The annual International Living Future unConference is nearly upon us and several from Arch Nexus will be presenting at the 2019 event. The Friday morning session features Arch Nexus Director of Sustainability, Patty Karapinar and Arch Nexus Site Design Leader, Jennifer Styduhar. Together they will present Abundance through Collaboration: Fostering Community-Based Food Access. Participants in this session will gain perspective from Karapinar and Styduhars’ real-world examples of private-public collaborations utilizing community-driven local food production and Urban Agriculture Imperative scale jumping with a school district. This process increased equity, environmental outcomes, youth education and job skills.

Catch Erica McBride and Peter McBride in the Friday afternoon session, Truth or Dare? Let’s Get Honest About Achieving Healthy Indoor Air Quality. Erica McBride is the Building Manager at Arch Nexus SAC. Maintaining a Living Building requires specialized and specific knowledge, passion, patience, and often long hours; demonstrating these day-to-day, Erica advocates for sustainable changes for buildings and how they operate and are maintained.  Arch Nexus Associate, Peter McBride is passionate about design and was the Arch Nexus SAC Building Manager during the challenging process of becoming California’s first Living Building. Together Erica and Peter will contribute their knowledge and experience to this “Best Practices” session, taking a strong lessons-learned approach that looks at the final success of achieving indoor air quality results within LBC’s thresholds through a series of failures and discoveries.

Earth Day made for a perfect date to break ground on the latest sustainable design from Arch Nexus. The new zero-energy 26,000-square foot Daybreak Library will offer a unique rooftop experience designed to incorporate urban re-wilding and support an active community.

Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, South Jordan Mayor Dawn Ramsey, and representatives from the County Library were in attendance at the groundbreaking ceremony to discuss the importance the library will be to the South Jordan community.

“As this part of the County continues to see rapid growth and development, the Daybreak branch is going to be in the center of everything,” Library Director Jim Cooper said. “It’s a great opportunity for people in Daybreak and the surrounding communities to experience a County Library branch a little closer to home.”

See more from the groundbreaking here.

The latest edition of Trim Tab, a publication of the International Living Future Institute, features an article by Kenner Kingston. In the piece, Kenner details a defining moment he experienced at the 2017 ILFI unConference. “I realized I was witnessing something truly unique: the answer to what had moments before seemed to be an unsolvable problem. Within minutes, the question of how Arch Nexus could help formed in my mind.”

Enter, Nexus Builds. Joining forces with The Block Project, employees of all levels at Arch Nexus are volunteering, collaborating, designing and constructing a home. Every employee at Arch nexus will have LBC experience by the end of 2019 and Nexus will be the only organization in the world to have designed, owned, operated, and built an LBC project. What’s more, one more person currently experiencing homelessness will have a house by the end of the year.

Read the full Trim Tab article here.

SALT LAKE COUNTY, Utah–The County Library announced the groundbreaking for its Daybreak branch, which will take place at 10 am on Earth Day—Monday, April 22—at 11358 Grandville Ave (approximately 5600 S) in South Jordan.

“As this part of the County continues to see rapid growth and development, the Daybreak branch is going to be in the center of everything,” Library Director Jim Cooper said. “It’s a great opportunity for people in Daybreak and the surrounding communities to experience a County Library branch a little closer to home.”

Because the role of the public library has evolved drastically over the past decade, Arch Nexus and the Salt Lake County Library system have worked with residents to fine tune what type of facility is needed in the community. The Daybreak branch will redefine the whole notion of library, acting as a as a de facto community center, a co-working space, a bridge for the digital divide and a nurturer of lifelong learning and literacy.

Construction will begin following the ceremony, with an approximate finishing date in summer of 2020. The new, zero-energy 26,000-square-foot branch will be open to everyone, and offers a unique rooftop experience designed to incorporate urban re-wilding and support an active community.

Construction has begun on the new Salt Lake County Kearns Library. The 35,000 square foot facility will be adjacent to the previous building. The new site allows for a relocation along 5400 South to increase visibility, access and usability. Arch Nexus has produced the new design to help regenerate the Kearns community, serving as a seed to create lasting change and to cultivate the people and place.

Community leaders gathered Monday for the groundbreaking ceremony. Salt Lake County Library Director, Jim Cooper spoke to the audience stating “I couldn’t be prouder to be associated with the Kearns community and the things you have done to bring the new library to Kearns. Finally, we are delivering on that promise!” Cooper also invited participants to try out the virtual reality tour provided by Arch Nexus, to experience what the future library will be like.

Arch nexus President, Kenner Kingston shared that it is an honor for Nexus to have been given the responsibility of creating the new design. Regarding the former site Kenner stated “It struck us that the level of passion and care for this community was not being reflected by the physical environment… our job is to reveal that.”

The new design brings people together in a comfortable fashion, welcomes cultural diversity, provides a sense of choice and opportunity, and mixes the kind of creative yet cozy ambiance that one thinks of when they imagine a library. Working with R & O Construction, the new library will be complete by summer of 2020.

The 10^th annual Intermountain Sustainability Summit will be held at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, March 21 – 22, 2019. Online registration will be available through Tuesday, March 19^th and walk up registration will be available onsite. The two day event will conclude with an afternoon workshop presented by Kenner Kingston in the Shepard Union Building room 404.

Intermountain Living Future Workshop:

What if every single act of design and construction made the world a better place?

Come to this half-day workshop, tailored to the unique nature of the Intermountain West, to learn about and discuss how you can help to “support the transformation toward communities that are socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative.” – ILFI Mission Statement

Who should attend: Building Owners and Operators, Architects, Construction Managers, Designers, Engineers, Realtors, Students, and those who want to go beyond LEED.

An audience member of the SXSW session presented by Arch Nexus’ Kenner Kingston and ILFI’s Amanda Sturgeon,  artistically summarized the presentation in this doodle. The session; Nature Tech: Rewilding Human Habitat, discusses restoring each place we encounter to a condition of wholeness. Seeing nature as (free) technology is a key step in restoring our buildings, neighborhoods, communities, and cities to their full potential.

Tour the only Living Certified building in California on Thursday, March 7, 2019. Doors will be open from 9:00 to 5:00, no apointment nessesary.

Discussions about the water-energy nexus have reignited conversations about energy impacts and consumption. Presenters will use real-world examples to show how unique building and space types have successfully implemented and documented their energy impacts and performance. During this session, we will delve into how LEED addresses energy today through LEED v4 and through pilot credits and also take a look towards how today’s trending topics, like the water-energy nexus impact LEED’s future goals.

A webinar course approved for 1 LEED specific GBCI CEU that will be hosted in the Architectural Nexus office in SLC. Lunch optional. Discussion and dialogue following the 60 minute course.

Thursday, March 7th, 11:30-1:15pm
Architectural Nexus SLC

RSVP for this event HERE

Please email lunch/diet restrictions/requests to cwoodruff@usgbc.org