September news roundup

Time for a news roundup -- recent links from around the web. Have something you want shared with SEAW? Send it our way.

Wood

Lessons learned on recent mass timber buildings around the world

http://www.rethinkwood.com/tall-wood-survey

Hans-Erik wrote an article on tall wood buildings in Arcade magazine (note: article is embargoed for non-subscribers until November 11)

http://arcadenw.org/issues/empathy-fire-and-spades

FPInnovations is selling a handbook on Tall Wood buildings for Canada

https://fpinnovations.ca/ResearchProgram/advanced-building-systems/Pages/promo-tall-wood-buildings.aspx#.VBmdPBYZ7CU

The website for the ambitious USA Tall Wood Building competition is now active. The goal is to realize at least an 8 or 10 story commercially viable timber high rise in the USA. http://tallwoodbuildingcompetition.org/

Reuse and Preservation

Architectural Record discusses buildings that are not flexible or functional enough to last long.

http://archrecord.construction.com/features/critique/2014/1409-Obdurate-By-Design.asp                                     

Preservation Green Lab (a project of The National Trust for Historic Preservation) finds that a mix of older and smaller buildings hold more economic and social vitality than new construction.

http://www.preservationnation.org/information-center/sustainable-communities/green-lab/oldersmallerbetter/

Preservation Green Lab begins a research series on building demolition and reuse with an article that uses Los Angeles as a case study for issues surrounding building reuse.

http://www.preservationnation.org/information-center/sustainable-communities/green-lab/partnership-building-reuse/

Energy

AIA is giving a series of classes on net zero building design

http://www.aiaseattle.org/GettingToZero

Building codes could harmonize seamlessly with LEED certification as USGBC, ASHRAE, and ICC join forces
http://www.usgbc.org/articles/standard-1891-igcc-leed-phillips-head-hammer

http://www2.buildinggreen.com/article/one-standard-rule-them-all-leed-igcc-1891-be-parts-single-system

Resilience

A resilient city conference was held in San Francisco this September and discussed the Rebuild by Design competition sponsored by the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force

http://resilientcity.uli.org/           http://www.rebuildbydesign.org/

Oakland hires its first “Chief Resilience Officer”

http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/oakland-hires-its-first-chief-resilience-officer

The Cost of Retrofitting Multifamily for Resilience (to floods)

http://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/resilience-efforts-hurt-affordability-multifamily/

Kiewit General Manson issues their design-build team’s first annual report on the strategies they used to incorporate sustainability into the SR 520 design.

SR 520 Floating Bridge and Landings Project Annual Sustainability Data Report

 

ASCE International Conference on Sustainable Infrastructure 2014

For those of you who do engineering for infrastructure, the International Conference on Sustainable Infrastructure is in Long Beach, California, November 6-8, 2014. It is hosted by ASCE. www.asce.org/icsi2014
This is the first international conference of its kind. The call for papers has closed.

Buzzwords from the program include: climate change, extreme events, risk, resiliency, adaptation, envision rating system. More from the program

This conference is not about how to be sustainable. If it were, we would tell you not to
waste your time. Instead, and more appropriately, this conference is about how to deal
with the consequences of non-sustainability, that is, how to plan, design and construct
infrastructure for a new and increasingly harsh operating environment.
Today, engineers, academicians and other practitioners are facing difficult and
unprecedented challenges in addressing a new reality for infrastructure design.
Decade after decade of non-sustainable economic development is changing the
environmental conditions under which infrastructure is supposed to operate. It is also
changing the cost and availability of critical resources such as fresh water and energy.
How we as engineers and scientists deal effectively with these changes is the most
important challenge of the 21st century.
This international conference is the first of its kind. We have brought together people
from across the world; people who are building the knowledge base and developing
the requisite policies and practices to handle the challenge of a changing operating
environment. We designed the conference for practitioners, enabling them to engage
with others, exchange ideas, and see the full spectrum of activities in infrastructure
design for this new reality.

You can also meet members of the Sustainability Committee of the Coasts, Oceans, Ports and Rivers Institute (COPRI) of ASCE. Contact Angie Lander at ASCE for more information on the committee.

If you are a member of the SEAW Sustainability Committee and are interested in attending and sharing what you've learned, we want to hear from you.  We can help defer the cost of attending.