GAB Report library
Building Materials
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Living Lab for Energy Efficiency Design
Harvard’s HouseZero project officially opened this week. It is an adaptive re-use project that transforms a pre-1940s Cambridge house into an educational, office building for The Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities. More importantly, it serves as a data-driven living lab for documenting and exploring energy efficiency strategies and their performance outcomes. Targeting the…
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Reinventing the Toilet
Since 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has sponsored the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, providing grants and investment to researchers around the world. Last week, the Foundation along with global innovators, development banks, corporate partners, sanitation utilities and governments hosted the first Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing. The Reinvent the Toilet Challenge challenges innovators to…
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Making Water From Air
Architects are often trained as generalists who think about problems globally. Leave it up to an architect and his team to come up with a smart solution to address a critical global water crisis – the severe lack of accessible and clean potable water throughout the world. Congratulations to architect David Hertz and inventor Rich Groden…
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Water Reuse Summit
The What: The Summit will focus on the practical design and application of water reuse systems for architects, engineers, and building owners. It will also highlight the success of San Francisco’s regulatory process and to address the associated regulatory and permitting challenges in jurisdictions that don’t have a well-defined process or where authority is unclear.…
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Webinar: Zero Carbon/Energy Codes
The What: Following closely on the footsteps of last month’s Carbon Smart Building Day Conference, the New Buildings Institute will be hosting a webinar to discuss key policy tools to meet climate goals in its Webinar: Zero Carbon/Energy Codes. As governments of all scales consider options for meeting deep greenhouse gas reduction goals, attention has turned…
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How Do We Get Beyond Net Zero Carbon?
The time is now. As an industry, we have been making headway in greening the built environment for the last twenty years but that is not enough, and not quick enough. We need to achieve zero carbon emissions as soon as possible and act with a sense of urgency. Ed Mazria, Founder and CEO of…
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Webinar: Safe and Circular
The What: What materials should we use to create things? Circular design encourages us to rethink business models, how we make products, and to consider the system surrounding them, but we also need to think about the materials we use. Whether it’s improving the safety of users or ensuring that resources can be used again and again…
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Sand Scarcity in the Construction Industry
How does sand scarcity affect housing and the construction industry? When thinking about building a new house, building, or even city infrastructure, most people don’t realise that sand is actually a fundamental element of construction. Why? Because sand is a key ingredient in creating concrete. Due to continuously growing population and the increasing urbanization rate,…
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NAPHN18 Flash Sale
The North American Passive House Network Conference and Expo will take place on October 17th -21st, 2018 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. Passive (House) first – It’s about resilience – not just rating systems. Join the community as it convenes in a hotspot of Passive House design and construction: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Thanks to a strong professional base,…
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Carbon Smart Building Day
The What: Carbon Smart Building Day is a conference for building professionals supporting the Global Climate Action Summit. Its purpose is to inspire you to lead the built environment toward Zero Net Carbon, and equip you with the latest tools, resources and programs to help your firm thrive in a Zero Net Carbon future. Carbon…