What makes one product more sustainable than another? It’s a question that anyone concerned with their impact on the planet must confront. How do we choose the right couch, coffee machine, flooring, tiles, or curtain wall system—so that we’re doing the most good for both people and the environment?

That’s the question Lisa Gralnek has been working to answer.

Gralnek is the U.S. Managing Director and Global Head of Sustainability and Impact at the iF Design Awards—one of the largest and most prestigious design award programs in the world. This year, 131 jurors evaluated nearly 11,000 entries from 66 countries, judging everything from appliances to automobiles, furnishings to buildings.

For the first time, sustainability accounted for 20 percent of the score for every submission. So how does an international awards program assess sustainability across such diverse design disciplines, regions, and product categories?

Listen to this episode of Deep Green, as METROPOLIS editor in chief Avi Rajagopal sits down with Gralnek to discuss how the iF Design Awards are tackling this challenge.

This season of Deep Green is produced in partnership with Mannington Commercial.

Resources

iF DESIGN AWARDS

Sustainability and the iF DESIGN AWARDS

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If there’s one defining trend in American architecture over the last decade, it’s the rediscovery of wood as a construction material. Mass timber buildings—made from large wooden panels, columns, and beams—are rising across North America, with developers racing to construct the tallest wooden tower. A new contender, the 32-story Edison in Milwaukee, just broke ground and is set to claim the title of the tallest mass timber building in the Western Hemisphere.

But why are American developers, architects, and builders all timberstruck? There are the carbon emissions—wood pulls down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as trees grow, so these buildings are a tool in the fight against climate change. Plus, they are quick to construct and can be cheaper to build. So should we start building everything out of wood?

In this episode of Deep Green, METROPOLIS editor in chief Avi Rajagopal speaks with two experts to unpack the potential of mass timber. First, Columbia University professor and author Lindsey Wikstrom discusses how architecture and construction need to evolve to fully embrace timber-based design. Then, DLR Group principal Stephen Cavanaugh shares insights from his extensive experience designing over three million square feet of mass timber buildings, as part of the largest collection of mass timber buildings in North America.

Join us as we dive deep into the thinking behind and the practice of mass timber architecture.

This season of Deep Green is produced in partnership with Mannington Commercial.

Resources:

Designing the Forest and other Mass Timber Futures

Finding a Future for Mass Timber in Hospitality

DLR Group: Hines T3 Partnership

Episode art: Photo by Creative Sources Photography/Rion Rizzo, courtesy DLR Group

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Buildings account for 40 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. If you’re an architect, or a frequent listener to this podcast, you already know that. But in their new book, Build Like It’s the End of the World, Sandeep Ahuja and Patrick Chopson frame buildings and carbon emissions in a way that might change how you think about it:

“Buildings offer some of the most cost-efficient ways of reducing carbon emissions and combatting climate change. This is because, unlike carbon capture or more efficient cars, buildings have a lot of room for improvement in their design and construction, which is often not even simulated or cost optimized.”

Ahuja and Chopson are the cofounders of Cove, an AI-powered consulting and technology platform that helps building designers and owners do just that—optimize buildings for both lower carbon emissions and lower costs. Every year, architects across the U.S. report their progress on reducing carbon emissions to the AIA, and Cove is the #1 tool they use to measure their impact. The goal? A 70 percent reduction in the building industry’s emissions by 2030.

In this episode of Deep Green: Deep Cut, METROPOLIS editor in chief Avinash Rajagopal sits down with Ahuja and Chopson as they break down how Cove works, why they think we ignore cost and profit to our own peril, and how AI will be critical to the future of climate action.

This season of Deep Green is produced in partnership with Mannington Commercial.

Resources:

cove

Build Like It’s the End of the World

Three Technologies Are Changing how We Design for Climate

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.