LEED Project Showcase 2014: Your Sponsorship is Requested

The following is a letter sent to over 150 eligible LEED Project Teams to encourage their participation in the Showcase. If you know anyone who's worked on a LEED-certified building in the past year and a half, please refer them to me so we can bring them on board and so they can earn the attention and accolades they deserve.

Congratulations!

You are eligible for the 2014 Massachusetts LEED Project Showcase. You are the LEED Project Administrator listed for a project certified since Jan. 1, 2013. You did read that right, we want projects since 2013.

Thank you for your hard work to ensure your project attained certification and has benefited from the third-party verification process that USGBC created through LEED. We want your project to be highlighted at the LEED Project Showcase. If you are not central to the project, could you help us by referring us to the person or team who would be? This is a gathering for all parties involved in the creation of certified green buildings.

We are hosting the Showcase on Tuesday evening, September 30th, at Genzyme at 500 Kendall St in Cambridge MA.

More information about the event is here.

would like you to show off your project and sponsor a board, but there are also more significant sponsorship opportunities available.

The higher-level sponsorships include advertisements in the NEREJ, videos produced to describe the project for your future use, and opportunities to present at the event. This year we anticipate 250 people in attendance and excellent networking opportunities.

National Grid has already signed on as a Platinum Sponsor. You can see a video regarding last year's Showcase here. We hope you will participate in this celebration of all things LEED!

Thank you for your interest, and please do not hesitate to correspond so I can clarify the event and the sponsorship opportunities.

Grey Lee
Executive Director

Please forward this message to colleagues with whom you've worked on a LEED Project.

Passive House Conference Gathering in Portland, Maine, in September

by Dona Pfeffer, NAPHN

Portland, Maine, to Host Global and Local High Performance Building Experts

North American Passive House Network 2014 will gather Passive House leaders from across the continent and around the world to share new developments in the future of low carbon construction.

Portland Maine will host the North American Passive House Network 2014: Conference and Expo (NAPHN14) at the Holiday Inn By the Bay on September 22nd and 23rd. Leaders in this future proof building methodology will converge to share solutions on how to address resiliency, carbon reduction and climate change for the built environment. The Passive House Standard has fast gained momentum here in the North East and across North America with leading proponents participating in this event. Local NAPHN 
chapter, passivhausMaine, is thrilled to play host to this conference. 

Founder of the Passive House Institute, Dr. Wolfgang Feist will keynote NAPHN14 with a presentation on how the Passive House Standard is evolving to incorporate Plus Energy buildings with renewable energy sources. In a recent press release on the new rating system, Dr. Feist stated: “A building that produces more energy than it consumes is not only possible, it is often very sensible.” 

With the North East’s challenging climate and strong history of environmental building design, the region has fomented a hotbed of Passive House innovation. Pre-fabrication and the use of non-petroleum-based building materials have surfaced as strong themes here. Local Passive House proponents will be represented in both presentations and two post-event Passive House Projects Tours. Projects on the tours include schools, a co-housing development, multiple residential projects along with retrofits of existing 
homes.

Presentations have been selected from the broad spectrum of climate and building traditions across North America including NAPHN members from Colorado, New York, California, New Mexico, Washington, Oregon, Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Massachusetts. International presentations from Austria, Germany, Ireland, the UK, Belgium and China will exemplify the diversity and adaptability of this building methodology and make this the most globally diverse Passive 
House Conference ever hosted on US soil.

NAPHN14 closing plenary speaker Gernot Vallentin who's firm, ArchitekturWerkstatt Vallentin founded by he and partner Rena Vallentin, was awarded the prestigious Best Educational Passive House Building at the 18th International Passive House Conference in Aachen, Germany. The Pulmuone Seminary and Training facility, located in Goesan, South Korea, was designed and completed in 2013 (see below).

The Passive House Standard has come to represent a universal level of quality and performance, and it is this that will be showcased at NAPHN14 in Portland, Maine. 
NAPHN14: Conference & Expo website (with offered trainings, social events & tours).

The Pulmone Seminary and Training Facility in Goesan, South Korea

USGBC MA Chapter has a new home!

We have officially started operations at the new CIC Boston coworking facility - at 50 Milk Street in Boston. We are now on the 19th floor with many of our colleagues from Space with a Soul. The new location is between Post Office Square and Downtown Crossing. 

Looking northwest at the Charles River, across Boston Common, beyond the spire of the Park St. Church. How many green buildings can you see here?

The facility will be more convenient to more volunteers and visitors - located close to all T lines and a short walk from many of our sponsors' and members' offices. We are also now much closer to Boston City Hall and the State House, which will hopefully enable more advocacy work.

We are now officially part of the curated office space network of the CIC (formerly Cambridge Innovation Center) and the building is being renovated for another type of "Venture Cafe" networking venue. This is a big weekly gathering in Kendall Square, Cambridge, currently, and we hope to participate with the innovation community through CIC Boston.

If you have an upcoming meeting at "our offices" - they will now be at 50 Milk Street in comparable space. We will be updating the calendar entries but please know that we will have no further activities at our former location at 281 Summer Street.

Also at CIC Boston is the Impact Hub Boston, for social enterprises working to solve social problems through business-based models. I like to think LEED is one major way to use business to address social & environmental problems, thus meaning we are indeed a social enterprise.

I hope you will stop by for an upcoming meeting. Wait, did I hear someone say "Open House?!"

See you soon,
Grey

Chapter Volunteer Phoebe Beierle Nationally Recognized

Phoebe Beierle, long-time Chapter volunteer and former Board President, has been recognized in the magazine gb&d - a 50,000 subscriber portal for all things in the green building & design world.

Congratulations to Phoebe for being acknowledged as one of five people, nationally, who are going above-and-beyond for green schools. THANK YOU for your work to help make the Boston School Department embrace environmental responsibility in their operations and in how they bring subject matter to the students. You are a fabulous example of the dedication, the insight, and the hard work it takes to transform organizations and our built environment. Kudos to you!


The Chapter depends on people like Phoebe to help bring about the major changes we need in order to attain our mission. We believe in the power of design to improve lives and we have a vision that every person will be able to live, work, play and study in a green building within a generation. Also congrats to another Massachusetts green building proponent, Bruce Coldham, for his work on the Living Building at Smith College.