Saturday, October 5, 2024 @ Town Hall in Seattle
Presenters
Our presenters come from a variety of green building professions and are invited to share their stories of innovative advancement in all stages and styles of green building. Each presentation is just 10 minutes, and all speakers are coached, to provide a highly entertaining and informative evening. You don’t want to miss this!
Tim Hammer and Natalie Grimm
LEAN: Passive House Middle Housing in Downtown Seattle
Tim Hammer is an architect and principal at CAST architecture. Tim has worked on a spectrum of residential, multifamily, and mixed-use projects. As a principal at CAST Tim fosters a culture of thoughtful, collaborative design that draws on the collective strengths of the entire team to deliver design excellence. His award-winning projects have been featured in numerous regional and national publications.
Raised in Colorado, Natalie earned her Master of Architecture from Kansas State University College of APDesign. At Kansas State, she developed a passion for design that is well integrated into its context, serving as a platform for communities to foster growth. After completing her degree, Natalie joined the CAST team and earned her licensure in the state of Washington.
Max Stafford
UW Solar Decathlon: Home at Ease
Max Stafford is a junior undergraduate at the University of Washington majoring in Materials Science and Engineering with a focus on energy and sustainability. He leads the Solar Decathlon team, a multidisciplinary group of students focused on designing high performance buildings for disadvantaged communities. He has also started the initiative of revitalizing the University of Washington American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Chapter.
Martha Rose
Verona Street Dream Realized – After Twenty Years
Martha Rose enjoys the challenge of building high-performance homes and paying for those extras with simple design and finishes within the home. She considers voluntary simplicity an important aspect of how we must build and live our lives. After 51 years of immersion in the construction industry, she is now a consultant offering a wide variety of construction services from building design, materials, and equipment suggestions to low impact development strategies and implementation.
Dave Bennink
Building Up an Industry That Takes Down Buildings
Dave Bennink of the Building Deconstruction Institute has 30 years experience training groups across 44 States and 5 Provinces, helping start almost 100 new sustainable businesses. He focuses on growing the circular economy, zero waste/energy movements, embodied carbon, and sustainable building. Re-Use Consulting has completed over 5000 deconstruction/salvage projects, including the Kingdome, Space Needle, Hec-Ed Pavilion, and other iconic Northwest structures. To keep in practice, Bennink also runs a reuse store and deconstruction contracting firm, markets reclaimed wood, and salvages and sells mature landscaping from jobsites. Projects include structures like the Pentagon, sports stadiums, hospitals, homes and more.
Monica Guevara and Steve Gelb
Contractor Diversity is the Answer
Monica Guevara has 15 years of experience working with business owners, especially on finance and access to capital topics. Monica has created the curriculum utilized by city departments for WMBE contractors and led CDFI lending departments that focus on financing minority-owned businesses. Her interest in entrepreneurship is likely fueled by her early experience seeing entrepreneurship propel families forward and create generational wealth and opportunities. It is also an opportunity to share knowledge and give back to her community. She now oversees Contractor Development in the Pacific Northwest where she supports WMBE firms in growing their businesses through clean energy projects.
Steve Gelb, NW Regional Director at ECC, is passionate about putting under-served communities at the front of a transition to clean energy. He leads the Northwest ECC team with a focus on integrating its policy, clean energy program delivery and economic inclusion programs in order to create compounded benefits. Steve brings over 10 years of experience working at the intersection of the environment and equity through creating coalitions, launching programs, and supporting policy advocacy at the intersection of equity and the environment.
Carissa Iris
Biophilic Design: Transforming Spaces and Enhancing Lives
Carissa Iris is a sustainability consultant at Delta E Consulting with experience in LEED, WELL, Living Building Challenge, Fitwel, Embodied Carbon, ESG, and specializing in biophilic design. Starting her career in control system design, fabrication, and horticulture, she brings a holistic perspective on the built environment from concept to long-term maintenance. She is currently pursuing a master’s in landscape architecture at the University of Washington, fueling her passion for biophilic design, wellness, and resiliency. Outside of her day job, Carissa is an interdisciplinary artist dedicated to cultivating sustainable communities and environments through collaborative, human-centered, and inclusive design principles.
Brittany Porter
Northlake Commons: A Biophilic Mass Timber Workplace
Brittany is a Senior Associate at Weber Thompson and was the senior project architect for Northlake Commons, a mass timber, LEED Platinum targeting, biophilic workplace on the shores of Lake Union. Passionate about low-carbon architecture that promotes health and wellness for all, Brittany is a Certified Passive House Consultant and LEED Green Associate. She was the designer of Pax Futura, Seattle’s first passive house multifamily building, and the winner of the 2020 PHIUS Multifamily Award. She served on the Passive House Northwest Board of Directors through 2021 and currently sits on the Board of Directors for AIA Washington Council.
Matt Hutchins
HEAVY: A Partially-Buried CLT House in the Methow Valley
Matt Hutchins is a co-founder and principal at CAST architecture, a housing advocate, passive house designer, policy wonk, zoning hacker, an occasional professor, a former design-builder, and a first-time developer. He serves a Seattle Planning Commissioner and as the AIA Seattle President-Elect. He is focused on abundant housing, climate action through sustainable building and green zoning, and making cities great places for the people who live there.
Julie Blazek and Tom Balderston
Passive House Meets a Public Library
Julie Blazek is a Partner at HKP whose strategic and holistic approach to the design and construction process leads to context-driven, function-focused, uplifting architecture. Her design work has received numerous awards from the AIA Northwest Washington and, for the Twin Lakes Landing affordable housing project, national recognition from the National Association of Home Builders. Julie received her architectural degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Certificate in Design Firm Leadership and Management from the University of Washington. As a LEED Accredited Professional and a Certified Passive House Consultant (CPHC), she is determined to bring Passive House high-performance building technology and design to the mainstream.
With over 35 years as a green builder, designer, and consultant, Tom brings in depth knowledge and passion for low energy buildings. He is committed to finding practical and innovative ways to bring low energy homes to the mass market. As a professional resource to builders, and architects, Tom provides field support to project teams. After 12 years as a technical lead for Conservation Services Group developing and implementing retrofit and new construction Programs, Tom is active as a Green Performance consultant, providing Energy Modeling, LEED Midrise, LEED for Homes, Built Green, ENERGY STAR, and Passive House Certifications.
Linda Pruitt
Thornton Creek Commons: Salvage and Rebirth
A nationally recognized and award-winning real estate developer & builder, Linda is a leading expert in building ‘missing middle’ infill, pocket communities of modestly sized, energy efficient, Built Green Certified, single-family homes. Linda co-founded The Cottage Company in 1996 and has completed ten communities of homes designed with ‘community in mind’ in the Pacific Northwest, all built within close-in neighborhoods near jobs and transportation. Linda also consults with residential developers nationwide who seek to create communities of innovative medium density infill development in their regions. Linda earned an MBA concentrating in Entrepreneurship & Marketing from The University of Washington Foster School, and was a Gates Fellow with the Washington Research Foundation.