The next destination: Passive design airports
Today, we can design airports that are climate resilient, durable, long-lasting, and healthy for occupants—we can design airports using Passive House standards.
HORIZONTV FEATURING BD+C: WATCH EPISODES ON DEMAND AT HORIZONTV
Today, we can design airports that are climate resilient, durable, long-lasting, and healthy for occupants—we can design airports using Passive House standards.
The Biden Administration recently released “Decarbonizing the U.S. Economy by 2050: A National Blueprint for the Buildings Sector,” a comprehensive plan to reduce greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from buildings by 65% by 2035 and 90% by 2050.
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has opened the first public comment period for the first draft of LEED v5. The new version of the LEED green building rating system will drive deep decarbonization, quality of life improvements, and ecological conservation and restoration, USGBC says.
Boston has placed significant aspects of its plan to protect the city from rising sea levels on the actions of private developers. Amid a post-Covid commercial development slump, though, efforts to build protective infrastructure have stalled.
For all its advantages, mass timber also has a less-heralded quality: its acoustic challenges. Exposed wood ceilings and floors have led to issues with excessive noise. Mass timber experts offer practical solutions to the top five acoustic issues in mass timber buildings.
Mastry Ventures and LENx, the venture arm of homebuilder Lennar, have co-invested in Vessel Technologies’ next-generation housing product.
HALL Arts Residences, 28-story luxury residential high-rise in the Dallas Arts District, recently became the first high-rise multifamily tower in Texas to receive WELL Gold Certification, a designation issued by the International WELL Building Institute. The HKS-designed condominium tower was designed with numerous wellness details.
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will invest $30 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to increase the sustainability of federal buildings by testing novel technologies. The vehicle for that effort, the Green Proving Ground (GPG) program, will invest in American-made technologies to help increase federal electric vehicle supply equipment, protect air quality, reduce climate pollution, and enhance building performance.
The embodied carbon (EC) intensity in core and shell industrial buildings in the U.S. averages 23.0 kilograms per sf, according to a recent analysis of 26 whole building life-cycle assessments. That means a 300,000-sf warehouse would emit 6,890 megatons of carbon over its lifespan, or the equivalent of the carbon emitted by 1,530 gas-powered cars driven for one year. Those sobering estimates come from a new benchmark study, “Embodied Carbon U.S. Industrial Real Estate.”
Cogeneration is more efficient than traditional power generation, reduces carbon emissions, has high returns on the initial investment, improves reliability, and offers a platform for additional renewable resources and energy storage for a facility. But what is cogeneration? And is it suitable for all facilities?
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently released guidelines for its Green and Resilient Retrofit Program (GRRP) that has $4.8 billion for funding green projects.
The Edes Building, a two-story art gallery and wine bar in the Silicon Valley community of Morgan Hill, will prominently feature mass timber. Cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glulam posts and beams were specified for aesthetics, biophilic properties, and a reduced carbon footprint compared to concrete and steel alternatives.
Solidifying a decarbonization plan via an “asset drawdown strategy” that carefully considers both capital and operating costs represents a game-changing opportunity for existing properties to compete with new projects.
As climate change is linked with biodiversity depletion, fostering biodiverse landscapes during construction can create benefits beyond the immediate surroundings of the project.