Ralph has been incredibly busy with all the interest in the greening of historic buildings. He recently made a second trip to DC to discuss a number of issues related to sustainability as it pertains to our historic buildings to legislators for the Historic Trust . Here are a smattering of the relevant coverage from this and his previous trip. More to come from Ralph soon….
Last week I attended the Gulf Cost Green Symposium in Houston. The theme this year, was creating sustainable communities and they brought together a great group of keynotes and presenters covering the breadth and depth of the subject and expanding the sustainability dialog way beyond buildings. The speakers explored new dimensions in the connection between new urbanism, sustainable community planning, global climate change, community health, social equity and disaster preparedness. There were also some presentations focused on the building rather than planning scale, that covered high performance site responsive design, advanced building controls, and Living Buildings.
Aligned with the conference theme, Terry Miller with GBS presented a series of case studies on LEED for Neighborhood Development pilot projects and the lessons learned from applying this new standard to development projects of different scales and locations. Focused on community scale sustainability initiatives, Amanda Tullos with GBS’s Houston office moderated a panel discussion on creating the infrastructure for building materials reuse.
There was no disagreement among the presenters that the typical American suburb is an unsustainable model that is in serious need of repair, and that this cannot happen one building at a time. Keynote Doug Farr challenged us by asserting that constructing even the highest performance building possible within this faulty model only prolongs the inevitable need to reinvent the very fabric of our communities. It left me thinking, within the context of the real estate bust and record home foreclosures, is there a silver lining, and opportunity to begin overhauling the suburbs surrounding our cities and making sustainable communities that benefit both human and environmental health.
Overall I was happy with the event and thought that it did a good job of bringing together some of the best minds in our industry.
-Alan
Green Building Services is a proud member of the Gerding/GBD team leading the Portland Sustainability Center of Excellence. The team was featured in a recent DJC article discussing the progress the team is making during this critical planning event and promoting this Friday’s public open house.
If you are really interested in following the developments please follow their blog for daily progress and insights into the charrette led by our own Alan Scott, Ralph DiNola and Terry Miller who will be sharing their experience here in the weeks to come.