Last week, at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft announced it is the first large corporate user of a new tool to track the carbon emissions of raw building materials. Microsoft is piloting the tool, called the Embodied Carbon Calculator for Construction or EC3, in the remodel of its 72-acre Seattle campus.
The tally of how many defective cross-laminated timber panels need replacement on a $79-million college of forestry building at Oregon State University is almost complete.
U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers' researchers, leading a team that recently completed the 3D printing of 9.5-ft-tall reinforced concrete walls for a 32-ft x 16-ft deployable barracks, are setting their sights on a future project--3D printing of concrete roof beams--even before they have put the precast concrete lid on the printed walls.
Saint-Gobain, one of the world's largest building materials makers, decided to prove the performance of its products in a real work setting by creating a high-performance environment in its North American headquarters in Malvern, Pa., and using the 289,000-sq-ft retrofit expansion of a 1960s building as a guinea pig for an occupant comfort study. The three-year research program went further than most occupant comfort studies by including a survey of staff in the former headquarters in Valley Forge, Pa., with its more traditional, rather than open-plan, office layout.
Delegates at the American Institute of Architects annual meeting late last month in New York City resoundingly passed an anti-abuse and anti-harassment resolution to amend the AIA Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.
