If you’re attending Greenbuild International Conference and Expo 2017 this year, you’ll have multiple chances to connect and learn with us. Andrea Love, our Director of Building Science, will be presenting on improving the design process of integrating sustainability strategies and Director of Creative Engagement Karen Robichaud will lead a discussion on social equity. The 2017 Greenbuild Expo and Conference will be at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center on November 6 – 11.
Social Justice and LEED: 10 Things You Can Do NOW
This session will discuss the metrics that measure social equity, and help you develop your own tools to create more socially just outcomes through your work. This session will review the research being done by members of the LEED Social Equity Pilot Credit Working Group to understand and catalog social justice metrics being used in the built environment and related disciplines. Following a short presentation, participants will engage in a flash-charrette to apply metrics to existing projects in small teams, and develop social equity decision-making processes to guide project work in the future. We will end the session with an all-group conversation to develop a comprehensive list of actions associated with the different metrics discussed. Attendees will leave the session with a framework of 10 things they can do in their firms, processes and projects to produce social equity outcomes.
Session details:
Wednesday, November 8
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Room 210B
Speaker details:
Karen Robichaud, Director of Creative Engagement, PAYETTE
Shawn Hesse, Architect & Sustainability Consultant, emersion DESIGN
Brad Guy, Associate Professor of Practice, The Catholic University of America
Design Process Hackathon
BuildingGreen recently surveyed 64 sustainability directors at major architecture firms. Even firms with a strong reputation for green projects face problems such as spotty performance modeling; research not integrated into design; lack of goal-setting prior to pen on paper; fixation on first costs at expense of health and environment; lack of buy-in on relevant goals; lack of institutional learning and knowledge-sharing; and effort expended out of proportion to profitability.
Design Process Hackathon will explore these tough problems, and ask, are they unsolvable, or are we merely looking in the wrong places? “Education” and “awareness” are often cited as the solutions to these problems, but how useful is awareness when your project team revers to the same old behavior?
This session breaks down the essential components of how to get people to do things, and finds some surprising answers.
Session details:
Thursday, November 9 | 8:00 AM – 10:00 AM
Room 210B
Speaker details:
Andrea Love, Director of Building Science, PAYETTE
Tristan Roberts, Chief Strategy Officer, BuildingGreen, Inc.
Jennifer Preston, Community and Design Engagement, The Laurentia Project
Conference details:
November 6 – 11
Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC)
415 Summer Street
Boston, MA 02210
If you are interested in attending, make sure to register before September 7th for early bird prices!
The 2025 OpenLAB Boston studio work will be exhibited at Virginia Tech Monday, March 2nd through Wednesday, March 4th.
Please join us for the following events on Monday, March 2nd:
11:00am - Lecture with Parke MacDowell
1:00pm Lobby talk with Kevin Sullivan
This year’s studio identifies seven sites along the frayed edges of Boston’s Greenway. The Greenway is a one-mile-long linear park running through the heart of the city, reconnecting downtown Boston with its waterfront. Many of the parcels along its edges remain undeveloped and present mute, blank facades to the public realm. Addressing and repairing these edges through acts of infilling, layering, grafting, framing, and placemaking is the core focus of the studio—SUTURE.