In 2022, we at SERA completed our second annual assessment of the embodied carbon emissions for our full portfolio of projects. We’re pretty excited about this. Why are we so passionate about such a technical undertaking? It’s only partly because we’re data geeks. Tracking carbon and avoiding materials and assemblies with large carbon footprints help us […]
Breathe in. Breathe out. We’ve all been carrying a lot. Sustainability leaders in the built environment are no exception. Our roles are demanding – holding hope that our industry can make the monumental shift needed to reduce emissions, center human health and social equity, and halt ecosystem collapse, while also holding the reality that we […]
The West Coast has experienced an astonishing number of climate-related catastrophes in recent years. Wildfires created widespread devastation and smoke-choked air, atmospheric rivers resulted in extensive flooding, and a heat dome shattered records and resulted in a significant number of deaths. As architects, we know our work has a significant impact on the climate, and […]
The design and construction industry has spent two decades promoting net-zero energy buildings by combining operational energy efficiency and onsite renewable energy generation, but now the goalposts are shifting. There is a growing awareness that buildings generate massive amounts of carbon through “embodied carbon” emissions during construction, creating huge spikes in carbon emissions and undercutting […]
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 […]