) on 19 September 2017, the third-annual Create + Construct symposium featured a series of conversations with engineers, architects, contractors, owners, industry representatives, and city officials on adaptive reuse and rehabilitation projects.
“There are valuable opportunities throughout New York City to reposition and reimagine existing buildings,” said Vince Cammalleri, SGH Senior Principal. “It was great to hear directly from our peers and colleagues in the field about their experiences with these types of projects and what they think these structures will look like in the future.”
Highlights from the event’s agenda include:
A keynote presentation by Annabelle Selldorf of Selldorf Architects on architecture and design trends affecting these projects
A panel discussion on the current and future state of this critical market sector moderated by Guy Geier, FXFOWLE Managing Partner and AIA New York President-Elect
Conversations on how project teams investigate existing structures, recognize and develop their potential value, address life safety concerns, and preserve and adapt historic structures and enclosures
Simpson Gumpertz & Heger (SGH), a USGBC MA Chapter Sponsor, designs, investigates, and rehabilitates constructed works in the United States, Canada, and in more than thirty additional countries.
The 2017 Greenbuild Legacy, Green building Tech Program had its first tradeshow demonstration of green building technologies Wednesday the 20th. 70 trade school students from Madison Park Vocational Technical High School attended this informative event.
Students were able to engaged with the vendors and experience a unique opportunity of how a trade show is run. Six vendors representing the HVAC, carpentry, plumbing, and facilities management industries set up a mini expo hall for the students to view demonstrations and learn about green building products.
The juniors and seniors were “very excited” to learn about career opportunities after high school. Students were particularly thrilled about the mentorship opportunity.
A raffle was held and four students received Dunkin Donuts gift cards as a thank you for their participation. After this event, nearly 30 students signed up for the first upcoming field trip to Cambridge's MLK School next week (a near net-zero school building).
Thank you to the companies that participated in the tradeshow: Conservation Solutions Corporation, CoolGreen Power, Water Energy Distributors, Tremco, Veritiv Corporation, and Stacks & Joules.
We got a lot of positive feedback on our blog post 5 sites you don't want to miss on Greenbuild Tours, and we know that highlighting only five sights doesn't do the outstanding roster of 80 tour sites justice. So we've decided to highlight five more cool sites you don't want to miss on Greenbuild Tours.
The Howard Ulfelder, MD, Healing Garden at the Mass. General Hospital Yawkey Cancer Center
There is a growing body of research that shows that environments that promote a connection to nature reduce patient healing times. The Howard Ulfelder, MD, Healing Garden at the Mass. General Hospital (MGH) Yawkey Cancer Center is a meditation space that provides solitude among lush scenery. The healing garden has served as inspiration for green roofs and healing garden development nationwide. This project demonstrates MGH’s leadership in championing high-performance healing environments.
Cambridge is a hub for life science innovation, but designing energy-efficient laboratory buildings comes with a distinct set of challenges, especially when you have limited space to work with. The Sidney Research Campus illustrates how to effectively renovate existing buildings for not only energy efficiency but also to create a cohesive campus.
Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife Field Headquarters
The Division of Fisheries and Wildlife Field Headquarters is Massachusetts’ first net-zero public office building, demonstrating that large-scale net-zero buildings can be created within a state budget. It also won the “Energy Efficiency” award at USGBC MA's 2016 Green Building Showcase. The headquarters overlooks a beautiful wildlife management area totaling 1,000 acres. Get out of the city for a few hours and see this magnificent building.
Boston Landing is slated to become Boston's health and wellness district, and it's anchored by the New Balance Headquarters, which achieved a LEED Platinum rating and was winner of “Building of the Year” at USGBC MA's 2016 Green Building Showcase.
Massachusetts' leadership in sustainability and the strength of our green building community can be traced back to our deep roots in the conservation movement. Walden Pond is considered by many to be the birthplace of the conservation movement due to its association with Henry David Thoreau. The spirit of the movement has carried forward into the design of the visitor center, a net-zero building designed to harmonize with its beautiful surroundings.
See the Walden Pond Visitor Center on tour TM03 – Net Positive Revolution sponsored by Auburndale Builders, ZeroEnergy Design and Thoughtforms.
Monday, November 6, 8am-4pm
This is just another taste of the tour offerings. All of the tours have interesting sites that demonstrate all of the different ways Massachusetts is leading in green building. For a full list of tours and to register visit greenbuildexpo.com
As the sun started to go down over One Financial Center in Boston on Thursday Sept 21st, over 90 passionate professionals came out for our Greenbuild Mixer with JLL. Drinks were shared over the beautiful skyline view overlooking South Station at our venue. Seeing our community come together is always inspiring for us at USGBC MA, but we were also impressed by the amount of new faces at the event, whether students from Boston’s many universities to new individuals with growing interest and professional level expertise in green building.
Welcoming the crowd was Jennifer Christakes, Regional Manager from JLL, who spoke about the excitement of Greenbuild approaching and the importance of sustainability in our state.
Kate Bubriski, Senior Associate at Arrowstreet, commented on the sense of community within the green building industry. She thanked our Local Partners and Regional Outreach organizations, who have all been supporting Greenbuild on a local level.
Our very own Celis Brisbin, Acting Executive Director of USGBC MA, talked about the importance of standing up and taking responsibility for the health of Boston as a city, as we remain in a flood zone.
We cannot wait for Greenbuild to come, and it was apparent from the energy of participants at our networking event that our community is also ready for the conference and expo.
Thank you to our friends at JLL to thank for this wonderful networking opportunity!
Union Point is a 1,500-acre re-development of a former naval air station south of Boston, which grew from collaboration between three towns, a visionary developer, local conservation commissions, and the state office of economic development.
Linnean guided decision-making around integrating sustainable water, wastewater, and energy infrastructure systems, and the potential to pursue a range of certifications for additional sustainability goals. Linnean helped the project team develop a common vision guided by sustainable and regenerative development parameters, and identified innovative technological strategies for urban infrastructure.
Diagram depicts preliminary monitoring plan for the new development.
By Julie Salvatoriello, Emerging Professional MA committee
The EPMA met on the third Monday of September for their monthly committee meeting. With Greenbuild just one more month away and the end of the year approaching fast, agenda items centered around networking opportunities, expo volunteer opportunities and holiday parties (and how the BMC rooftop garden tour at the Boston Medical Center had been sold out for weeks!).
The meet up landed mere days after hurricane Harvey hit the U.S. mainland. John Gravelin, Project Manager at Linnean Solutions, kicked off his presentation on “Resilient Design in Boston: Responding and Adapting to Climate Change” with an image of three new hurricanes. Katia, Irma, and Jose were all pictured together with the remnants of Harvey still visible in the satellite imaging. In his presentation, Gravelin described resilient design as preparing “buildings, cities and communities to respond to and adapt to the hazards of climate change.” The image of almost 4 hurricanes at once emphasized the real importance and necessity of intelligent resilient design.
One of the more poignant points Gravelin makes is how much of current resilient design applications that are found today are more focused on protecting buildings and infrastructure, and not, to his dismay, focused so much on the health and lives of people. Resilient design has a few uphill battles to climb, including the necessity for areas outside of flood zones to still have a resiliency plan as so many flood zones don’t take climate change into account or are based on models that just aren’t accurate enough. Even the focus on flood damage ignores that the type of disruption that causes the most deaths are heatwaves, which affects all infrastructure.
Gravelin emphasized the need for all communities to have resiliency plans and support services, and for those services to including supporting community gathering places and organizations. He emphasized that communities supporting each other have been found to be a perfect place to begin a resiliency strategy. It was a good reminder that, though we were brought to the meet up by green building, it’s people that we design and build for.
Join us next month for our October EPMA meeting on Monday, October 16th at 6pm for updates on our upcoming events, a feature presentation provided by Andrew Breiter-Wu and, of course, snacks!
