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Monday, August 23, 2010

Jury Selection Complete!

Four of sustainability’s top minds have agreed to BrickStainable Jury Duty. Vivian Loftness of Carnegie Mellon, Martin Vachon of AXIM Concrete Technologies, Bill Browning of Terrapin Bright Green, and Anna Dyson of Center for Architecture Science and Ecology will judge the entries in this year’s competition.


Loftness and Vachon are returning jurors and Browning was last year’s Award Ceremony Keynote. Anna Dyson brings new perspective to the competition. Here’s a little more about our jurors. You can read their full bios on the BrickStainable web site.

Vivian Loftness is an internationally renowned researcher, author and educator with over 30 years of focus on environmental design and sustainability, advanced building systems and systems integration, climate and regionalism in architecture, as well as design for performance in the workplace of the future. She has served on seven National Academy of Science panels and has given Congressional testimonies on sustainable design. Loftness is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

In his position at AXIM in the United States, a subsidiary of ESSROC-Italcementi Group, Martin Vachon promotes the use of Self Consolidating Concrete (SCC) in the U.S. and is a pioneer in this field. He has played a significant role in the development of the Interim Guidelines for the use of SCC by the Precast Concrete. Vachon has been involved in several R&D projects, including concrete maturity, surface quality characteristics of architectural concrete, electrical conductivity and hydration kinetics of cement, tribology and pumpability of concrete.

Bill Browning is one of the green building and real estate industry’s foremost thinkers and advocates for sustainable design solutions in business, government, and civil society. He has lent his to expertise Fortune 500 companies, universities, non-profit organizations, the U.S. military, and foreign governments. He founded Green Development Services at Rocky Mountain Institute, an entrepreneurial, non-profit “think and do tank” whose work advances energy-efficient and environmentally-responsive design. Browning was a founding member of the USGBC’s Board of Directors, and still serves on its Governance Board.

Anna Helen Dyson is the director of the Center of Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE), an entity spanning several institutional collaborators, and co-hosted by Skidmore Owings and Merrill and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Its mission is to create an exceptional context for the innovation of high performing building technologies by uniting multiple interests across the building disciplines in order to support common interests for innovation. Dyson is currently directing interdisciplinary research to develop building systems that integrate applications of emerging technology from diverse research fields.

We thank them for their commitment to BrickStainable and hope we won’t have to sequester them during their service!

Friday, August 6, 2010

What a Week at DesignDC!

We were thrilled to meet all the visitors in our booth, as well as the attendees in our presentation – over 50 guests! Our panel discussion included PVB’s president, Alan Richardson, BrickStainable consultants, Peter Doo and Rob Busler (moderator), and 2009 BrickStainable competition winner, Eric Haskins. Eric flew all the way from Albuquerque, NM to Washington, DC to join us.

There was much discussion about the design concepts submitted in last year’s competition, and the new, yet age-old, sustainable applications for brick. Peter and Rob conveyed a clear message about the USGBC LEED rating system, “…design shouldn’t be about trying to achieve LEED points. If you design well, you will achieve a sustainable and durable project. Sustainability is sophisticated. You should be choosing the right products for their performance, not because of the points you can obtain.” (Well said Peter and Rob!)

We also had many winners of various prizes in our booth including a 32 GB i-pad and case, tickets to our Awards Ceremony, free entrance to the BrickStainable Design Competition, and travel to the new Essroc cement plant (a four AIA/CEU opportunity)!

Design DC was the formal launch of the new BrickStainable Concepts in Construction – Sustainable Brick Cards. Hundreds of copies were distributed in our booth and at the presentation. Contact your PVB design partner today to collect your copy!