The Architecture Program at Portland State University will be hosting an open house to the design community on the evening of February 8 at their new federally funded Green Building Research Lab.
The facility hopes to promote cutting edge sustainable design, research, and education by making this facility available for…

The annual Seattle AIA What Makes it Green awards came to Portland late last year. Two rotating exhibits, one at PSU’s Shattuck Hall and the other at the UO White Stag, highlight top sustainable building projects in the Pacific Northwest.
Seattle AIA’s Committee on the Environment started the award program several years…

I recently caught up with Mark Frankel, Technical Director of the New Buildings Institute (NBI), to discuss the use of prescriptive design criteria as a strategy to increase the energy performance of commercial buildings rather than using project specific energy modeling to do so. NBI’s Core Performance Guide is one of…

First, here are a couple tidbits that I didn’t include in previous posts:
1) News came in during the conference that on Tuesday (Nov. 10) the world’s leading green building organizations have reached a ground-breaking agreement to adopt a common global language for the measurement of the carbon footprint of…

Just back in from the parties, I mean networking. I spent some time at the AIA Committee on the Environment reception and may have accidentally got myself assigned to a sub committee dealing with Net Zero Carbon. Then there was the fundraising “Party with Purpose” for the Green Building Foundation, whose…

Continuing on from yesterday’s session on European experience.
We find that in Europe the time frame for building planning is longer, maybe even centuries. In the US we think in decades. Europe also has codes informed by their culture. Codes require every worker having access to views outside, not just…

Greetings from GreenBuild in a very warm Phoenix. It is truely an international crowd here. Yesterday was the World Green Building Congress with representatives from everywhere from United Arab Emirates to Germany, Australia, France, numerous Latin American countries and even the USA. I didn’t attend that event, but I’ve seen…

Now you can read the lectures and learn the lessons of the participants in this zero net energy design workshop series. Through a series of presentations and an interdisciplinary design charrette, participants in this zero net energy design workshop develop a roadmap to understanding the issues, barriers, and institutional needs…

At the recent AIA Portland Design Awards gala on October 17, a panel of nationally recognized jurors recognized the best built and un-built projects from a pool of over 70 projects submitted by Portland architects. Portlandarchitecture.com did a nice job of discussing the winners.  However, the blog did not cover a…

How do you approach the topic of building energy performance with your clients? It can be an elusive subject because it’s commonly addressed from two different perspectives: in relative terms, such as percent better than a building just built to code levels, or in absolute terms, as energy units (kWh…

BetterBricks is a regular sponsor of Cascadia’s Transformational Lecture Series (TLS) – an ongoing speaking circuit that invites some of the most accomplished figures in the world of green building to share their insights, wisdom and experience with those in the industry. In addition to funding the series, BetterBricks conducts interviews…

With the recent US Green Building Council announcement that performance data reporting is required for all new LEED 2009 certified buildings, I find myself wondering if a data collection center, by itself, will really do much to improve the performance of already occupied and operational LEED projects. Certainly, useful feedback will…

The use of natural light for interior illumination has been integral to architecture since before the time of the Romans, but the field continues to evolve. Daylighting design challenges and stimulates architects and designers as it brings together the worlds of aesthetics, function, and energy efficiency, at the interface between…

When gathering information for programming, architects should pursue additional detail of how and when a building will be used. Ask about potentially different thermal comfort requirements for various spaces and occupancies, and how lighting needs might be met with different ambient and task levels. Gain as much insight as possible…

Ten years ago, BetterBricks brought leading architecture firm  SRG Partnership together with the University of Oregon’s Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory to design a high performance building using a research based approach.  The team’s single-project collaboration has now evolved into a lasting partnership that’s transformed the firm’s design leaders and hit upon a…

Courtesy of our friends at the Boise Integrated Design Lab.  Enjoy!
After dozens of trades and sub-contractors have contributed to a building, there is no guarantee that the building envelope functions according to its original design; building envelope commissioning can help to co-ordinate this multitude of design influences. Commissioning is…

For energy-minded architects and designers, a building’s façade has consistently been a  critical and complex topic.  It has the potential to capture, filter and integrate natural ventilation, daylight, manage solar heat and provide visual and physical connections between indoor and outdoor environments.  One of the challenges is to create a…

Welcome to Rethink Energy and Design. As manager of the BetterBricks Commercial Design initiative at the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with some of the best minds in the world on sustainable high performance design, and many of those are right here in the Northwest. As a result, BetterBricks is constantly in the flow of information related to energy efficiency in buildings. We also produce a lot of our own. We’d like to share some of that. Rethink Energy and Design is here to provide building professionals a platform to connect, collaborate and otherwise participate in the dialogue around energy and our built environment.

The Integrated Design Lab directors who operate the  BetterBricks funded Integrated Design Lab Network are among the best and brightest in the high performance building community.  It’s no wonder then that two of these superstars made headlines with recent accolades and honors.
Charlie (G.Z.) Brown was recently recognized with a PLEA Award – an…

In certain circle in the design and engineering community, Guy Battle, of Battle McCarthy Consulting Engineers , is somewhat of a rock star.  His work specializes in the integrated design of low energy and environmentally responsive buildings.  A few of his most renowned projects include Jubilee campus at Nottingham University, Endesa…