Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Brick as a Sustainable Building Material

Brick is a very sustainable building material and with the amount of brick found in demolition it is easily recycled and reused for new projects. The people an firms being honored in the event below have completed some very green building projects worth plenty of press!
BrickStainable Award Winners Honored During Ceremony at National Building Museum
Cambridge Professor Alan Short delivers "world tour" keynote address
ROCKVILLE, MD—April 6, 2011— Innovative thinkers from across the globe gathered in Washington, DC to recognize the winners of the 2nd Annual BrickStainable International Design Competition.
Competition winners created sustainable architectural designs using brick as the primary material. Potomac Valley Brick hosted the Awards Ceremony at the National Building Museum, an apropos location, given it is constructed with over 15 million bricks. Among nearly 200 guests included representatives from the EPA Energy Star Program, Integrated Environmental Solutions, Enterprise Green Communities, and the Brick Industry Association.
The night's festivities included a Keynote Address delivered by one of the industry's foremost minds on sustainable heavy construction, University of Cambridge Professor of Architecture, Alan Short, MA DipArch RIBA FRSA. Short took the audience on a riveting world tour of buildings his firm, Short & Associations, have designed that maintain a temperate interior atmosphere using minimal or no mechanical systems.  They've worked in various climates, from the desert of Malta to the fluctuating hot and cold of Chicago.
Video presentation clips from the jury deliberation revealed a little bit about why the four jurors selected each winning entry as the winners were called to the stage to receive with their awards.
The BrickStainable Competition was broken into two categories, integrated building design, where entrants were tasked with creating a sustainable building in an urban Baltimore setting, and technical design, where entrants explored specific aspects and assemblies of a brick.  Winners in the two categories include:
Integrated Building Design Grand Prize
·         Jamillah Muhammad, Ronald Moore, Dindo Mabana, Tou Boran Pek, Kathleen Stover, Boryana Fileva, a team from Perkowitz & Ruth in Virginia (USA) for Net Zero in Baltimore

Integrated Building Design Honorable Mentions

·         Robert Kane, a student in San Casciano (Italy) for in BRICK, of BRICK, for BRICK, & by BRICK
·         Heather Santos and Jillian Schroettinger, students at Cal Poly Pomona in California (USA) for MassEnergy Science Center
·         Shane Valentine, a student at University of Texas San Antonio, Texas (USA) for Cultivating Energy

Technical Design Grand Prize

·         Jason Vollen and Kelly Winn, of CASE New York (USA) for EcoCeramic Masonry Systems

Technical Design Honorable Mentions

·         Rizal Muslimin, a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Massachusetts (USA) for BrickBead
·         Jason Vollen, Kelly Winn and Ted Ngai, of CASE New York (USA) for Climate Camouflage
Potomac Valley Brick's President and BrickStainable Founder, Alan Richardson spoke of the global attention the competition has received, citing the 21,000 website visits from 128 countries.

"We set out to achieve greater awareness of the role brick can play in the green movement and with the support of our growing list of sponsors and endorsers it's starting to happen in a big way. This year total registrations were from 62 countries."


The Competition also offset carbon emissions through the Enterprise Green Communities, who attended the event and spoke about its efforts to provide affordable green housing through its carbon offset fund.  To see all of the winning designs, visit http://www.brickstainable.com/


About BrickStainable

BrickStainable is a design competition seeking integrative design solutions that promote the use of clay brick to achieve sustainability goals. The competition explores the potential of brick construction in the creation of energy efficient building and challenges designers to maximize the physical characteristics of brick. The competition was created by Potomac Valley Brick in 2009. It is sponsored by Belden, Boral, Carolina Ceramics, Cloud Ceramics, Continental Brick, Endicott Clay, Essroc Italcementi Group, Genco Masonry, Hanson, Hohmann and Barnard, Hyload, Integrated Environmental Solutions, KaRon Masonry, Lehigh-Heidelberg Cement Group, LF Jennings, Mason Contractors Association of America, Masonry Institute of Maryland, Merritt Construction Services, Mortar Net, Owens-Corning, Pavestone, Palmetto Brick Company, Redland Brick, Riverside Brick, Taylor Clay Products, Triangle Brick, United Masonry, Wells & Associates, and York Building Products. More information is available at http://www.brickstainable.com/ and on Twitter @pvbrick.
This release is available at www.BrickStainable.com/press-room.
Photo Caption:  Alan Richardson, president of Potomac Valley Brick & Supply, gives opening remarks to the BrickStainable Awards Program attendees.
This blog post was approved by http://www.igreenbuild.com/

1 comment:

  1. I am a little surprised that your article does not discuss the durability of brick. Brick facade buildings hold up well through time and have little maintenance cost. I am all for our buildings saving energy but I also think its real important for our buildings to have lasting value, that is to be designed well and built of durable materials.

    ReplyDelete