Once teeming with bountiful salmon and fertile plains, Seattle’s Duwamish River drew both Native peoples and settlers to its shores over centuries for trading, transport, and sustenance. Unfortunately, the very utility of the river was its undoing, as decades of dumping led to the river being declared a Superfund cleanup site. Much of Washington’s history…
The top 50 architecture, engineering, construction (AEC) firms, and other key professionals responsible for well over one trillion dollars of global annual construction have rallied around establishing building sector emissions targets to meet the Paris Agreement. The embodied carbon emissions of construction products represent a significant portion of emissions and unlike operational carbon emissions these…
We have dual climate and affordable housing emergencies bearing down on us as a community and a world. In order to be truly sustainable, our communities must make note of the equitable access to clean, green, affordable housing. Our communities in Redmond and Kirkland are 100% LEED Platinum certified, and yet close to three quarters…
Emissions arising from manufacturing building materials for North American homes add around 65 million metric tonnes of GHGs every year. And the drive to improve energy efficiency in homes may push these emissions even higher. Understanding the impacts of material carbon emissions (MCEs) is critical for all of us in the homebuilding industry. Fortunately, homebuilders…
The C Street Co-op packs a punch: Affordable Housing at 60% AMI? Check. Affordable homeownership? Check. Permanently affordable homeownership? Check. Net Zero Energy? Neighborhood walkability? And all this with about 10% of the subsidy required by typical affordable housing apartment buildings? Check, check, and check. Recently completed in Springfield, Oregon, the C Street Co-op has…
Climate change, wildfires, excessive heat and a life-threatening pandemic - life as we have known it, no longer exists. Many people from all walks of life and who live in existing housing can no longer escape to their 'castle'. What can be done to provide healthy housing with clean, cool and affordable indoor air to…
Well before the current housing crisis, creative developers and grassroots communities were busy advancing a broad movement. Largely inspired to create housing, also moved to establish a profound sense of place, this movement has become so broad and deep that no single person or group can say that know most of what is going on.…