Articles

When deciding where to physically locate a project that is designed to achieve Living Building Challenge certification, the stakes are understandably high.

Whether you’ll be applying analytics for a new construction project or as part of a controls upgrade, you have to keep the end-game in mind at every stage of the design process.

The stone industry is one of the most recent in the building industry to adopt a certification program. Now, a third-party verified standard for natural dimension stone helps project teams clearly identify which stones are produced in an economically, environmentally and socially responsible manner.

Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) is a nonprofit dedicated to transforming global energy use to create a clean, prosperous, and secure low-carbon future. Therefore, when RMI needed a new office and convening center for 50 employees in the mountain community of Basalt, Colo., they seized the opportunity to practice what they preached with a state-of-the-art building that achieved an unprecedented level of integration, automation, and performance.

Performance contracts, where the project team is held to energy and water performance guarantees established during design, are beginning to see more widespread use. The challenge is to align each party’s interests with those of the building, from design through the performance verification period. Here are some helpful suggestions.

The Living Building at Georgia Tech will become a living-learning laboratory for hands-on educational and research opportunities that will be a model for the southeast region of the United States.

Keeping external noise from penetrating into what should be the quiet, peaceful sanctuary of the guest room might seem an impossible task.

As states and local jurisdictions move toward more efficient building codes, the manufacturers of construction materials have been developing and improving products to meet new standards.

A new public building provides a unique opportunity to reach out into the community. Cincinnati worked with residents to design its Police HQ.

Deep energy retrofits can be a gold mine for real estate investors. A project in Silicon Valley demonstrates how a net zero energy retrofit led to profit.