Recently in Outreach Category

Bill Swietlik has worked in EPA's Office of Water in Washington DC since 1988. In 2009, he  created the EPA Green Homes website.  This website provides pages of useful, practical information and advice for the homeowner or apartment dweller to live a greener, more energy efficient life at home.

While he was developing the website, he and his wife  decided to implement as many of the recommendations as possible to see if they could live greener, and after six months the results came in!

• They are using 35% less electricity,
• They are using a bit less water,
• They are recycling 75% of all our household waste,
• Most storm water runoff stays on our property during each rainfall,
• They are gradually eliminating our ½ acre of lawn (and all the work that goes with it) and turning it into a garden of native plants by re-naturalizing our yard.
• They purchased 100% Green Power (renewable electricity) from the local utility through their renewable energy program.
• And, they've done all this with minimal expense and are saving almost $550 a year on energy bills!

EPA's new Green Homes website is at  www.epa.gov/greenhomes

We can design our hearts out, but the final results of a building's functionality is up to the people who use the building for their purposes.  And they never ever match the architect or designer's expectations!  The public is "fickle" -- meaning, of course, complex and unpredictable. But in a recent research project to identify the value and impact of a specific green building and people's experience of it, researchers delved in-depth into the likes and dislikes about the Philip Merrill Environmental Center in Annapolis, MD. 

The most liked features of the building included:

• Connection to nature and the bay
• The lunch room
• Views to the outdoors
• Openness of the space
• Daylight
• Sustainable resoruce use
• Overall aesthetics
• Parking
• Location

And the least liked features of the building included:

• Temperature conditions
• Things not working right
• Moving from downtown
• Insufficient storage
• Insufficient meeting rooms
• Glare from windows
• Central vs. local copiers

Intriguing.   People WANT nature, but then don't like natural conditions.  They like overall space and aesthetics, but dislike taking time to walk a bit to use the space.  We like space but want lots of stuff around us.  Yes, Virginia, we are complex beings! 

Maybe the challenge is one of attitude.  Even an attitude of gratitude! How do we design gratitude into building functionality? 

SOURCE:
The Human Factors of Sustainable Building Design: Post Occupancy Evaluation of the Philip Merrill Environmental Center, Annapolis, MD. by Judith Heerwagen, Ph.D.; Leah Zagreus; and prepared for Drury Crawley, US Department of Energy Building Technology Program

Where's the beef? Well...meeting value, that is.

Architect Scott Simpson described a concept KlingStubbins called a team structure and the industry now calls Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). The concept is key for a collaborative project approach, but its importance is more universal. The phrase that stuck with me was "decision-ready information".

Decision-ready information consists of the key facts required for a meaningful, final decision about a subject to be decided.

In an IPD project, major decision-makers are expected to attend every meeting, so that decisions made in the meeting have meaningful buy-in and closure. These meetings can be intense, not to mention very expensive.

It's the responsibility, therefore, of each team member to bring decision-ready information for the decisions on the agenda.

"Clearly stated, decision-ready information helps your teammates look good to their teammates. Design professionals love representatives who help them look good. (This is also the old-fashioned way information "goes viral": good information gets carried along.)" says Aaron Chusid of Building Product Marketing.

Wouldn't this information design approach make meetings more valuable...and engaging!

Read more at BuildingProductMarketing.com