The Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI), in partnership with the University of Colorado Boulder, is pleased to announce the 9th Biennial Professional Conference for 2021.

The concept of living buildings has recently emerged as the new ideal for sustainable building design and construction. Defined as a building that generates all of its own energy with renewable, non-toxic resources, captures and treats all of its water, and operates efficiently with an uncompromising aesthetic, living buildings represent a new species of buildings that blends boundaries between the built environment and the natural world and necessitates creative, integrative engineering and architecture solutions to meet rigorous design challenges. 

This course will discuss considerations for the holistic design and construction of durable, long-lasting structures that are sustainable, safe and resilient. A building's primary goal is to protect the lives, lifestyles and livelihoods of its occupants. Precast concrete has numerous qualities that can help buildings perform efficiently and offer occupants and communities healthy, flexible and useful spaces that can be effectively utilized over many years. Attendees will have the chance to see and hear case studies of projects that used precast concrete for durability, resilience, and sustainability, and examine important qualities and attributes to consider when specifying the material.

Learning Objectives:

1. Define the concepts of resilience and sustainability with a focus on holistic design and long-term, lifecycle performance.
2. Analyze how material choices made impact the safety and wellbeing of occupants over the life of the building and future design concepts.
3. Explore opportunities where sustainability, resilience, durability and efficiency intersect.
4. Identify how precast, prestressed concrete can contribute to designs that are sustainable, efficient, durable and resilient enough to protect the lives, livelihoods and lifestyles of occupants and communities.
5. Examine case studies of sustainable, resilient and safe projects that effectively utilized precast concrete to achieve their goals.

We held a panel discussion in DC on The Role of #ESG in Enhancing Building Performance & Value earlier this month for the National Institute of Building Sciences #BI2023 event. It was so successful, we were asked to host a continuation via zoom to answer more questions.

You'll hear from Amy Carenza with ActivePure, Matthew Snyder with ESG Property Consultants and Sarah Feldmann, president of the ESG Network Association.

This event is free, but remember, we only have space for the first 100 people - Click to read the full description on what we'll cover and add additional questions you'd like us to cover into the comments!

Join AIA in this live course about decarbonizing the built environment through regenerative design and high-performance buildings, addressing the 40% of US energy consumed by buildings. Learn to retrofit existing structures, with 82% of US commercial buildings built before 1999. Dive into the latest research and case studies covering various building types and climates. Discover how existing buildings fit into urban resiliency plans. Hosted by the Building Performance Knowledge Community (BPKC), this course equips you to identify net-zero energy building types, master regenerative design for retrofits, explore sustainable design techniques through case studies, and contribute to urban resiliency.

The Getting to Zero Forum is the premier event dedicated to building decarbonization. With a growing number of climate emergencies across the United States and around the world, there is no more important time than now for the Getting to Zero Forum. The event brings together the world’s leading experts to share best practice approaches to reducing energy demand and decarbonization related to policy, program, and projects. It is the only event with a broad cross-section of stakeholders focused on ambitious building efficiency goals and is an ideal venue for organizing both the policy and building communities to achieve zero carbon ambitions.

Mass timber structural systems are gaining popularity in U.S. construction of multi-unit residential buildings and office buildings for a number of reasons. Mass timber is well suited for prefabrication and reduced construction schedules, has low embodied carbon, can be exposed aesthetically, and can be built taller than traditional light-framed wood construction.

Because modern uses for mass timber are relatively recent, practitioners are still learning about mass timber system selection, relevant design provisions for mass timber structures, and design decisions’ effects on final design performance. Many guides and tools for mass timber structural design exist; however, these resources offer limited guidance during the early design stage when key decisions are made. Further, the available resources do not typically link multiple design goals to each other to understand how early-stage design decisions affect multiple project goals.

Based on the parametric modeling of mass timber floor structures, this presentation discusses design guidance for early decision-making related to the following performance goals: embodied carbon, fire design, structural depth, floor mass, and acoustic insulation. The discussed guidance and related parametric model data will be included in a free design guide to be released at the end of the year as part of the AIA Upjohn Research Initiative.

session presentation