evolveEA Papers on Green Building and Organizational Sustainability Published in Constructing Green Textbook and Journal of Green Building

The rapid market uptake of green building has transformed the design and construction industries, yet little attention has been given to how green buildings can transform the organizations that they house.  evolveEA has contributed to two publications that are establishing the next generation of thinking about sustainability and organizational evolution.

In Constructing Green: The Social Structures of Sustainability, published by MIT Press and edited by Rebecca Henn and Andrew Hoffman, evolveEA establishes how organizations can multiply their environmental effectiveness when they engage in a green building project. The chapter titled “Building Up to Organizational Sustainability,” by evolveEA’s principal, Christine Mondor, AIA and co-authored by Steven Hockley and David Deal, uses case studies to understand how organizations leverage green building efforts to become more sustainable across governance, policy and practices. The chapter summarizes five principles for action that demonstrate how the activity of creating buildings and landscapes can shape organizations and affect individual behavior.

The book looks beyond the technological and material aspects of green construction to examine the cultural, social, and organizational shifts that sustainable building requires. The essays offer uniquely multidisciplinary insights into the transformative potential of green building and the obstacles that must be overcome to make it the norm.

“Constructing Green is a true eye-opener. It demonstrates that, in addition to technology, a new cultural mindset is needed to meet the challenges of sustainability. No other book tackles green building so effectively and in such rich detail.” —Mauro F. Guillén, Director of the Lauder Institute, Wharton School.

Journal of Green Building, from College Publishing (Volume 8, Issue 1), features evolveEA’s article, “The David Lawrence Convention Center: How Green Building Design and Operations Can Save Money, Drive Local Economic Opportunity, and Transform an Industry.” This article is a detailed case study of a two year post-occupancy evaluation of Pittsburgh’s convention center—largely recognized as one of the world’s greenest facilities. Using almost a decade of performance data, the study, led by evolveEA and commissioned by the Green Building Alliance, investigated the building’s performance and return on the initial investment in sustainability. With input from Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics, CJL Engineering, and Civil and Environmental Consultants, the Buildings-in-Operation (BiO) study defined the business case for sustainability to the region, to the facility, and guided the efforts that culminated in the world’s first LEED EBOM Platinum certification for a convention center.

Constructing Green is available through MIT Press: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/constructing-green

Journal of Green Building is available at: http://journalofgreenbuilding.com/toc/jgrb/8/1