Jonathan Wright of Wright Builders speaks about their Living Building Challenge projects

Jonathan Wright of Wright Builders speaks about their Living Building Challenge projects

In the second BCT lecture of the fall season, Jonathan Wright of Wright Builders spoke about "Building at the Edge of Sustainability" as exemplified in their various Living Building Challenge projects. In his engaging talk, he outlined the process behind the Kern Center at Hampshire College and various other buildings and also provided an outlook for the future of sustainable construction. Synopsis Mr. Wright, a graduate of Hampshire College, has been an active regional leader in sustainable design and construction since 1976. The firm he co-owns, Wright Builders, Inc., recently completed two Living Building Challenge projects (R.W. Kern Center & Hitchcock Center for the Environment) achieving the highest standard of renewable and resilient design and construction. His upcoming book Spirit of the Makers will be published by Ecotone Press in 2019. His journalism has spanned several decades, and in 2018 his poetry and photograph collection Season of Dreams joined the 2014 poetry collection, After the Rain. Links Presentation slides Wright Builders Living Building Challenge Presentation Slides https://youtu.be/qN128ZRIveo...
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Marc Rivard of WoodWorks presents on new opportunities in MassTimber

Marc Rivard of WoodWorks presents on new opportunities in MassTimber

The first talk of our Fall 2018 BCT Lecture Series was given by Marc Rivard from WoodWorks. He outlined the many technological possibilities that exist with new wood-based building materials such as cross-laminated timber, nail-laminated timber, and various others, many of which have been used in the construction of the Olver Design Building at UMass. Synopsis Mr. Rivard is Regional Manager at WoodWorks, an initiative of the Wood Products Council providing free project assistance as well as education and resources related to the design of non-residential wood buildings. Mr. Rivard’s background in Structural Engineering with 15 years of relevant design experience using all of the major building materials, allows him to provide practical and cost effective solutions for Architects and Engineers. https://youtu.be/-eWk8sbdVrE Links Presentation Slides WoodWorks - Wood Products Council ...
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BCT Alumnus Profile: Katherine McCusker (MS ’12)

BCT Alumnus Profile: Katherine McCusker (MS ’12)

Katherine McCusker turned her passion for green building into a career after she pursued our Professional Master's program in Building Systems. Katherine works now for Integrated Eco Strategy in North Adams, MA. We recently checked in with her and she provided this advice for other students: "As a BCT grad student at UMass, I worked in the Facilities Department as Green Building Intern. I got to see how campus staff were planning for and implementing green building principles on campus. My thesis work looked at how buildings on campus compared, from an energy consumption perspective -- benchmarking the EUIs. I now work for a firm in North Adams called Integrated Eco Strategy. We are green building consultants who have found a niche in the world of Living Building Challenge (LBC) projects, specifically helping project teams with the Materials Petal of the program. We've worked on a few local LBC projects: the Kern Center at Hampshire College, the Hitchcock Center for the Environment...
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BCT Alumnus Profile: Peter Levy (MS ’13 and BS ’10)

BCT Alumnus Profile: Peter Levy (MS ’13 and BS ’10)

After graduating from the BCT undergraduate major, Peter Levy pursued our Professional Master's program in Building Systems and is now a Building Performance Analyst at The Green Engineer. We recently checked in with him and he provided this advice for other students: "I enrolled in the Sustainable Building Systems M.S. program knowing that I wanted a career based around reducing energy use in buildings, but not knowing exactly how, or with what tools I would accomplish this. After taking an Intro to Energy Modeling course, I had a pathway and a set of tools which would direct the rest of my academic studies, and lead directly into a career in sustainable design. During my studies, I took courses in energy modeling, building systems, and lighting design, which prepared me for my current position as a Building Performance Analyst at the Green Engineer in Concord MA. As an analyst, I run whole building energy simulations of large commercial, academic, residential and laboratory buildings...
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Mockups Help Students Understand Building Technologies

Mockups Help Students Understand Building Technologies

June 25, 2018 Inside the John W. Olver Design Building–itself a teaching tool for builders and architects–the Building and Construction Technology program (BCT) has built eight movable, full-scale mockups of building assemblies to help students see how modern building components go together in the real world. At home in front of a class or wheeled into public view in the Olver atrium, the mockups display the complexity of roofs, walls, windows and floors, and the intricacies, sequences and attachment methods the multiple layers of these assemblies require. Current building technology, whether commercial or residential, has grown more complex under the demands of climate change and energy costs, and it is critical to understand how each component of a building’s “envelope” responds to the physics of heat, liquid water, water vapor and air. The mockups reveal each layer in cutaway with adjacent QR codes to supply more detailed information. The mockups were built by BCT lecturer L. Carl Fiocchi in collaboration with student Alexander Okscin,...
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