There are some exciting new green building products that have been slowly making their way into the commercial market: an innovative insulating glazing unit, a super insulating aerogel blanket, and a rapid drying, self-curing concrete admixture.

 I recently conducted a webinar about continuous insulation in exterior wall assemblies, a topic that has achieved white-hot status among design professionals of late. 

 The Federal Government’s General Services Administration owns and leases over 350 million square feet of office space—nearly 10,000 buildings, housing more than a million federal employees.  

Ever since I learned that fiber optic cables could be used for lighting, I have been fascinated with the idea that light could be brought anywhere into a building through tiny, plastic strands. 

 “The building envelope shall be designed and constructed with a continuous air barrier to control air leakage into, or out of the conditioned space.”

Several years ago while working on a Colorado shopping mall I was surprised to see the Design Development drawings I was reviewing indicated insulation at the low-sloped roofing assembly as a mere R-11. The climatein this part of Colorado, as with most of Colorado, is cold—really cold. 

After a multi-punch assault on the USGBC’s LEED 2012 rating system, Rick Fedrrizzi, President of the USGBC, was forced to announce that LEED 2012 would not go to ballot as originally planned, would be renamed LEED V4, and would be delayed until June 2013.