Engineers can fulfill a vital role in their communities through civic activism, proactive engagement in shaping public policy and leading in the civic realm. This segment of the Ideas Institute will explore the future of civic activism and leadership in the public realm for engineers. It is time for the engineering community to contribute to this re-examination in the spirit of technological and environmental stewardship. Increased leadership from the engineering community is needed to help society prepare for future crises.

Join Kristof in an interview with members of the Engineering Change Lab USA as they explore the future of engineering.

Join Kristof as he interviews Zack Semke and Michael Ingui of Passive House Accelerator on all the great work they’re doing to build community in the building science field.

Passive House Accelerator

Mission

Together we can make a difference! We have seen the power of collaboration.

The Passive House Community is creative, driven, and Collaborative. Passive House Accelerator has been created to make it easier for others to learn about Passive House, to support the community by allowing them to share ideas and solutions, to continue and expand on the incredible conversations and sessions at conferences, and to allow those who are succeeding in creating beautiful projects and/ or solutions to share their knowledge.

Passive House Accelerator aggregates the already fantastic content from existing sites while also creating a new platform for people to share new ideas. This site will hopefully always be a work in progress.

One of the keys to the success of Passive House Accelerator is for you to contribute -

Create new short or long articles

Provide a short description and a link to an existing article on your own site

Share photos and details — lessons learned

Upload your finished Passive House Projects

Share an upcoming event on the calendar

Links to sites, people, projects, features and anything else you feel can accelerate Passive House.

If you would like to be a contributor please email [email protected]

Zack Semke (CPHC, LEED AP) is Director of Passive House Accelerator, VP of Marketing with Zola Windows, and owner of Semke Studio, a marketing consultancy for the high performance building industry. Part of Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Corps. Zack writes and speaks about the role that buildings can play in accelerating the clean energy transition. He studied human biology, with a focus on human ecology, at Stanford University (BA, ’93). Since then he’s worked as a policy advocate for progressive regional planning, a developer and leader of nonprofit community organizations, a taiko (Japanese drum) musician, and an evangelist for Passive House construction.

Michael Ingui is a Partner at Baxt Ingui Architects, located in NYC. Baxt Ingui is a highly collaborative architectural design firm that consists of a number of talented architects and teams, most of which are also Certified Passive House Designers. Michael is active in the Passive House community, speaking at many national and international conferences. The team at Baxt Ingui have extended their collaborative efforts by opening their homes during construction to teach architects, tradespeople, homeowners, and developers to integrate better building techniques.

Allison Bailes is writing a book! Allison writes the popular Energy Vanguard Blog. With a PhD in physics and thousands of hours spent in attics and crawl spaces, he knows a thing or two about houses. Join Kristof in a discussion with his old friend and colleague as they explore common myths about houses and talk about your next book purchase.

Dr. Allison Bailes III

With a background in physics and nearly twenty years of experience in many facets of the residential buildings industry, Allison Bailes has a good handle on what’s wrong with residential buildings and how to fix them. In 2001, he built a high-performance home and launched himself into a new career in the world of building science. Since that time, he has worked as an HVAC designer, home performance contractor, regional manager for a green-building program, and building science trainer. For most of this new career, Dr. Bailes has run his own companies. Energy Vanguard, which he started in 2008, is his current firm.

At heart, though, Dr. Bailes is a teacher. He taught high school science for three years prior to earning a PhD in physics from the University of Florida and then taught physics for six years at the college level after his graduate education. Since leaving academia, he has focused his teaching on the principles of building science. Through short presentations, workshops, and extended classes, he has helped thousands of people understand how buildings work.

What Dr. Bailes is most known for is writing the Energy Vanguard Blog, which gets ten thousand page views per day. He also writes regularly for Green Building Advisor and has had articles published in Fine Homebuilding, The Journal of Light Construction, Home Energy Magazine, and other publications. Dr. Bailes is also popular speaker at conferences, presenting keynote speeches, breakout sessions, and extended workshops. In addition, he is a runner, a juggler, and a skier as well as having the honor of being perhaps the only man included in Who’s Who of American Women.

The Book!

A House Needs to Breathe...Or Does It?

“Of course it doesn't. But the people in the house do! That's one of many myths I'll be exploding, along with lots of advice about how to do things right (and sometimes, how not to do them wrong). And with the coronavirus on everyone's mind now, one of the topics I'll be discussing is what's most effective at combating infectious microbes in your home...and what's not.

My goal with this book is to make it one of the most informative and readable building science books in the world. I want people who live in homes - and that's almost everyone - to know how their homes work and what they can do to be more comfortable, have better indoor air quality, and save money on their energy bills.”

Here's some of the advance praise I've gotten for the book:

Dr. Bailes is my favorite writer in building science and HVAC design because of how he simplifies and explains complex topics. This book is sure to be a must read.
~ Bryan Orr, Founder of HVAC School and host of their podcast

I am stoked to share my excitement about the upcoming book, "A House Needs to Breathe." Manufacturers, distributors, trades, and design professionals need to get it right - right now. There's so much bad BS (building science) floating around, it needs to be sanitized before society moves into more bad houses. Dr. Allison Bailes, a designer's designer, will clean house with this one - a recommended must-read!"
~ Robert Bean (ret.), ASHRAE Distinguished Lecturer, Mechanical and Building Construction Engineering

Allison Bailes makes the complex world of building science seem intuitive. He combines the penetrating analysis of a physicist with the flowing narrative of a storyteller. And the story he tells is about what your home can and should be doing to make your life better. You're going to want to read this book!

~ Kristof Irwin, P.E., host of the Building Science Podcast

“If you order this book, you'll get signed copies of the book. If you order at the Six Pack level or higher, you'll also get your name listed in the book. And the top four levels have other bonuses (free consulting, webinar, workshops, or advertising in the Energy Vanguard Blog) included for the same price per book.

Please go to the campaign page and then click the Pre-order button at the top right to pre-order your copies. And pass the link on to your family, friends, and coworkers.”

Energy Vanguard Blog

Southface

Passive House Austin

Now, more than ever, there is a tremendous amount of attention on how interconnected we are to our immediate environmental conditions (and to each other). As building science consultants. Our family, friends, colleagues and clients have asked us for years about information that will help them reduce their exposures to pollutants, like viruses, in their homes, offices, and other indoor spaces. So as we began contemplating this episode, we heavily considered talking more about the Novel Coronavirus and how our work can help prevent potentially worse future outbreaks. What we realized in the process is that creating the future we want to see is the only way out of the old paradigm. We have to internalize the fact that buildings can improve health outcomes, both for us as human beings and also for the health of our planet.

This podcast episode is the first of a five part series exploring what we see to be The 5 Principles Of A Healthy Home. Join Kristof and Miguel as we explore what it means to “start with a good enclosure.”

The 5 Principles Of A Healthy Home:

-Start with a good enclosure
-Minimize indoor emissions
-Keep it dry
-Effectively capture particles
-Ventilate

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It’s been an incredible year. Let’s unpack it together and take a look at what’s coming your way in Season 6 of the show. Join producer Miguel & host Kristof for a fireside chat as the winter settles in around us.

It’s time to fundamentally reevaluate the way we build - not just at the level of detailing, but at the scale of the city. What are the decisions we make about density and how do they affect our daily lives? Why do we orient our urban infrastructure around cars when they’re incredibly inefficient ways to move people around? Why can’t you get to 90% of your daily needs within a 15 minute walk? Join Kristof as he interviews Ruchi Modi of the architecture and urbanism firm, PAU on a range of topics exploring how urban environments (can and will) actually benefit the entire planet.

Ruchika Modi, AIA

Ruchika Modi is an associate partner and the studio director at PAU. A registered architect, she oversees all aspects of the design process in the office. Most recently Ruchika completed design development for Riverfront Square, a 730-unit residential project in Newark, NJ. She is currently spearheading the design of the Domino Sugar Refinery in Brooklyn, NY, an adaptive reuse project to transform a factory into offices with a mixed-use ground floor; the master plan and design of forty-one buildings as part of a mixed-use new development in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; and an arcade infill and POPS design for an Emery Roth–designed office building in Manhattan.

Before joining PAU, Ruchika was a senior associate at Standard Architects and a founding partner of Studio r&star in New York City. She has also worked at Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects, Richard Lewis Architects, Maria McVarish Design Services, and Tim Perks Architecture.

Ruchika holds a Master of Architecture degree from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, where she was awarded the Charles McKim Prize for Excellence in Design / Saul Kaplan Traveling Fellowship, the William Kinne Fellows Prize for Study and Travel Abroad, and the Lucille Smyser Lowenfish Memorial Prize. She received her BA in economics from the University of Delhi and a BA with distinction in interior architecture from the California College of Arts, San Francisco. Her work has been exhibited at the Center for Architecture in New York, the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, and the China International Architectural Biennale in Beijing.

PAU

Founded by Vishaan Chakrabarti, FAIA FRAIC, in 2015, PAU is both an emerging and an established global practice. We embrace architecture and city planning as allied fields operating along a range of scales. We break down disciplinary boundaries by expanding the definition of architecture and rejecting the silos that have ossified it. Our designers use both sides of their brains to be as creative as they are analytical. Given the breadth and depth of our team’s talents, but also in an effort to raise labor standards in our field, we treat our personnel with the utmost respect in terms of compensation, staff development, benefits, and work-life balance. Our team of twenty, our network of experienced collaborators, and our clients all come to PAU inspired by our desire to palpably and positively impact the world. Together we thrive on constraints such as program, constructability, public process, regulation, budget, and schedule as the fuel for innovation and beauty. To achieve this, from the precise scale of an architectural detail to the large scale of a master plan, ours is a group of “swiss-army knives,” professionals who employ an unprecedented range of skills and mindsets. We are fluent in multiple languages: we speak architecture, we speak culture, we speak ecology, we speak economics, we speak academia, we speak urbanity, we speak government, and, perhaps most importantly, we speak the language of democratic public process, because the complexities of the projects we design demand no less. Below are brief descriptions of the individuals who form our unique collective, a group of thinkers who build, utopian pragmatists whose dreams of impactful design have been forged in the white heat of hard-fought experience.

Architects and engineers have great power because they make decisions that influence resource and energy use in their buildings. With great power comes great responsibility and now is the time to become fluent in the language of embodied carbon. In this episode Kristof has a lively conversation with Z. Smith and Kelsey Wotila from EskewDumezRipple on this and some adjacent topics.

While insulation and airtightness are critical elements of a high performance building, they also can significantly increase the risk of health and moisture failure issues. In addition, if using high "embodied carbon" impact materials then high performance buildings can have a higher net carbon impact by 2050 than conventional buildings. Come join us to learn how to create truly healthy, durable, comfortable, and low carbon impact buildings. Join Kristof as he interviews Lucas Johnson in a discussion about the impacts of insulation material decisions.

Lucas is a building scientist who has worked as a builder, utility program manager, enclosure systems consultant, and clean tech venture capital consultant to deliver Zero Net Energy, Passive House, Living Future, and even two of his own standards: SUN Buildings and Active House. Lucas holds a degree in Physicochemical Biology as well as a Master of Environmental Science and

Lucas Johnson

EcoEntrepreneurship. His position at 475 is his dream job since he gets to share his experience by collaborating with architects, engineers, and builders to make their projects cost-effective, carbon negative, healthy, durable, and enjoyable.

As houses get tighter, we know they need to be ventilated (hopefully). But many in the building industry don’t understand ventilation well. We know about the less than ideal ways to do it, like raw fresh air intakes. We’ve heard of ERVs. And it seems like everyone thinks they want them, but nobody understands them or cares enough to actually bring them into a project. Well wonder no more friends. This episode is a two part series and a deep dive into the V in HVAC - demystifying the ventilation paradigm and making ERVs a topic you can wrap your head around after a few listens.

Don’t be afraid to rewind. Soak it up. Join Kristof as he interviews Chris Smith of Zehnder America about ERVs, HRVs, and all things ventilation.

Chris Smith, Business Development Manager, Zehnder America

Chris Smith is Business Development Manager for Zehnder America, a high-performance residential ventilation division of the Swiss-based Zehnder Group. Chris's technical inclinations were established as a teenager in his family's CNC machine shop and further developed as a guided-missile launcher technician in the U.S. Navy. He has spent over 15 years in the residential design/build industry as a designer and licensed construction supervisor. He is an NAHB Certified Green Professional and a Certified Passive House Tradesperson. He has designed custom, balanced ventilation systems for hundreds of projects and has personally installed many of them. Chris's professional passion is to help mature the North American building industry's knowledge and application of ventilation systems and promote best practices for healthy Indoor Air Quality.

As houses get tighter, we know they need to be ventilated (hopefully). But many in the building industry don’t understand ventilation well. We know about the less than ideal ways to do it, like raw fresh air intakes. We’ve heard of ERVs. And it seems like everyone thinks they want them, but nobody understands them or cares enough to actually bring them into a project. Well wonder no more friends. This episode is a two part series and a deep dive into the V in HVAC - demystifying the ventilation paradigm and making ERVs a topic you can wrap your head around after a few listens.

Don’t be afraid to rewind. Soak it up. Join Kristof as he interviews Chris Smith of Zehnder America about ERVs, HRVs, and all things ventilation.

Chris Smith, Business Development Manager, Zehnder America

Chris Smith is Business Development Manager for Zehnder America, a high-performance residential ventilation division of the Swiss-based Zehnder Group. Chris's technical inclinations were established as a teenager in his family's CNC machine shop and further developed as a guided-missile launcher technician in the U.S. Navy. He has spent over 15 years in the residential design/build industry as a designer and licensed construction supervisor. He is an NAHB Certified Green Professional and a Certified Passive House Tradesperson. He has designed custom, balanced ventilation systems for hundreds of projects and has personally installed many of them. Chris's professional passion is to help mature the North American building industry's knowledge and application of ventilation systems and promote best practices for healthy Indoor Air Quality.