evolveEA Features Phipps Conservatory at UK Green Vision Conference

A real highlight of our July Green Vision conference was hearing from evolveEA, live from the US, describe their work at the recently completed Phipps Conservatory Center for Sustainable Landscapes. The audience in Leeds UK, along with many more tuned in on-line, listened to Christine and Mark Mondor present the inspiring background to the design and construction challenges overcome to address the Living Building Standard.
Of particular interest and real ‘take-aways’  for the audience was understanding how evolveEA addressed the Standard’s more demanding requirements, namely getting to net zero energy & water and meeting red-list material considerations, through the application of an Integrative Design Process to ensure multidisciplinary team collaboration. Collaboration is a key theme of the Green Vision view on sustainability, so evolveEA’s comment that sustainability requires “everybody talking about everything early” found real resonance.

Green Vision is a UK sustainability advocacy group and is the home of the Living Building Challenge UK collaborative, hosted by Claire Walker at Leeds Sustainability Institute and facilitated by Martin Brown at Fairsnape. In addition to sharing and engaging with regional and UK green thinkers, we also reach out globally, through use of social media and live web streaming to those making real change and progressing sustainability. It was therefore very fitting to have evolveEA join us in July, for what we hope to be the start of more collaboration.
Future Green Vision series will focus on Living Building imperatives, the autumn series featuring Sustainable Materials and our next half day conference scheduled for 11th December. Keep in touch via #GVis2013 and through our twitter chats on #Gvischat
Martin Brown, Fairsnape, August 2013