Embodied Carbon 101: Basic Literacy for Architects (1 LU)
This presentation will start with an introduction to Embodied Carbon: what it is, why it’s important, and for new buildings, why it may be more important in the first 10 years than energy performance. Then we’ll focus in on the practical and share how good decision-making on embodied carbon can fit into our work flow throughout a project’s life – from conception, interview, planning, design, and construction. We will close by sharing a variety of tools designed by architects that can help us reach our embodied carbon targets, including a carbon calculator tool that Larry Strain has been developing to help estimate the total carbon impacts of reusing and upgrading a building compared to building new.
Presented By:
Brian Feagans is an architect, designer, and strategic advisor with an intense curiosity about life. This has led him to explore how design engages with life at all scales: from a piece of furniture to a prototype classroom, a building, a campus, and starting a community school with a culturally-responsive curriculum designed to improve the quality of life for an underserved population. His aim is to create healthy, sustainable environments that support the life of his clients’ organizations and increase the value they can provide to their place. Brian is currently focused on removing carbon from the built environment as a sustainable design advisor for RATCLIFF and as an architect in India, where he has lived with his family since 2014.
Kit Ratcliff is the third generation principal of RATCLIFF and has guided the century-old, award winning, collaborative regional enterprise to its present stature as leaders in health care, academic, and civic architecture. He has pledged the firm’s resources toward sustainable practice in concert with AIA’s 2030 Challenge and ensures that sustainable concepts and technologies are incorporated into the firm’s work. Kit crusades for the environment by urging clients and colleagues to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions in their facility operations and strives to educate a global constituency through firm.
Larry Strain is a founding Principal at Siegel & Strain Architects. He has spoken on materials, sustainability and embodied carbon at conferences throughout the country. He serves on the AIA Materials Knowledge Working group and the boards of the Ecological Building Network and the Carbon Leadership Forum. Publications: ReSourceful Specifications – early guideline specification for green materials, White Paper – Time Value of Carbon; Rebuild – chapter in the New Carbon Architecture and the Total Carbon Study (co-author). For the last decade he has focused on reducing the total carbon footprint of buildings, and on building reuse.
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