11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Tami McCrossen-Orr, Chief of Airport Planning, LAWA

Richard Spencer, Design Director – Aviation, Woods Bagot

Heidi Creighton, Associate Principal, Buro Happold

Simon Fowell, Economist, Autocase

Sponsored by Autocase

In pursuit of the City of Los Angeles’ sustainability plan, Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) is leading the charge towards zero. You will hear from LAWA’s Chief of Airport Planning, Tami McCrossen-Orr, who will provide an overview of the sustainability goals, projects, and initiatives at LAX. She will be joined by Woods Bagot’s Design Director – Aviation, Richard Spencer, who will highlight the specific sustainability goals and challenges around carbon neutrality and project reuse for their current net zero project at LAX. Heidi Creighton, an Associate Principal at Buro Happold, will outline the strategies the team employed to ensure net zero operational carbon, minimize water use, reduce embodied carbon, and design for reuse/circularity. Finally, Simon Fowell, an Economist with Autocase will illustrate the financial, social, and environmental value of these strategies and how measuring impact in a common metric can build a business case for sustainability and help with designing for net zero lifecycle emissions.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Judhajit Chakraborty, Associate, Stantec

Porus Antia, Senior Associate, Stantec

Embodied Carbon is a critical component of the sustainability movement within the built environment. However the need for a Baseline design for tracking performance is still impending. Establishing a baseline design is an important step towards net zero carbon.This session will showcase processes for bench-marking baseline designs for various climate types and construction types with an aim of codification thru further research and will cover the following items:

1: Definition of the Baseline design as it exists today and its shortcomings.

2: Need for a Holistic Baseline design that will cater to multiple sites, climates, building types, construction methods and materials.

3: A matrix underlining baseline Global Warming Potentials (GWP) values with a common denominator/unit that can be used for residential and commercial projects.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Chris Magwood, Director, Endeavour Centre

Massey Burke, Co-Director, California Straw Building Association

David Arkin, Principal, Arkin/Tilt Architects

How do we transform buildings from major drivers of climate change to become a real climate change solution? This session will explore the basics of carbon accounting for buildings, and how a combination of energy efficiency and smart material selection can result in buildings that actually help to reverse climate change.

Each presenter will cover a different aspect of the issue, with a final case study building used to show the practical and affordable steps that can result in carbon-positive buildings today.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Lori Atwater, CEO, Transformation

Brian Conner, Architect / Pastor

This webinar shares a high-level technical explanation of how incorporating all-electric infrastructure, onsite generation with storage, and Zero Net Energy in high-rise towers transforms the large-scale community built-environment.

Speakers will show a sneak preview of the master plans, materials, products, and technologies that go into a holistically designed village of the future. The presentation includes comments from utilities related to load analytics and grid reliability. The model village is sustainable, scalable, and reproducible. The development firm, Transformation Village, currently has two California projects in the design phase.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Haley Garner, Energy + Carbon, Senior Specialist, International Living Future Institute

Efrie Escott, Environmental Researcher, KieranTimberlake

Erin McDade, Senior Program Director, Architecture 2030

To solve the climate crisis, we must radically reduce carbon emissions. Embodied carbon will be responsible for at least half of AEC carbon emissions between now and 2050. There has been a rapid acceleration in awareness, research, tools, and projects addressing this topic. Yet, do we know what “good” embodied carbon targets are? This session will present the latest data on embodied carbon and unpack what it reveals about developing appropriate targets, highlighting crucial next steps for robust target development, and outlining immediate and impactful reductions while target development continues. Presenters will share perspectives as a designer, tool developer, and Zero Carbon certifier. Participants will engage in a collective discussion of leveraging actionable information to positively impact embodied carbon in their next project.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Brent Bucknum, Founder, hyphae design lab

We will discuss the design and development process involved in renovating an old fishing lodge and historic distillery in Punta Gorda, Belize into the Copal Tree Lodge, a farm to table resort that showcases the historical Belizean crops: Chocolate, Coffee and Rum and how they could be produced again in a traditional as well as ecological way. The presentation will focus on the Copalli Rum distillery, which is both a functional organic filed-to-glass organic agricole rum processing facility; an innovative example of closed loop organic alcohol production. The project aims to be net zero water, power and waste. The sugarcane and the entire Facility are supplied by rainwater, from a 100,000 gallon rainwater catchment system with passive slow sand filtration. The cane both creates the spirit and also provides power through biomass to steam conversion of the crushed cane. Stormwater and wastewater water are retained and treated through constructed wetland systems. Potent vinasse wastewater is treated and reused for fertilization, through systems we researched and developed for the project. Could be catered to experts or intermediates.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Eric Corey Freed, Senior Vice President, Sustainability, CannonDesign

You are in the innovation and problem-solving business. Yet, you are struggling to push your ideas with staff and clients. The level of conformity in any organization is in inverse proportion to its creative ability. The success of your design firm depends on your ability to provide bold, creative solutions and ideas. But what if the conventional wisdom you’ve been following is actually blocking your pathways to innovation? We call it: Wisdumb™. Wisdumb is the business standards that are outdated and ineffective in a changing world, and it’s ruining your business and practice. In this session, we’ll explore how to drive Wisdumb out of your business and devise an innovation strategy instead, using our Innovation Agreements. We developed this insight through our work with hundreds of organizations, companies, and municipalities on accelerating their sustainability plans but removing these barriers to innovation and creative thinking. We’ll identify these institutional blocks to creativity and how to transform the aspects of your organization and team that are lagging. We’ll explore the ways that traditional business thinking and industry standards are holding you back, losing you customers, and destroying your competitive advantage. By attending this talk, attendees will learn how to identify the top obstacles to their business, their blockages to growth and change, and how to develop a path forward to innovate and transform their business or projects. This is an innovation crash course in change management showing you how to rally your team, your clients and your consultants toward enacting deep transformations and goals. So if you’ve always wanted to work on a creative project, packed with your best ideas, but it always gets “value-engineered” out in the design stage, this session will show you how to commit to these grand ideas, get clients excited, and embed them into your work.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Sierra Atilano, Chief Real Estate Officer,  Skid Row Housing Trust

The often-discussed solution to the scarcity of buildable lots in Los Angeles is to build taller; however, the building code and the economics of building up nearly always preclude that possibility for low-income housing projects. This approach uses a single podium floor of Type I or II construction topped by 5 levels of inexpensive, Type V wood frame construction—the maximum allowed. In order to build taller, a builder would need to change to the next-least-expensive method, which is significantly more expensive. Mass timber structures have the potential to fill in the gap between the economics and push the height of low-income development up to 12 to 18 stories, thereby presenting a new model for building low-income multifamily properties while helping solve Los Angeles’ homelessness.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Marian Goebes, Assoc. Technical Director, TRC

In 2008, California set 2030 zero net energy (ZNE) goals for new construction and half of existing commercial buildings. But how much progress has been made, and as decarbonization priorities increase, how relevant is ZNE? This session will explore a recent market characterization study of California commercial ZNE buildings that included interviews with over 80 market actors – most with experience in ZNE or ultra-efficient buildings. Study findings indicate a mix of achievements and setbacks. This session will identify challenges to ZNE adoption and recommendations for overcoming them, including strategies for codes and standards, reach codes, incentives and financing programs, and training. Finally, the session will describe how ZNE dovetails with decarbonization goals and recommend policies to align ZNE requirements with decarbonization needs.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Daniel Huard, Founding Principal, Humann Building Solutions

Wes Sullens, Director, LEED Team, U.S. Green Building Council

James Connelly, CEO, My Green Lab

Ramie Vagal, Senior Manager, Sustainability, Mohawk Industries

Discover trends in materials transparency and documentation, and learn how healthy materials impact occupant wellness and can help your project achieve its carbon goals.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Mary Dickenson, Regional Sustainable Design Leader/ Associate Principal, Perkins&Will

Amy Mustanti, Sustainability Director, Assa Abloy

Tim Conway, Vice President of Sustainability, Shaw Industries

Arthur Clarke, Director of Sustainability, HMTX

The mindful MATERIALS Collaborative is an inclusive network of building industry professionals and companies that share a common vision for a thriving building materials ecosystem. We work together on transformative yet practical solutions to create and support this ecosystem through our standard daily practices. mindful MATERIALS (mM) is a free platform with aggregated information on human health and environmental impacts for products from leading manufacturers.

Join a group of industry leaders as we discuss our efforts in material transparency and documentation. Members from manufacturers and architectural firms will share our involvement with the mindful MATERIALS platform and our plans to continue with the support of this and other progressive industry initiatives.