Each 90-minute track session receives 1.5 continuing education units from the following professional organizations: AIA, BPI, GBCI, InterNACHI, NAHB, and NARI. To receive your credits, you must sign in at the beginning of each session
Track Co-Chairs: Robert Leaver, New Commons; Bernice Radle, Buffalo Energy
The City is a Whole System
Session 1: Wednesday, March 6, 11:00am-12:30pm
Session Chair: Robert Leaver, New Commons
Session Speakers: Robert Leaver, New Commons; Bernice Radle, Buffalo Energy
Description: How do cities work? What conditions are pushing cities in the Northeast to focus on becoming more resilient? In becoming more resilient, how does the polis, or the energetic vibe of the people, make a place a soulful, whole system in action? What building and energy practices are making cities more resilient? What can we do to get good sustainability projects done in cities? As practitioners, what do we need to learn next about cities? These questions will be addressed in both the presentation and facilitated conversation.
Efficiency, Durability or History: Pick Two?
Session 2: Wednesday, March 6, 2:00pm-3:30pm
Session Chair: Bernice Radle, Buffalo Energy
Session Speakers: Jean Carroon, Goody Clancy; Bill Rose, University of Illinois
Description: Historic buildings make our cities livable and attractive. Almost by definition, they’re resilient — otherwise they would not have survived this long. But they’re also energy hogs, by the standards of what NESEA practitioners try to design and build. Adding insulation on the inside can compromise exterior durability; adding insulation to the exterior compromises history; not adding insulation at all burdens the stewards of these buildings with high operating costs and large carbon footprints. What’s the best balance of these three priorities of efficiency, durability, and history? This important and far-ranging conversation between two of our greatest thinkers about historic preservation may not give you any easy answers, but you’ll come out with a much keener sense of the right questions to be asking in your preservation practice.
Avoiding Disaster: Resource Resilience in Energy Systems
Session 3: Wednesday, March 6, 4:00pm-5:30pm
Session Chair: Robert Leaver, New Commons
Session Speakers: Steve Hammer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a roundtable of experts
Description: We’ve got three feet of storm-surge water over a hundred city blocks. We’ve got a half-dozen really angry high-level people with conflicting priorities in the same room trying to fix things: City Hall, the utilities, engineer, architect, developer, and tenant associations. Even worse, we’ve put an MIT energy planning professor in charge. What happens when the arguing and finger-pointing stops and they get to work on solutions? What can we learn about how we should be designing our future buildings and energy systems in cities?
What Small Cities are Doing… Buffalo, NY and Northampton, MA
Session 4: Thursday, March 7, 8:30am-10:00am
Session Chair: Bernice Radle, Buffalo Energy
Session Speakers: Chris Mason, City of Northampton Sustainability Coordinator; Catherine Tumber, author of Small, Gritty and Green; Chris Hawley, City Planner in Buffalo, NY.
Description: Big cities too often get the spotlight when it comes to sustainability, but there are a lot of really cool, innovative things happening in our smaller cities that we need to know about. From creative zoning codes, solar initiatives, food production, sustainable community planning and promoting energy efficiency city-wide, smaller cities are taking the lead and continue to raise the bar. Learn about how Buffalo is overhauling its zoning code and how Northampton is promoting green communities and why the smaller cities are small, gritty and green.
Planning for Resilience and Rebuilding in an Era of Climate Change: The NYC Response
Session 5: Thursday, March 7, 10:30pm-12:00pm
Session Chair: Bernice Radle, Buffalo Energy
Session Speakers: Hilary Beber, NYC Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability; Lesley Patrick, CUNY’s Institute for Sustainability
Description: Cities across the country are developing sustainability and resilience plans that address the challenges of climate change. NYC is a city of islands with nearly 600 miles of coastline and the majority of its carbon footprint (75%) embedded in buildings. Buoyed by their concern of rising tides in low-lying areas, NYC has developed a multipronged approach to respond to rising temperatures and tides. Learn from two experienced speakers about NYC’s vulnerability to climate change and the multifaceted approach to changing the City’s carbon footprint.
Using LEED Neighborhood Development Standards to Drive Neighborhood Retrofits
Session 6: Thursday, March 7, 2:00pm-3:30pm
Session Chair: Robert Leaver, New Commons
Session Speakers: Elizabeth Humstone and Margarita Iglesia, Boston Architectural College
Description: The neighborhood serves as the context for what gets built. This session will demonstrate how LEED-ND standards are applied to do retrofits in neighborhoods. Examples include neighborhoods in: Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Ontario. The specific LEED standards we will examine in practice: Smart Location and Linking, Neighborhood Planning and Design, and Green Infrastructure and Building – including water and energy provision and discharge. Specific foci include: redevelopment, mixing uses, increasing density, transportation, energy grid and bringing nature into the city.
Closing Forum: What will be the hot topics at BE25?
Session 7: Thursday March 7, 4:00pm-5:30pm
Session Chair: Paul Eldrenkamp
Session Speakers: TBA
Description: The final session of the day will wrap up everything we learned at BE13 by forcing us to think out loud about where all our new-gained knowledge is taking us. The format: Six NESEA thought leaders will work within the pecha kucha framework to offer their predictions regarding what we’ll be grappling with in the sessions and workshops at Building Energy in March, 2025. This will followed by a period of quick-paced audience discussion. The 90 minutes will then wrap with a compelling preview of NESEA, 12 years hence. This closing session will offer an engaged response to the too-rarely asked question: “Just where are we going with all of this?“
