LEED Showcase is Coming! Save the Date 9/18/14

Each year, the USGBC MA Chapter gathers our community to celebrate the achivements of LEED Project Teams and the certifications they've attained.

This year we will celebrate the over 200 projects that have gone for LEED in the past year and a half.

Here's a great little video of our program from last year.

If you have been involved with a project this past year, please get in touch so you can participate in the Showcase this September!

Thank you,
Grey

Tour with the EPMA: LEED Gold Boston Public Library, East Boston Branch

We had a great time getting together as Emerging Professionals last Thursday evening in East Boston. Thank you to our tour guide Christine Schonart, Branches Manager of the Boston Public Libraries, and the designer team from William Rawn Associates, Sindu Meier and Carla Ceruzzi (who is now at Sasaki) for organizing the tour. The Green Engineer, project consultant, had representatives on hand - Marie Nolan, Ryan Montoni and Matt Smity - to help interpret some of the technical aspects of the building. Thank you to all - esp. the large contingent of Chapter members who attended who are from East Boston - I felt like we were about to start another regional group all of the sudden.

Loving the undulating, light-enabling ceiling:

Looks like another emerging professional to me!

Matt, Marie, and Ryan found something amusing in the mechanical room:

Here's a nice article in the Boston Globe about the project. The place really has a lot going for it, beautifully designed, engineered for real savings and efficiency, and a cool view through the Bremen Street Park (and old rail right-of-way) of Downtown Boston:

Thank you again to EPMA and the project team for organizing this great tour. We had a great pub-crawl around Eastie afterwards, but that is another story entirely. Hello KO!

See you all at the next EPMA event on July 24th. 

Weekly Bulletin to 6/13/14

All eyes are on next Thursday:

We have three things going on at the same time. I know, not the best form, but it's really three partnering organizations who are working with us where each wound up needing to hold forth next Thursday. I hope you find one that you like and can benefit from.

Many of our upcoming events & programs were just announced in our June Event Email - take a look because we are all over the place!

6/19/14, Thursday, and actually all day on Wednesday 6/18/14, the Northeast Building & Facility Management Show & Conference will rally facility management professionals from across the region to the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. There are a lot of educational programs and some of our members will be presenting, including Matt Shortsleeve of RGS Energy and Brian Salazar of Entegra Development & Investment. See you there!

At 1pm, 6/19/14, USGBC MA and the BSA's Committee for the Advancement of Sustainability are hosting a Sustainability Public Policy Forum: Community Strategies for Sustainable Development at Atlantic Wharf in Boston. You will hear presentations from Jim Newman of Linnean Solutions, Ludmilla Pavlova from UMass Amherst Campus Planning, David Straus of A Better City, and others.

Later that evening, from 5:30-7:30, 6/19/14, we are hosting the Regenesis Group's Bill Reed (presenting with Jim Newman, actually) and an introductory presentation on The Regenerative Practitioner. Come join us to build out a group to focus on regenerative development and take our efforts toward sustainability to the next level. It will be a very good program.

We also have a trio of webinars next week:

        6/17/14 at 12:00pm in Amherst, LEED v4 BD+C, ID+C Materials & Resources

        6/18/14 at 4:30pm in Boston, LEED v4 BD+C 252 Indoor Air Quality

        6/19/14 at 6:00pm in Worcester, LEED v4 BD+C 252 Indoor Air Quality

Don't you just love this fabulous lighting piece?

But here is "what to watch" according to some experts:

Other experts would have you watch this (apparently over and over):

And yet still others would have you watch this:

The Transparency Tool from Perkins+Will

We hosted our latest Networking Night on Tuesday evening, June 10th, at the Boston offices of Perkins+Will on Franklin St at Post Office Square.

Thank you to the team at Perkins+Will for hosting us and especially to Juliette Bowker for presenting on their Transparency Tool. This is a tremendous resource for the many folks who are working to find materials and components of designs which will have better health effects on us all.

As we know, LEEDv4 offers points for reporting on materials through health product declarations and environmental product declarations. Many product vendors are racing to be relevant in this new marketplace where transparency into their processes and materials will become clearer.

Juliette led us through a great presentation about why we should care about environmental effects of materials in buildings, about how we can figure that out, and how we can then use that information to make better choices as designers and building creators so our communities are safer, healthier and stronger. She mentioned how she was really learning a lot about chemistry and health.

One stunning concept was "We are sharing this with everybody - there's no competitive advantage for us to hold onto this information" - so take a dive into the tool and learn more about materials and their impact on health!

Some of the staff at Perkins + Will were on hand to chime in about the tool and how they are using it to enhance the sustainability of their designs. Also, how it is helping their product vendors figure out how to be more relevant when selecting materials becomes more rigorous than just function, appearance and cost.

Juliette referenced the old "rubber duckie" and how examining that innocuous seeming toy could lead to an exploration of human health effects of common materials. And that we want to get to where the duckies really are cute and innocuous.

One of her quotes was from Dr. Claudia Miller, a renowned immunologist and a dean at the University of Texas School of Medicine: "Architects have a greater ability to improve public health than medical professionals" - due to the capacity of designers to remove health-threatening components from our buildings and thus reduce popular exposure.

Overall, it was really good to get the overview and to have an introduction to the transparency tool. Kudos to P+W for putting it out there - this will help our practice as an entire community. And we can all help by adding to it as well. It was good to meet so many people who are new to the Chapter, from out of town, from firms we don't often connect with, and of course also many of our old friends and colleagues (you know who you are).

Perkins+Will has this great infographic related to their transparency tool:

Thank you again  P+W, we'll see you soon! (Nice view of Post Office Square, too)