Last summer, SERA Principal in the Hospitality Studio Gary Golla convened a research group to look at mass timber construction in the hotel industry. Mass timber buildings tend to be thought of as beautiful, with warm, welcoming spaces and distinct sustainability advantages, but that doesn’t mean they’re a perfect fit for every use or building […]
In this final chapter of our series exploring our Sustainability Action Plan, we address the question, “So how does SERA actually use the plan in the real world?” Remember our Project Compass? SERA’s Project Compass is a tool we designed to note and understand the many aspects of sustainability in our work. We’ve used it […]
Energy efficiency, good water management, daylighting, and all the other sustainability strategies we champion are meaningless if they’re not available to everybody. Social sustainability and equity, as explored in this week’s podcast, must be at the core of our work. At SERA, social sustainability has roots in our founders Bing Sheldon and Don Eggleston’s dedication […]
Sustainability, when you scale it up beyond buildings to think about neighborhoods, campuses, or regions, isn’t just about stormwater and mini-power grids. Sustainable strategies have to be rooted in the character and identity of their location, and add to its richness—this is what we mean by sustainable placemaking. History, past development patterns, and ongoing community […]
As sustainable construction has evolved and our whole industry has made dramatic improvements around energy use and water management, we’ve learned to look more broadly—this is one of the biggest ideas behind SERA’s Sustainability Action Plan and in this latest podcast it extends to embodied carbon—at all the impacts involved with erecting a building, sourcing […]
A connection to nature allows humans to feel safe, healthy, and productive. We design for human experience and take responsibility for making the people who eventually move through our spaces feel those same things. So the topic of biophilia gets a lot of attention at SERA, whether we’re talking about a new building or interior […]
At SERA, we published our first Sustainability Action Plan (PDF) in 2011, with multiple updates since then. Earlier this year, we published our most recent—and extensive—version, which includes some new topics and a great deal of information about both the latest thinking in the industry, and some of the recent work we’ve done which explores […]
We live in interesting times. COVID-19 has changed the world. The simple rule (or recommendation, depending on your location) to stay home and stop socializing throws many of our deepest held assumptions and habits into turmoil, especially around how we approach work. At SERA, we’ve taken steps similar to many of our peer organizations: we’re […]