Presentations

Reading, besides being a wonderful use of the mind, can help gather momentum on your chosen path:  This session will feature a slide presentation of many quotes from a plethora of interesting books that range from best sellers to a few you might not have heard about.

This Earth Day: Why is sustainability and green building an easy-sell to some, and resisted by others? A few key books provide a plethora of explanations. Steve Stelzer will present interesting facts and hypotheses from social, cognitive, and political sciences, and climate change works, that will help move the green building agenda forward. Steve began a booklist in 2003 in his quest to understand more about the environment and the perception of it. More and more has been written about the topic, almost to a crescendo; and Steve’s short list can get you up to speed.

Indoor Environmental Quality: We have a marvelous opportunity to hear from a premier source of information in this realm: the Executive Director of the Healthy Building Network, founded by Bill in 2000.

Houston has a tough climate for energy conservation. Learn from the design and the construction side of real methods to keep your homes comfortable in the context of affordability, safety, and sustainability. With a focus on the building envelope and the equipment inside, we will hear from an engineer and an HVAC installer that have real know-how and experience with Houston climate challenges, and not only with new projects.

Is anything less convenient, other than massive flooding? John Nielsen-Gammon, the State Climatologist of Texas, will update us for the first hour on the climate data in the past ten years and how that is impacting Houston. Additionally, three speakers will present current slides from the Climate Reality Project, an organization dedicated to catalyzing a global solution to the climate crisis.

Global Climate Reality Seminar: 02/22/2017

Sustainable development means compact mixed-use infill neighborhoods featuring connectivity, walkable streets and sites for social interaction – which contrast with sprawl development patterns that convert agricultural land, destroy wildlife habitat, require costly extensions of infrastructure, and make people dependant on personal automobiles.

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

The purpose of the Living Building Challenge is straightforward – it defines the most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment possible today and acts to diminish the gap between current limits and ideal solutions.

Where on earth are we going, and what can we do about it? The Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium is a profound inquiry into a bold vision: to bring forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on Earth.

If you are ready to explore what this vision means for you, and the opportunity to create an inspiring future, we invite you to attend (There was no separate presentation that is typical of our prior education sessions, the presentation used was material from this website).

The speakers will cover the best practices in Green residential building and energy efficiency technologies. Primarily intended for building officials, builders, suppliers, subcontractors, architects/engineers/residential designers, building trades’ instructors, students, apprentices, bankers, real-estate agents, and the general public. Each participant receives a course book containing more than 200 course slides and related green building information. (The downloadable presentation does not include the comments of the speakers).