Tuesday, December 4, 2012

GreenBuild 2012

Last week, Regina Souchek and I attended USGBC's annual GreenBuild conference in San Francisco. We joined roughly 30,000 attendees, choosing from several hundred seminar sessions and viewing over one thousand hands-on product displays.


This conference has grown and matured from the first GreenBuild I attended in Austin, back in 2002. Back then, it was difficult to find "green" products and even more difficult to confirm a manufacturer's green and sustainable claims. USGBC's primary mission has always been to incentivize market transformation by encouraging detailed benchmarking of building performance, including individual products and construction techniques. One decade later, it is difficult to find architects who do not claim to design sustainably, products that are not green, and contractors who are not building in a more resource conserving fashion.

Williams + Paddon is proud to be a leader for sustainably integrated building design, as notably evidenced by our SMUD Customer Service Center—designed a decade before the LEED® rating system was initiated, then received a LEED® for Existing Buildings Platinum certification a decade after it was first occupied. To date W+P has nearly two dozen LEED® certified and LEED® registered projects to our credit. And, to USGBC's credit, they keep raising the bar as the market catches up to previously reaching benchmarks. The over arching goal is to certify buildings based on five simple performance objectives: human experience, transportation, water, energy, and waste.

We came back fully energized after seeing, hearing, and connecting with all things green!

 

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