International Living Future Institute awards best biophilic designs during Greenbuild 2018

Hi Green Cincinnati Education Advocacy,

Are you planning to attend Greenbuild in Chicago, beginning November 14^th in Chicago? If so, we’d love to invite you to attend the 2018 Stephen R. Kellert Biophilic Design Awards, taking place Wednesday, November 14^th. The International Living Future Institute will present several outstanding biophilic design projects before announcing this year’s award winner.

Taking place at the Greenhouse Loft, we can also connect you with a member of Interface’s leadership team to discuss the company’s commitment to sustainability and its own endeavors into biophilic design – including its new HQ in Atlanta. They can speak to how its new headquarters, named Base Camp, was selected and designed with employees and the environment in mind. For example, the building uses it uses 48% less energy than code requires and houses a 15k gallon water collection system for irrigation and flush fixtures.

In addition, Interface can speak to how the company’s customers can reach their sustainability goals with Interface’s lines of carpet.

Would you like to attend? Let me know, and we can be sure to put you on the RSVP list.

If you are unable to attend the Biophilic Design Awards, Interface will also be exhibiting in the new mindful MATERIALS pavilion, booth #M580, speaking to materials transparency and product certifications. Let us know if a meeting is of interest.

Thanks,

Elisa Suri

On behalf of Interface

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“The relationship between humankind and nature can be one of respect and love rather than domination…The outcome…can be rich, satisfying, and lastingly successful, but only if both partners are modified by their association so as to become better adapted to each other…With our knowledge and sense of responsibility…we can create new environments that are ecologically sound, aesthetically satisfying, economically rewarding…This process of reciprocal adaptation occurs…through minor changes in the people and their environment, but a more conscious process of design can also take place.”
René Dubos, The Wooing of the Earth

From the book “The Practice of Biophilic Design” by Stephen Kellert and Elizabeth Calabres

Transcription of the video,

“Again, so this is a publicly funded high school, community wide resource. The Science and Math Institute however, is somewhat a missing work. This is a school with its culture and its curriculum deeply seated in the ecology of the setting.

It’s a 700 acre park in the pacific northwest. Point Defiance Park at the north end of the city of Tacoma is surrounded on three sides by water. It’s not simply a project seen in the south east corner of the pacific. The project isn’t simply located next to the park. The park itself is the primary learning environment for us in the classroom and these students occupy numerous circles throughout this extensive trails.

We start the process developing an approach in lying with the traditional architectural site analysis. We respond to the existing site topography. We began to talk fallen materials in response to the forest. But it really wasn’t until we invited a group of students to our offices to participate in a scenario mocking exercise that the project really came alive for me.

This was a wonderful group of students to work with. The maturity with which they approached that task and the eloquence with which they describe their intimate relationship with the natural surroundings was truly inspiring and it really helped understood the importance of this that we would create in the evolution of this school.”

Transcription of the video,

“An education facility for the Dixon Water Foundation. Dixon Water Foundation came to us asking for a building that would house people as they learned about what they did at the foundation, which is to restore the prairie through range management that actually protected the watershed at the same time.

The building was all about complimenting the land and linking people to the land. So, wherever you are in the building you have views to the prairie and as people are learning about the protection and restoration of the prairie and the protection of the watershed, they are very much engaged with that.

The building forms themselves speak to the prairie, simple low-lying forms that frame the horizon and windows of horizontal nature that frame views to the prairie so that the building compliments the land and the land compliments the building.

The buildings were arranged in a way that water can be celebrated. Though most of the water is collected for reuse. One-eighth of the water off the roof actually goes into a central water feature along the entry during storms, so that the movement of the water through the land and the building is celebrated and experienced with visitors, so they can better understand the cycle of water from the building.

Outside the doors of the aboretum we have planted seed heads from all the native grasses used in the North Texas tall grass prairie as a way to integrate botanical motifs into the project. So visitors to the project are able to experience and walk along those wood walls looking at the grain of this beautiful plant is exposed.

One of the interesting things about the project is when you visit and you see the people that are using the space, they love the education space. The porches really seem to attract everyone. And they like to be in the building too, but it’s kind of interesting how people congregate on the porch. It’s like they have to ring the dinner bell to get them to come inside.

People love pivoting the doors open or sliding the barn doors and playing with the lamp because it’s cool, but also because it does respond to the conditions of any given day.

Being the first Living Building in Texas and the 9th Living Building project in the world, really did broaden the message and the audience that the Dixon Water Foundation reach. Lots of people come to see the building and in so doing they learn a lot about what the Dixon Water Foundation is doing and so it’s really been helpful to the organization that they were building challenge and it’s just a wonderful story to tell.”

If you would like to meet at Greenbuild, Chuck Lohre, chucklohre.com, 513-260-9025