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Material Choice given the Fierce Urgency, Limited Understanding, of Now
Jennifer Atlee, Research Director, BuildingGreen, Inc., Brattleboro, VT
Nadiv Malin, LEED AP, Vice President & Editorial Director, BuildingGreen, Inc., Brattleboro, VT
This session will invite participants to take a hard but expansive look at material and product selection in the context of the enormous global challenges we face, the gloriously innovative ideas that have been raised as solutions, and the messy reality of specifying products for buildings given the limitations of our time, tools, knowledge, and understanding.
We start the conversation with our aspirations – Can we envision living products, as elegant as living buildings, in the context of living cities? We’ll look at the plethora of innovative products and visionary ideas and take it a step further. What would an open-source inspirational product vision/ challenge/ system look like? How would it integrate or transcend existing platforms?
Then we’ll move into the reality of today – what tools, data, and approaches for product selection are in use now? How do you make the best use of them, in practice, today? Transformative ideas have their own flaws and challenges in practice. What are your strategies for pushing the bar despite these limitations?
Finally, we explore getting from here to there – what tools, processes, policies, or collaborations are in full swing, emerging, or desperately needed to bridge – or leap - to where we want to go? How can we raise the bar further and faster right now, in practice, with the tools we have? What are our individual roles, and how can each of us better support others to step into leadership roles? What follow-through is needed to scale up these efforts?
This session focuses on key questions that invite conversation about (1) our aspirational vision for materials and products, and for product information, (2) strategies for pushing the envelope given limitations in current practice (3) how to get there from here; transforming practice, policy, and products.
Presenter Bios
Jennifer Atlee
Jennifer Atlee is research director of BuildingGreen, LLC., where she provides technical and research support for Greenspec, Environmental Building News, and projects such as the ASID/USGBC ReGreen Guidelines. Her obsession with improving the assessment of sustainable product and process is expressed through updating product criteria for GreenSpec, speaking on materials issues, and supporting CSI’s GreenFormat. Jennifer has a dual MS from MIT in Technology Policy and Material Science & Engineering, and a BS in Environmental Science from Brown.
Nadiv Malin
Nadav Malin is vice president and editorial director of BuildingGreen, LLC and serves as editor of Environmental Building News, executive editor of McGraw-Hill Construction’s GreenSource magazine, and coeditor of the GreenSpec product directory. He is founding chair of the Materials and Resources Technical Advisory Group for the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Rating System, a LEED Faculty Member, and a LEED Accredited Professional. He served on the U.S. team for Green Building Challenge, oversees BuildingGreen’s management of the U.S. Department of Energy's High Performance Buildings Database project, and leads the content development team for Web and software resources at BuildingGreen.com.
