Buildings + Beyond Podcast

Many of us take good acoustics for granted. But it’s common for acoustic efforts to be the first thing cut from commercial projects—or not included in the design phase at all, according to Graham Waks, founder of Music City Acoustics.

Commercial kitchens are one of the most challenging spaces to electrify, but we need to take on this challenge in order to decarbonize restaurants, hotels, schools, hospitals, and other buildings with commercial kitchens. Is another green certification program the answer?

Remember when gas stoves became a political issue last year? While all that public debate was happening, there were chefs around the world embracing the concept of all-electric kitchens and getting past the learning curve to induction cooking.

Accessibility consultants work at the intersection of architecture and social justice. It’s much more than checking the boxes on accessibility requirements of laws and codes; it takes precision, dedication, and creativity to solve problems and remove physical barriers to access…

Listen as host Robb Aldrich poses the same 10 questions from the original episode, and a few new ones, to Lois and Dylan Martello—who both work on first-of-their-kind, largescale Passive House projects at Steven Winter Associates.

The International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) or “model code” establishes the minimum requirements for building energy efficiency. The code is updated every three years, and for 2024, a new consensus-driven development process brought together diverse stakeholders to determine those requirements.

Though electrification is important to reduce carbon emissions, electrifying buildings is not straightforward. Factors like cost, existing infrastructure, compliance needs (and we’ll say it again: cost!) can keep building owners from going all-electric.

In this episode, Ellen Honigstock, Senior Director of Education at Urban Green Council, sits down with Kelly Westby, Managing Director of the Building Operations, Decarbonization, and Efficiency (BODE) team at Steven Winter Associates. They chat about what it takes to…

Jonsara Ruth from the Healthy Materials Lab is on the Buildings + Beyond podcast to discuss how to phase out toxic ingredients and select materials that are healthy and affordable.

Over the lifespan of a building, operations and maintenance staff arguably have the biggest impact on system performance and energy efficiency. With the right training, staff can keep a building running as it was designed to run and “create the…

If jurisdictions cannot ban gas, how can we put electrification in the energy code? How should embodied carbon accounting be incorporated into energy codes?

Our guests on the Buildings + Beyond podcast discuss how to design and operate cost-efficient, high-performance, and comfortable buildings.