Design & Construction process

The AIA 2030 Commitment: Building Energy Literacy

The AIA 2030 Commitment has impacted not only how we design, but also how firms practice. It has changed the way firms work by integrating performance information into the design process. This session is relevant to both those interested in learning more about the Commitment as well as current signatories, and will cover new tools and developments, such as the online performance tracking tool, the Design Data Exchange.

Three Vermont High-Performance Homes, Three Approaches

This session offers a thought-provoking comparison of the construction and performance of three high-performance homes completed in Vermont in 2015-2016: all two story, one with a basement, one traditional double stud, one double stud with air barrier behind the inner stud, one exterior I-joist wall. The projects’ architect and construction leaders will discuss design, ease of construction, cost and performance of the different systems, and reasons to choose one over the other.

Permanently Passive: Building With AAC

Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) is a masonry product with a long history in much of the industrialized world, yet it has seen relatively limited use in the United States. The two presenters, Dan Levy and Steve Bluestone, both find AAC preferable to wood as a building material for many reasons, including resistance to fire, water, mold pests, and structural loads. And AAC does all of the above with a single material installed by a single trade.

State of the Art: High-Performance Natural Building for Cold Climates

The phrase “natural building” tends to evoke images of humble, rustic homes built out of mud and sticks by barefoot idealists in rural backwaters. The natural building movement has come of age, however, and today's professionally-executed natural buildings can match any green building in air-tightness, energy use intensity, durability, and aesthetics, all while achieving reduced levels of embodied carbon and enhanced social benefits.

Data-Driven Design and the Living Building Challenge

Super-insulated construction, simple yet efficient building systems, and modern solar generation have made net zero energy a realistic project goal for new construction even in cold climates. However, achieving this without the use of red-list materials is a serious balancing act. Moisture control, air tightness, and thermal isolation are critical; evolving envelope products must be tested.

Redundancy. Diversity. Connectivity: Optimizing Your Projects, Your Business, Your Work

An inspirational educational session illustrating the methodologies nature uses to optimize. Through storytelling, discussions with the audience, and use of prezi as background, we will learn about biomimicry, biophilia and bio-utilization and learn to employ the clues in those realms to processes supporting project planning, business management and workflow.

For Good Measure: Monitoring Envelopes to Inform Masonry Building Renovation

Existing buildings have a unique story to tell, and we as designers and engineers must tune our design process to "hear" how our buildings actually perform. On-site monitoring of dynamic environmental conditions provides empirical evidence for building performance, which adds granularity to energy modeling practices and empowers the design team to effectively analyze unique envelope characteristics.

Is Net Zero Energy Net Zero Benefit?

Net Zero Energy (NZE), is generally thought of as the deployment of distributed renewable energy generation at the building/load location. It is offered as a key strategy in the effort to minimize and mitigate global climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions. But is this strategy and definition of NZE the best strategy to accomplish these goals for every building? Are there situations when NZE is not an appropriate design objective? What is the best strategy for minimizing global emissions? Should we create a new term instead of NZE? Our panel of energy professionals will present several perspectives on whether or not it makes sense to pursue NZE; or is there a better strategy for how to address net zero emissions.

Living Building Challenge: Historic Building, Modern Lessons

The Living Building Challenge (LBC) can be applied to any building project, including historic renovation and new construction. Charley Stevenson and John Rahill will compare and contrast the LBC renovation of an 18th century plank building to the design and construction of several new LBC buildings.  By examining the three most challenging petals (water, energy and materials) they will illuminate the benefits of and the obstacles to LBC compliance.

Foam-Free - Fabulous, Feasible, and Fun!

Three experienced practitioners will demonstrate that we needn’t (shouldn’t?) be captive to foam in the high performance building industry by showing practical solutions that eliminate foam in new and retrofit applications – above and below grade.  Using real projects and assemblies, the speakers will discuss an integrated design build process, review the implementation of details and sequencing and the verification and commissioning of alternative construction methods.  Without dwelling on the negative environmental impacts of foam insulations, alternative, safer insulation mater

Material Selections: A Life Cycle Perspective Viewed Through One Home

Sometimes the things we think are a poor environmental choice turn out to be not so bad. Sometimes they are worse. Ben Morelli, along with Bensonwood energy & sustainability experts – Rheanon DeMond and Danny Veerkamp - will discuss the results of an LCA of a single family home; from material source through building lifespan. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one of many emerging tools available to building designers and construction firms to measure and guide reduction of their structures’ environmental impact. The presenters feel it is essential to look at a broad variety of impact categories –not just climate and energy considerations - in order to assess the trade-offs that may be associated with the emerging paradigm of advanced, green buildings. The results of this analysis confirm the importance of systemic energy reduction strategies, while challenging some of our preconceived assumptions on the relative impacts of various materials.

Achieving Zero Net Energy Affordably Today: Mobile Home Replacement

A modular home factory in Wilder, VT has opened to build zero-net energy mobile home replacement units. While there have been other efforts to replace mobile homes outside Vermont, they have done so with newer manufactured housing units that suffer from poor indoor air quality, high energy costs, and durability issues. This session will provide an overview of the issues with manufactured and mobile homes including financing and depreciation, attributes of the zero-net energy replacement modular home, the design and build process, and the comprehensive whole-house monitoring system. Detailed monitored energy and environmental data will be shared from two years of occupancy. The session will also discuss design challenges/constraints associated with cost, prefabrication, and transportation of a Modular/mobile home. We will present a comparative look at cost and energy with other related housing initiatives, as well as show the cost to benefit analysis of what it would take to bring the project to the Passive House level.

Offsite Construction: the Future?

A panel of Architects and Manufacturers steeped in the offsite construction industry will discuss the future of offsite construction. Topics include the stigma of the industry itself in the US versus widespread successes overseas, challenges of the process within our current system, the truth behind perceived cost/speed/quality advantages, and the frank and current reality of it all.

Navigating Product Selection: How to Find the Greenest Materials in the Age of Full Disclosure

Are you drowning in the arcane alphabet soup of product labels? Frustrated with inflated environmental claims from manufacturers? Unsure of the health and safety risks associated with your favorite building materials? Help is on the way! Join the experts from BuildingGreen, who have been researching and writing about green building products for 25 years. In this hands-on half-day workshop, you will learn how to cut through the b.s. and select safer, greener products, and you’ll get an in-depth understanding of the trove of information you can find in product disclosure tools like environmental product declarations, health product declarations, and the newly required safety data sheets. Understand the full context, get down and dirty with the devil in the details, and learn which information you can safely ignore. You’ll also glimpse some of the newest, most innovative products that are paving the way for a greener future, and you will leave with powerful educational materials to share with clients and other team members. Bring your questions, share your insights, and get ready for an enlightening and entertaining morning!

Integrated Design for High Performance Schools

Schools provide complex puzzles for the architects and engineers who engage them. In this panel discussion, two high performance firms and their construction and engineering partners will discuss the challenges and rewards of decision-making in an educational environment, and the value of a fully integrated design process. At the Proctor Academy, the new dining hall’s energy target was Net Zero. The complex load profile – especially the all-electric kitchen and its extensive make-up air requirements, presented the design team with a hefty challenge. At the Friends School of Portland, architect and builder engaged with the school’s building committee to create a building to embrace the community’s values of Simplicity, Integrity and Stewardship, and managed to deliver Maine’s first Passive House school building.

Calculating the Life Cycle (Cradle to Grave) Impacts of Buildings

It is a tall order for humanity to become healers of the planet. In order to do so, people need to tap into new avenues of influence that are not yet sufficiently explored and identified. It is essential to lessen the environmental impacts of buildings in ways extending far beyond operational energy and carbon by considering a holistic view of material and energetic flows across a building’s full life cycle.At the same time we must consider how to give back to the planet and create a regenerative future. This workshop will demystify the important practice of life cycle assessment (LCA) and inspire with an overview of handprinting,which identifies how we not only do less harm, but change things for the better. Participants will gain the skills needed to calculate the life cycle impacts of buildingsacross their full lifecycle – material production, transport and construction, material replacement and maintenance; and finally material disposal or re-cycling, and to use the results during the design process to evaluate design options and identify low-impact solutions. In the afternoon, participants will learn about the current state of the science of LCA practice, how to interpret and compare LCA results, and the integration of LCA into certification schemes, such as LEED and the Living Building Challenge. Presenters will share case studies in which LCA informed design decisions on built projects and participants will generate a series of comparative LCAs using Tally, a Revit-integrated LCA tool. Participants are encouraged to bring examples of material, assembly, or whole-building LCAs and their thoughts and questions about this emerging practice.

Getting to Zero: Frameworks & Roadmap to help you achieve portfolio-wide performance improvements

The future of our planet and our profession depend on our ability to co-create collaboratively and achieve levels of synergy that transform our impact. Net Zero, the 2030 Challenge and LEED define performance targets. Yet, critical gaps remain between rising performance goals and the organizational capability to consistently achieve them. AIA 2030 data shows that 57% of gsf uses energy modeling, meaning 43% doesn’t. Most teams don’t know what the anticipated energy use is. Firms also report that LEED certified projects, which tend to have more commitment and higher levels of integration, have 24% lower pEUI than non-LEED projects, yet LEED still represents a small percentage of a firm’s portfolio. This session provides participants with frameworks and proven methodologies to transform their practice from “random acts of sustainability” to consistent capability based on cultural change, clearly articulated methodologies, truly integrative design and effective use of metrics to achieve continuous improvement.

Can You Afford an SPF Failure? A Comprehensive Look at Assuring a Quality Foam Installation

As a building professional you take on a high level of risk when you use spray foam in your projects. Spray foam is the one of the few building materials we routinely use that is manufactured on-site; yet it is almost always installed without adequate quality control or the means to verify proper processing; and the consequences of material failures and/or inadequate protection of the occupants and the site can be catastrophic. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can minimize the risks if you know what to require from installers and how to ensure that they use the proper safety protocols and quality control. This must-attend workshop will teach you everything you need to know and do to avoid problems with spray foam installations.

Huddle Together for Warmth: Multiple Solutions for Multifamily Passive House

We will show two mid-rise multi-family projects in the northeast that meet either the Passive House or PHIUS+ building energy standard. The Distillery’s 28-unit Phase 1 building in South Boston, MA and the Bayside Anchor 45-unit project in Portland, ME, both now under construction, will be used to discuss the design and construction principles that are employed to radically reduce energy consumption and construct beautiful, low energy, and healthy urban living spaces. Details, testing data and lessons learned will be shared with a special focus on large scale air barrier implementation, efficient ventilation systems, and cost savings and funding metrics.

Affordable Passive House Commercial Buildings - Secrets Revealed

High performance commercial buildings cost 10- 25% more to build than conventional buildings, right? Adam Cohen of Passiv Science has been designing and building high performance commercial buildings at costs comparable to typical new construction and achieving Passive House level results. This workshop will explain the basics of Passive House design principles specific to commercial buildings. It will then go into the details of how buildings like dental clinics and college dormitories can be built at market rate while achieving Passive House standards. Integrated Project Management will be discussed as will details, equipment, controls and areas for capturing money typically left on the table in conventional design-bid-build project delivery situations.

Building Blocks for Green Master Planning: A Hands-on Introduction to LEED ND

This engaging, hands-on workshop will give participants a “learning by doing” introduction to sustainable site planning principles and USGBC’s LEED for Neighborhood Development program. The workshop will begin with a short introduction. Then, using case studies developed from actual site designs, participants will complete a series of guided exercises in small teams to develop their own plans for these sites using wooden building blocks on top of the case study site plan. Teams will test development feasibility, do site design, and apply LEED ND credits to their plans. By comparing the workshop team designs and considering the actual plans, participants will explore the many ways that sustainable design principles can be applied to site planning. Teams will also gain experience with applying LEED ND prerequisites and credits to their site plans. This workshop is designed for participants of all skill levels—no prior design or planning experience needed

Combating Climate Change with Timber Construction

With its smaller carbon footprint, timber construction should be considered alongside steel and concrete to build both low and mid-rise projects. This session will introduce innovations in timber technology, and through case studies demonstrate the wide range of benefits including environmental benefits. With buildings in the U. S. accounting for 38% of all carbon emissions and with population growth on the rise, we must reconsider how we construct our buildings. Climate change can be combatted in two ways –by reducing carbon emissions and by removing carbon from the atmosphere – and timber is unique in that it is the only building material that can do both. Recent innovations in timber technology is paving the way for timber once again to become integral to the fabric of cities, at this pivotal moment in time.

Passiv for the Masses

Climate change has made mainstream adoption of high-performance buildings a priority, and the Passivhaus standard provides a means to assess and drive the performance of these buildings. With 16 certified Passivhaus buildings between them, industry leaders Adam Cohen, Alan Gibson and Mathew Omalia will discuss their experiences designing and constructing a wide spectrum of building types, styles and scales that meet the Passivhaus standard. Adam Cohen will discuss techniques used to design, manufacture and construct Passivhaus buildings that cost the same or less than comparable code buildings. Alan Gibson will talk about simplifying construction systems and assemblies, and lessons learned about structure, moisture, air sealing, and air quality. Matt Omalia will explore how to integrate Passivhaus parameters into the design process to create a new canon of architectural design. The presenters will use case studies including: single and multi-family homes, schools, university residence halls, and community buildings.
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