Fin MacDonald

The hardest part about preparing for Greenbuild each year is choosing the education sessions you will attend. There are so many exciting ones to choose from. This year I am choosing sessions that fit into one of three categories.

1) Support my career in green building operations
2) Support my role helping students and young professionals through the Canadian Emerging Green Builders Committee
3) Inspiring topics

Here is what I have chose to see in November:

Creating Green Career Pathways at Community Colleges
Dee Patel
Jessica Gutierrez
Thomas Darling

This session will inspire innovative ways to create green career pathways at community colleges. Presenters will spark an interactive discussion on how colleges can prepare students for green careers through both curricular and co-curricular opportunities. Participants will begin to outline action plans to bring these opportunities to their communities.

Master Speaker Candy Chang
Candy Chang

Candy Chang is an artist, designer, and urban planner who explores making cities more comfortable and contemplative places. By combining street art with urban planning, social activism, and philosophy, she has been recognized as a leader in developing new strategies for the design of our cities.

The Integrative Design Process and LEED 

Bill Reed
John Boecker

The Integrative Process is now a formal LEED Credit in v2012. Participants will learn the fundamental methods and benefits of utilizing the Integrative Process to achieve enhanced environmental and project performance, cost effectiveness, and value relative to conventional approaches in project design and real estate development.

Trials of Designing a Living Building in Cold Climates 

Matthew Conti
Matthew Plecity
Larry Jones

This session will compare the challenges of designing to meet the Living Building Challenge’s net-zero criteria in two different cold climates – Alaskan and Northeastern United States. Discussion will include project concepts/goals/expectations as well as the analyses used to determine which method of design was deemed best for each climate.

GAP: Experiential Learning By Crowdsourcing a LEED Project 

Keith Schneringer
Robert Thiele
Doug Kot

The Green Assistance Program (GAP) facilitates community education about sustainable building operations while simultaneously greening an actual building. The San Diego Green Building Council has developed this innovative approach to LEED project management, combining elements of crowdsourcing and experiential learning to assemble a community-benefit LEED EBOM project team.

EcoBalance Design – measuring success through life cycles 

Kathy Zarsky
Pliny Fisk III
Gail Vittori

We explore ecoBalance Design through a biomimicry lens to integrate balance as a pragmatic performance metric, and cycles as an overarching design discipline to sustain basic life support systems across life cycles (source/process/use/re-source), both informed by ecological frameworks. The session will engage participants to test-drive concepts and gamestorm examples.

Turf Wars: Institutionalizing Green Streets in San Francisco 

Rachel Kraai
Kris Opbroek
Adam Varat

This session will explore how San Francisco’s City agencies are working to implement the City’s vision for complete, green streets through greater capital project coordination, creation of project manager resources, and development of a triple-bottom line analysis to assess design options, by leading participants in a real-life design problem.

Permaculture: Principles & Practices of Regenerative Design 

Jillian Hovey

Permaculture is more than agriculture: it is a wholistic design methodology focused on developing human settlements that have the resilient properties of natural ecosystems. Tied into the essence of regenerative systems, permaculture design principles can play an important role in the green building communities, moving us towards a sustainable future.

The Science and Design of Biophilic Urbanism 

Bert Gregory
Timothy Beatley
Judith Heerwagon

How do we create biophilic cities? Ones that are in tune with ecological systems, foster place-based relationships, and embody the attributes of nature in their design. This research paper presentation and discussion of biophilic principles will explore how to integrate these concepts into the design of our neighborhoods and cities.

Adaptive & Dynamic Buildings – The Future of Architecture 

Steve Selkowitz
Markus Zawierta
Rick Morris

What if you could design a building that could think, move, react and adapt to real-time weather conditions? What if it provided more satisfied tenants, energy savings, and enhanced aesthetics. Learn more about emerging technologies and design principles that make dynamic facades the newest standard in green building and design.