Letter from the Chair

Letter from the Chair
The challenges are many. Where do the global and the local meet for you? Hear from James Binkley, FAIA, the 2006 chair of the AIA Committee on the Environment Advisory Group about what COTE is up to, challenges ahead, what’s on his mind, and some links he recommends. > Read the full article

Features

On Reducing Fossil Fuel Use in Buildings by Half
By Thomas Fisher, Assoc. AIA
Fifty percent reduction in energy use in buildings is a wonderful goal, but the technical problem of using too much fossil fuel in buildings is a symptom of a much deeper root cause, which involves our seeing ourselves as separate from, dominant over, and controlling of the natural world. > Read the full article

Guest Column: AIAS
By Andrew Caruso, LEED AP
In the first of our guest columns from the American Institute of Architecture Students, Andrew Caruso, a student at Carnegie Mellon University suggests that architecture is experiencing a fundamental paradigm shift. Achieving a synergy between academia and practice has never been more critical in redefining the design ethos. > Read the full article

Guest Column: SBSE: Magnetic Variation, or What is True North?
By Truett James
In a guest column from the Society of Building Science Educators, we borrow a page from the SBSE newsletter. Truett, a lecturer at the University of Texas-Arlington, discusses true north. > Read the full article

Walking the Talk: Green at Work
By Meredith Elbaum, AIA, LEED AP
Here’s a look at how one firm, Sasaki Associates, has gone about greening itself—inside and out. Architect Meredith Elbaum discusses some of the firm’s strategies and lessons learned. > Read the full article


Walking the Talk: Green at Home
By Marilyn Farmer, AIA
Here’s a look at how one AIA member renovated her family’s home in San Luis Obispo, Calif., with sustainability in mind, and a list of resources for greening your own. > Read the full article

Spotlight: The Natural Talent Competition
The USGBC’s Emerging Green Builders group includes emerging designers and others in a wide range of related disciplines. Check out the scoop on their Natural Talent Competition—and spread the word to young professionals you know. > Read the full article

The DOE’s High Performance Buildings Database
Many Top Ten winners wind up in the High Performance Buildings Database, an important resource filled with building information. Check out this great site for case studies and building data. > Read the full article

Resource Review: Greenguard
By Rand Ekman, AIA
Practitioner Rand Ekman considers the uses and value of Greenguard Environmental Institute, a resource that aims to track and document the emissions and makeup of products and materials.> Read the full article

Bridging the Physics of Buildings with the Physiology of Health Care
By Andrew Phelps, Michael Horman, Marcia Barr, Justin Brower, David Riley, Jorge Vanegas, and Annie Pearce
In October 2005, key members of the building industry, green design community, health care industry, academic institutions, and government agencies gathered in a targeted dialogue to consider the feasibility of forming a consortium to improve how health care facilities are planned, designed, constructed, and maintained. The roundtable documented the drivers and expectations of participants; instinctual, emotional, and intellectual reactions of participants to health care facilities greening, and the strengths, opportunities, and challenges posed by the task of greening health care facilities. This article is reprinted with permission from the Journal of Green Building (for submission and subscription details, click here ). > Read the full article

ENERGY STAR Change a Light, Change the World Campaign
Many of us want to do our part to save energy and help protect the environment, but often don’t know where to start. The ENERGY STAR Change a Light, Change the World Campaign is a national call-to-action to encourage every individual to help change the world, one light at a time. > Read the full article

The Biggest Landlord of All Reviews Green Rating Systems
The GSA has recently assessed a series of green rating systems and released an overview of its findings. For those who have been using some of these and wondering if certain projects might benefit from other rating systems, this is a valuable consideration. > Read the full article

Sustainability & Government Advocacy:
Congressional Report Affirms AIA Positions on Brownfields
The House Committee on Government Reform has released a report, Brownfields: What Will It Take To Turn Lost Opportunities Into America’s Gain?, that cites and supports AIA positions about ways to spur redevelopment at America’s brownfield sites. In testimony before the Congressional panel last spring, 2005 AIA President Douglas L Steidl, FAIA, said the AIA supports using federal tax credits for remediation expenditures at brownfields sites to provide an added incentive to induce private parties to undertake the cleanup and rebuilding of these sites. > Read the full article

Global Warming Forces U.S. Coastal Population to Move Inland
By Lester R. Brown
Looking back at Hurricane Katrina, and considering the data about the population shift that disaster caused, Lester Brown identifies the first wave of American “climate refugees”—some 250,000 of them. Katrina, he says, forced a million people from New Orleans and the small towns on the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts to move inland either within state or to neighboring states, such as Texas and Arkansas. Although nearly all planned to return, many have not. > Read the full article


Student Voices: When Recycling is Design for Survival
By Angie Ferrer
The human’s instinct for survival makes us creative, resourceful, smart, and maybe even naively hopeful. And sometimes that results in an act of architecture. A University of Virginia architecture student reconsiders the idea of trash, recycling, and just exactly who is a designer. > Read the full article


BOOK REVIEWS 
The books we review for this issue of COTEnotes are

 —Ecological Design and Building Schools
 —Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature
 —Green Building Materials
 —Plan B 2.0
 —Ecological Engineer: KEEN

> Read all book reviews

News

The Top Ten Green Projects 2007 Jury Is Selected
COTE is pleased to announce the jury for our 2007 Top Ten Green Projects awards program: Stefan Behnish of Behnisch Architekten; Susan Szenasy of Metropolis magazine; Alisdair MacGregor of Arup; David Brems, FAIA, of Gillies Stransky Brems Smith; Anne Schopf, AIA, of Mahlum Architects; and Traci Rose Rider, a graduate student at North Carolina State University. They will convene in March in Washington, DC, to consider the submissions. The Top Ten submission site will be available this fall and submissions are due in January. > Read the full article

Al Gore Speaks Out for the Planet … and Encourages Architects to Step Up
A series of findings come at the end of a summer with record-breaking temperatures and the hottest 12-month period ever measured in the United States, with persistent drought in vast areas of our country. Scientific American introduces the lead article in its special issue this month with the following sentence: “The debate on global warming is over. Many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several “tipping points” that could — within as little as 10 years — make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet’s habitability for human civilization. > Read the full speech

Miller Joins COTE Advisory Group and AIA/COTE Adjunct Advisory Group is Established
COTE announces that David Miller, FAIA, of Miller|Hull Partnership in Seattle, has joined the Advisory Group; we’re thrilled to have this leader in sustainable design on board. We are also very pleased to announce the formation of our new Adjunct Advisory Group, which includes Greg Mella, Lance Hosey, Tom Fisher, Catriona Campbell Winter, and Deborah Snoonian. COTE has been busy, and we are grateful to these new volunteers who are stepping up. > Read the full article

CONNECT with COTE Members and Friends on Thursday at Greenbuild
Will we see you in Denver? Save the date and time for the COTE Open Forum (on Thursday from 2 to 3 pm at the convention center, Room 405/406/407) and the AIA COTE and Denver Greenprint Mixer that evening.

What? AIA COTE and Denver Greenprint Mixer, with a welcome from Beth Conover, director of Greenprint Denver, Office of the Mayor
When? Thursday, November 16th from 5 pm to 7:30 pm
Where? Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret stretches beneath one of Denver’s most recognized icons: the historic Daniels and Fisher Tower at 16th and Arapahoe. The first “skyscraper” in Denver, the D&F Tower was built in 1910 and was modeled after Venice’s Campanile in the Piazza San Marco. The Daniels and Fisher Dry Goods Store was part of the Tower when it was first built, and occupied all of 16th Street between Arapahoe and Lawrence. In addition to serving the needs of the bustling downtown community, the store kindly accommodated the hundreds of visitors who wanted to stare in awe at the purple mountains from the Tower’s 21st Floor. The building is part of the national, state, and city historic registers.

Join us in Washington for the Ecobuild Conference
Go Beyond Green at the upcoming Ecobuild Federal event December 5-7, 2006, in Washington, DC. The Ecobuild conference is focused on Sustainable, Green, and High-Performance Solutions for the Built Environment. Held in cooperation with Sustainable Building Industry Council (SBIC) and Green Building Initiative (GBI), Ecobuild Federal includes educational sessions of special interest to COTE members from both the private sector and government. Don’t miss the COTE session highlighting the winning projects of the Top Ten 2006 awards. 

Sustainable Solutions: Top Ten Green Projects 2006
   Presented by: AIA Beyond Green, COTE
   Moderated by: Jeffrey Levine, AIA, LEED, AP, Resource Architect, AIA

Each year the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment (COTE) invites U.S. licensed architects to submit high-performance, sustainable designs for the annual Top Ten Green Projects competition. This panel presentation will focus on the 2006 Top Ten Green Projects. Discuss the evaluation criteria, including performance metrics and practices. Review the whole-building design approach, the Top Ten submission criteria, and the resources and tools available for sustainable design. Click here for more information. 


COTE Around the Country
Check out what COTE is up to in just a few of the 51 local/state chapters around the country: This issue’s sampler includes a COTE presence at a community event in Boston (with “celebrity” sightings!); a COTE regional conference in Houston; a COTE panel on LEED in New York, plus a line on a cool film on a famous green building; COTE and others weigh in on green building ordinances in Washington, DC. > Read the full article

Green Cities Around the Country
A look at some of the sustainability initiatives in communities around the country: This issue, we take a look at some green building and infrastructure guides in New York; hear about new green building policies in San Francisco; and see what’s happening in Atlanta. > Read the full article


Pete Smith and Click and Clack
at Alt Wheels Festival in Boston

WATER + DESIGN: AIA/EPA Post-Conference Report
In September, AIA and EPA hosted a national, multidisciplinary conference to develop criteria and principles for reducing the impacts of buildings and communities on water resources, and leading to a final publication. These principles are intended for use by architects, planners, engineers, public officials, and developers to promote the design of buildings and communities that preserve and protect water resources. Issues include: water use, reuse, conservation and harvesting, stormwater management, groundwater recharge, watershed design and protection, and natural drainage in site design.
> Read the full article

UPDATE: Sustainability Task Group Recommendations Get Board Approval
WEIGH IN: Defining Sustainable Design & the COTE Measures
The 2006 AIA Sustainability Task Group recommended a set of strategies and actions to the board in September, and it was enthusiastically accepted. Find out more about these recommendations and weigh in on the definition of sustainable design that COTE and the STG have drafted. We need your feedback: What’s missing here, and how can we craft simple language to communicate with a variety of audiences? Please weigh in. > Read the full article

Architects: Take the ENERGY STAR Challenge
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is encouraging architecture firms to participate in the ENERGY STAR® Challenge and receive recognition for protecting the environment. Achieve AIA’s fossil fuel reduction goal through superior energy-efficient building designs. > Read the full article

An Update on the 2030 Challenge
By Ed Mazria, AIA
A grassroots movement is taking hold, and formal endorsement by various organizations is occurring all over the country. Find out who’s on board and what’s coming up … including an Global Emergency Design Teach-In that’s being planned for early next year! > Read the full article

Resources

Environmental Building News Calendar 
EBN is published by BuildingGreen, an AIA partner.

Some recommended reading (all links used with permission):
—Check out this power chick in the Bronx: Grist chats with Majora Carter.
—Can industrial civilization really become sustainable? Should it? Grist talks with endgame author Derrick Jensen and architect William McDonough, FAIA.

2007 AIA/HUD Secretary's Awards
The AIA Housing and Custom Residential Knowledge Community, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, recognizes excellence in affordable housing architecture, neighborhood design, participatory design, and accessibility. Good design is a cornerstone of thriving homes and communities. Check out the Call for Entries for the 2007 AIA/HUD Secretary's Awards.

Livable Communities: Walking, Working, Water
AIA members joined forces with regional and city planners, urban foresters, ecologists, economists, demographers, developers, and elected officials to explore “livability and sustainability” across America at a conference held September 14–17, 2006, in Seattle.  “Walking, Working, Water” served as an analogy for the intersecting spheres of community—social, economic, and environmental.

LivingHomes earned the first Platinum rating—the highest possible—from the LEED^® for Homes pilot program for residential sustainable design.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guts funding for its national library network, limiting access to information. See reports about the move published in TheScientist and truthout.org.

Check out the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, an association of colleges and universities working works with campuses, businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies. The association offers resources to assist campus sustainability as well as an e-newsletter (AASHE Bulletin). Its current campus highlight is Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley.

Join the Conversatin 
Join the COTE Forum listserv, an open discussion about sustainable design issues that matter to architects and their allied professionals. Send an e-mail to lyris@lyris.aia.org and type “subscribe coteforum” in the subject line. You will receive an auto-reply asking you to respond to confirm; you must confirm to join. Your confirmation e-mail will have instructions on how to adjust preferences and more.