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.

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.

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

South by Southwest, the annual conference and festival held in Austin, Texas, will host a session led by Arch Nexus President, Kenner Kingston and International Living Future Institute CEO, Amanda Sturgeon. The March 11^th event is titled Nature Tech: Rewilding Human Habitat.

Regenerative Design suggests that we must restore each place we encounter to a condition of wholeness. Seeing nature as free technology is a key step in restoring our buildings, neighborhoods and communities to their full potential.

To leverage this technology, a critical shift in philosophy is taking place. The built environment is no longer simply a “machine for living”. Instead, a new notion of shared and intensely local habitat for people is coming into focus; one that is informed by the simple truth that WE ARE NATURE.

For more information on this and other 2019 SXSW events, click here.

Are you in Chicago attending GreenBuild 2018? Don’t miss tomorrow mornings breakout session, presented by Arch Nexus’ Kenner Kingston and Patty Karapinar: Regenerative Design through Adaptive Reuse.

If architecture is the largest energy-consuming and emitting sector of the US economy, architecture is also the solution. Much of our green building industry is focused on new construction on greenfield sites, yet existing buildings within and around cities are ripe for regenerative design opportunities. Through thoughtful adaptive reuse, we are poised to transform our cities and the lives of the people within them. By reinvesting in the building stock we have, we take the most sustainable action of all in that we avoid further consumption of not only building materials, but also open space, clean air, and precious natural resources.

Click here for further details.

Arch Nexus’ Kenner Kingston and Jeffrey Davis will be presenting at the 2018 San Diego Green Building Conference and Expo. The conference will feature a day-long track dedicated to water, featuring local case studies and successful projects. Kenner will present during all four breakout sessions, Mission Impossible: San Diego Water Capture and Reuse, In the Face of Drought and the concluding session: Mission Possible (part A & B), also presented by experts Jeffrey Davis and others.

These sessions will help participants develop an understanding of the obstacles to achieving building water reuse in California and, more specifically, in San Diego. A California Water-reuse map will be presented, demonstrating the regulatory paths to success in this challenging area of practice. They will share how Arch Nexus found ways to eliminate the needs for water to be conveyed to or away from the site. In a collaborative effort with government and local experts, participants will find solutions to both climate and regulatory hurdles that stand in the way of innovative solutions.

There is still time to register! For more information visit: http://usgbc-sd.org/event-2977632

Arch Nexus is proud to support the first Utah Net-Zero Energy Summit to be held Tuesday, September 18^th from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM at the Salt Lake City Library. In this 1-day summit, guests will have a chance to converse with Special Guest Sam Rashkin (Chief Architect for the US Department of Energy) & other industry leaders about net-zero strategies & tools that offer a competitive advantage for all stakeholders in commercial & residential construction. During the summit, insights of Net-Zero design and construction will be shared to identify the best “bang for the buck” measures and to demonstrate the increasing practicality of Net-Zero Energy design for the built environment.

Construction in the 21^st centuary: Gearing up for Disruption is organized by Utah’s Net Zero Consortium with The Great Basin Collaborative. Special attendees include: Director of the Governor’s Office of Energy Development, Mayor of Salt Lake City, Mayor of Park City, Chair of the Summit County Council, and Mayor of Moab.

To register for this event visit https://netzeroenergysummit2018.eventbrite.com

On Thursday, June 7^th AIA Central Valley presents the Healthy Materials Symposium. The event will feature nine experts through three different sessions, exploring the impacts of materials on human and environmental health, learning of the tools available for prioritizing healthy materials, and identifying strategies for project teams to make informed decisions that promote healthy and sustainable environments.

Featured Speaker: Alex Muller is the Manager for the Living Product Challenge (LPC) at the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). The LPC is an international product sustainability framework and certification program, incentivizing the creation of healthy, regenerative products for all. Alex works daily with manufacturers pursuing the program on supply chain issues, material health and life cycle analysis; and with the program’s third party assessors to continually streamline and evolve the program, to scale its adoption.

Arch|Nexus Director of Sustainability, Patty Karapinar, will present during session 2: Identifying Tools of the Trade. Patty has thirty years of professional experience, including her recent work on the Arch|Nexus SAC location – the first Living Building in California and the first Living Building that is an adaptive reuse of an existing building.

To read more about the symposium or to register, click here.

Arch Nexus’ Director of Sustainability, Patty Karapinar, presented at the April 2018 Getting to Zero National Forum, held in Pittsburg Pennsylvania. Patty, along with Nexus Energy Analyst, David Griffin, presented: How Rigorous Planning and Effective Design Help Hit Ultra-Low Energy Goals 

It takes collaboration between a number of stakeholders to design and construct zero energy projects. Join the owner, architect, engineer, and LEED consultant on two small- to mid-sized office buildings both working toward ZE and Living Building Challenge design goals. These include the first city building (and fourth building of any type) in the world to achieve ZE and Living Building Challenge in Fort Collins, and a Living Building in Sacramento. Hear perspectives on how a strong integrative process leveraged synergies between occupant, building, and district scale goals and how you can apply these strategies in your own community.

The presentation slideshow is now available online here.