Join us April 20-23, 2021 for our online Living Future 2021 Conference! Check out our top 10 reasons to attend and then learn more on our conference website.

1. Three Incredible Keynotes
Adrianna Quintero, Senior Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Energy Foundation, kicks off the educational program Tuesday, April 21. On Earth Day, Mark Chambers, Senior Director for Building Emissions at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, will deliver a keynote address focused on the Biden Administration’s agenda for green building and opportunities for partnership with cities and private-sector leaders. Finally, Rosa Sheng, Principal at SmithGroup, delivers the J.E.D.I. Agenda – An Intersectional Approach to Designing a Resilient Future.

2. Living Product Expo Day – Tuesday, April 20, 2021.
The Living Product Expo is back! Hear from responsible materials providers about their products to help you accelerate in your work. Expo Day includes plenaries and tours of certified and pre-certified Living Building Challenge and Petal Projects.

3. Digital Art Gallery – Tuesday, April 20, 2021 – Friday, April 23, 2021
Walk through the virtual art exhibition Ritual For A Living Future, curated by Monet Clark, featuring her new video work with Brenda Laurel, as well as works by Edgar Heap of Birds, Cannupa Hanska Luger, John DiLeva Halpern and Emily Harris of the Center for Cultural Activism International, and Penny Slinger.

4. Case Studies – Friday, April 23, 2021
You asked and we listened! This year we are introducing several deep-dive case studies and a Short Stories Plenary on Thursday where you hear from project teams about challenges, successes and lessons learned during certification.

5. Inclusion + Unity – Tuesday, April 21, 2021 – Friday, April 23, 2021
The built environment echoes and perpetuates the structural inequities of our broader society. This is why we have selected the theme of Inclusion + Unity to drive the purpose of our intent. Climate justice and social justice are inextricably linked. We cannot begin to resolve the current climate crisis if we do not address the underlying inequities that are pervasive throughout our housing, cities, and communities. Only when we recognize the inherent dignity of all can we come together as one, a unified force in pursuit of justice for our people and our environment.

6. Spanish-Language Track – Wednesday, April 21, 2021
Join the first-ever Living Future Spanish-language track! Seventeen speakers will explore the needs and solutions of Latin America through four Spanish-language sessions.

7. Unconference Sessions – Friday, April 23, 2021 We’re going back to our roots and putting the “un” back in unConference! We’ll be taking your crowdsourced ideas to build the agenda for these free-form conversational sessions. Submit ideas for these sessions here up until the start of the event.

8. Continuing Education!
Did you know? Living Future Accreditation (LFA) requires 36 LFA CE credits, and attending Living Future will help get your there! Through live attendance and replays, you can complete all 16 LFA General credits. Sessions are also being submitted for AIA credit.

9. Be with community!
Living Future brings together leading minds of regenerative design, green building, climate advocates, and sustainability. These are the hopefuls, the change makers, the innovators, who are shaping the future. Come together with YOUR community through appointments, break out spaces, and sessions.

10. Celebrate 15 years of LF and plan for the next decade
Here at ILFI, we love a good party and we’re excited to mark the 15th year of Living Future with a DJ Dance Party! Celebrate Earth Day with us as we work together to accelerate the impact we make to repairing our built environment and our planet.

Over the next few weeks, we will introduce some of the incredible practitioners, change-makers and innovators who are speaking at Living Future 2021. This week, we are featuring Susan King and Tania Kadakia.

Tania is the Director of Partnerships and Residential Investments at DLR Realty and has dedicated her career to taking part in redeveloping communities and helping low and moderate income people have a good place to live. Susan, a Principal with HED Architects and advocate for sustainable, attainable housing, has been an active participant in the Living Future Affordable Housing Pilot Cohort 3 and 4. 

Lily Rybarczyk: What initially drew you to a career in sustainability?

Susan King: To be honest, I was drawn to architecture first.  In part the word “sustainability” did not exist in the context it does today when I started college.  I hate to be a cliché, but the leap from architecture to sustainability is natural.  It is not, or shouldn’t be separated.

Tania Kadakia: Similar to Susan, “sustainability” wasn’t something that existed as a career or even part of one when I was in college.  I was interested in affordable housing as a social justice issue and moved into the finance and development aspect of that work.  Affordable housing eventually presented the opportunity to incorporate environmental solutions and is how I started to interact with sustainability.  As I’ve worked with financing for a long time, the new and interesting areas for me are design, construction and sustainability.

LR: What does this year’s theme, “Unity + Inclusion,” mean to you? How does this translate to your personal or professional life?

SK: The theme this year is in lockstep with the Social Justice and Equity movement that has been building for some time in the United States and globally.  To me it has always been intertwined, but the early years of sustainability in the design industry were really focused, as they needed to be on how we build and what we use to build.  This is not to say there isn’t still a ton of work to do in these other arenas, but I am excited to see that we have the energy and space to bring social equity into the discussion now.

TK: I think we all have to get out of the straightforward paths we are on and figure out how, whether in our daily lives, professional careers, etc to make our personal contribution to inclusion.  As a community, country, world, we can only achieve unity through learning how to include others.

LR: You are presenting on “Advocacy in Action: Unifying a Multi-Faceted Approach to Solving the Housing Crisis at Scale,” why do you feel it is important to discuss this at Living Future? What do you hope conference attendees will take away from this session?

SK: The session was conceived as a workshop, so we are challenged with harnessing our audience’s energy virtually in a really short time period.  We have some ideas about how to do this, so we will see how it goes.  In the spirit of unity our goal for the workshop was to break down what I call the problem solving silos around the housing crisis.  Through this breakdown we believe that new solutions will emerge.  We recognize that this will take more than an hour so we are hoping a community or network focused on these issues is an outcome.

TK: To this audience (based on the attendee data that ILIF provided) I would note the importance of connecting with developers and finance people (banks and equity) around sustainability.  Developers control the development process more than any other single participant in the process.  I think many developers want to incorporate sustainability but they also have to get a project financed and not lose money on the project.  I am looking forward to collaborating with the audience to figure out how can we help bridge that gap.

Hear more from Susan, Tania and their co-presenter, Jordan Sullivan, at their session, “Advocacy in Action: Unifying a Multi-Faceted Approach to Solving the Housing Crisis at Scale,” as they explore creative financing strategies and solutions on April 23 at Living Future 2021!

Over the next few weeks, we will introduce some of the incredible practitioners, change-makers, innovators and projects you’ll be introduced to at Living Future 2021. This week, we hear from Isaac Adams, Associate Principal at Bora Architects and a core team member on the Metro Center project at Portland Community College.

Lily Rybarczyk: What does sustainability look like to you? 

Isaac Adams: One of my favorite examples of sustainable design is the Pantheon in Rome. Beautiful, adaptable and resilient. A celebration of solar access and passive heating and cooling. Innovative structural and stormwater systems. To me, the Pantheon is an example of an ancient Living Building that inspires future designers and serves the public as a teaching tool about sustainability today. 

LR: What initially drew you to a career in sustainability? 

IA: In 2001 I decided to pursue a career in architecture and began to research grad programs. Around that time a friend of mine went to see a lecture by Bill McDonough and managed to obtain a recording of it on VHS tape, which he then mailed to me. The lecture had an immediate and profound impact on me. Why not design buildings that preserve resources and improve health? McDonough made sustainable design sound like a natural mission for architects. I ended up attending the University of Oregon because of the faculty’s expertise in sustainability. 

LR: What does this year’s theme, “Unity + Inclusion,” mean to you? How does this translate to your personal or professional life? 

IA: I’ve always loved the philosophy that architecture – at its best – is performed in service to others. I see this year’s theme as an evolution of that philosophy – a call to serve those who have been left out of the design process in the past. To do that we need to ask tough questions about how our designs are perceived, and then listen and learn. As I’ve learned from recent Critical Race Theory training, space is never truly neutral. 

LR: Can you speak to the importance of applying sustainable and equitable concepts in an educational institution? 

IA: I think educational institutions like Portland Community College – the focus of our presentation – are ideal incubators for developing learning environments that embrace the interconnectedness of social and environmental justice. Teaching sustainable concepts to the public is critical so we are all working towards a low-carbon future. But even the design of our built environment can play a powerful role in promoting awareness, highlighting the urgency of the global climate crisis. The adoption of sustainable and equitable concepts in education lays the foundation for economic development through the green jobs of the future. By improving access to quality workforce training and healthy educational environments for a diverse student body, PCC strengthens our entire community.  

LR: This panel is presenting on “Embracing Equity & Inclusion in the Design of Community Buildings,” why do you feel it is important to discuss this topic at Living Future? What do you hope conference attendees will take away from this session?  

IA: We are excited to share the lessons learned from the PCC Metropolitan Workforce Training Center project because the guiding principles – such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) – have opened our eyes to social and environmental injustices perpetuated by the design community. We hope the audience will be inspired by the tenets of CRT and Design Justice and motivated to adopt a more inclusive design process that elevates underrepresented voices and celebrates diversity for users and the community at large.  

Hear more from Bora Architects and the Metro Center team during “Embracing Equity & Inclusion in the Design of Community Buildings,” on April 21 at Living Future 2021!

Between now and the Living Future Conference in April, we will introduce some of the incredible practitioners, change-makers and innovators who are speaking at Living Future 2021. This week, we are featuring Joella Hogan and Alanna Quock.

Joella created and led the Heritage & Culture Department of the first Nation of Nacho Nyäk Dun. Alanna is a Tāłtān and Tlingit planner, designer, and creative problem solver. She is principal and founder of Regenative Design. The two, based in the Yukon and British Columbia respectively, worked collaboratively on the planning of a new Cultural Centre for the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyak Dun (FN NND) in Mayo, Yukon Territory. 

Lily Rybarczyk: What does sustainability look like to you?

Joella Hogan: Our communities and this project are guided by traditional principles based on compassion for others and helping people in their journey of transformation into their real self. In Canada and in indigenous communities like mine in Mayo, we really draw on our cultural resiliency and connections to the land to support people through trauma, addictions, and other mental health issues. For me at the heart of sustainability are happy, healthy people grounded in culture and connected to the land. 

Alanna Quock: There are different threads of stories that tell that for me. I stopped using the word sustainability after I finished my undergrad in 2006. I am now transitioning back into some of the stuff that I looked at in my undergrad, like protected areas, culturally appropriate protection, architecture. I feel like this connection of people to place and the importance of having us as Indigenous people actively engaged with our land and the land base is what brings life to its fullest expression. It’s that concept of grounding and place from an Indigenous perspective, but translating that into the built environment and architectures across scales.  

I have a really hard time answering the question when people ask me what I do, but regenerative is part of my company’s name, Regenative Design. For me, it’s that sustaining is keeping things as they are and we need to add to that supporting life. Regenerative is the healing process, the supporting life process and that’s the really important piece that we need to get to that now, everywhere. 

LR: What initially drew you both to your careers in sustainability and the built environment? 

JH: In terms of environmental, which when I think of sustainability it always goes to the ecological thing first, when I was growing up I spent a lot of time hunting and fishing, out at the cabin. I started paying attention to more global issues and one of them was saving the manatees in Florida or protecting the rainforest, which seems so funny now. It was all about these global environmental issues happening around us, not paying attention to what was local. 

When it came time to decide what to do for university, I didn’t have a full grasp of really what the opportunities were in the environmental field. One of the professors at the University of Northern British Columbia recommended environmental planning. I had no idea what that was but I knew that I wanted to be a part of change and forward-thinking, not reacting to environmental things. I also knew at that point that I would always come back to the north. That’s why I wanted a better understanding of global issues, how these issues might impact the north, and also how decisions in the north can be a part of change and creating better communities. What I had seen around me was that if we didn’t have people that were connected to the land, of it, on the land then we weren’t making good decisions about land and culture. I wanted to be a part of supporting people to make better decisions around caring for the land.

AQ: I haven’t heard that story and I’m so happy to have heard it! Mine is a completely different context, but has a similar arc. I grew up in the Yukon. My dad was a biologist, my mom was a geographer but also worked in education. 

I ended up going to McGill, and I ended up in a course called “Knowledge, Ethics and the Environment” the day of the course’s add/drop. It was three different sections, with three different professors, and one of them was stories of free Northern Cree worldview. This led me to the McGill School of Environment, where I ended up doing my undergrad on environment and development. Peter Busby came and did a lecture at McGill about the CIRS building at UBC. It was just a concept at that point, and it was going to be the first regenerative design building. I loved the idea of that and I wanted to get into architecture because buildings contribute so much waste and consume so much energy. 

I went to UBC for my Master’s in Architecture.  The green building talk wasn’t integrated and I was really expecting at this point that it would be integrated within everything, but it really wasn’t. My undergrad was development, and like Joella said we were always looking south. In our Indigenous communities, we basically have developing conditions, so I ended up shifting my lens back north. What I realized in architecture was yes we have the technology, we have the solutions, we have all these things that we do, but we don’t have the political will or the decision-making capacity within people to choose. This is where, for me, it came back to people and behavior, and I ended up focusing my research designing process to make a more meaningful process to get a product that actually works. 

So, I thought it was about solving global warming and climate change but to do that we need to change the way we do buildings, but to change the way we do buildings we need to actually change behavior and the way that we design buildings.

LR: What does the theme of Unity + Inclusion mean to you?

JH: I feel like this is very much what we strive to do anyway, like so much of what Alanna said about inclusion and the process, from the beginning of this project we wanted to include as many voices as possible. We didn’t want to create a space where people didn’t feel welcome, we wanted to create a space where everyone felt like they matter and we wanted to include all of those voices. The other aspect is there is unity and inclusion, but also diversity and multiculturalism, and how that fits and making sure that what we do through design and the building and all of the work that we both do is reflecting all of that uniqueness.

AQ: The big thing that I think about right now is listening and belonging. In the process of doing this project we’re really trying to make explicit how we’re listening, and to truly engage, what does that actually mean. In the concept of regenerative development, how can the participants in the process actively design that process and engage in the design of that process? For me, this where the translation from the academic concept to actually doing it is so hard and I think this is what sets apart the work that we’re doing. We are really trying to take the time and create that space to develop the relationship that allows people to feel like they are involved and that they have ownership of the project, that they don’t feel separate from it. You need to be able to hold the discomfort, hold that space, then allow it to open up for people to come into the project. What I’m trying to do is translate the needs of the community, the needs of the architect team, and have them understand one another so that it then translates into a beautiful building that people feel like they belong to and supports them. 

JH: So much of what Alanna said made me think about how what we’re striving to do is put the power back to the people, and that that is hard. When she talks about discomfort, for so long our people were just given buildings, “this is your house, this is your youth center, this is that.” Now we’re turning it back in, “What do you want? What do you want that building to look like? What do you want to be able to do there?” Asking all of those questions, and asking the right questions too, that are about like function as much as it is about form. We are taking our time to do this particular building in a slow way, to reflect, using other projects as a learning process. It’s really about putting that power power, but also the responsibility back on the people, so that the people have the opportunity to design the places and spaces that they want to be a part of, and live and work and play in. 

LR: What do you hope people will take away from this session? 

AQ: One concept that comes to mind is this idea that of cultural humility, the importance of having cultural humility and what we have to learn from indigenous ways of knowing and being. In the sustainability context, the Indigenous worldview understands everything as connected and understands everything in relationship. To me, that comes back to the beginning of where we need to re-establish our relationship to place, in all cultures, in all places, but it’s Indigenous communities that have that knowledge to share. I’m really hoping that in our session we can convey that in a modern context, this isn’t going back, this is moving forward, this is how we enact this way of being. Joella and I both have completely different stories. I’m re-establishing my connection to my own nation as an adult, and that’s ok. I still have something to share and I still have something that I know in my bones. When I drive north and I go through my territory, my heart beats differently, I feel such a connection. I feel like that’s what we need to share is this importance of that connection to the land and to place and how that understanding translates to the solutions that we need for the major challenges that we face as humanity. Relationships are really important to each other and to place.

Hear more from Joella and Alanna during “Enan ts’in Inna (Go Forward in a Good Way),” on April 21 at Living Future 2021!

Between now and the Living Future Conference in April, we will introduce some of the incredible practitioners, change-makers and innovators who are speaking at Living Future 2021. This week, we are featuring Mark Chen, Senior Sustainability Engineer at Skanska, one of our event sponsors.

Lily Rybarczyk: What does sustainability look like to you?

Mark Chen: This will be my fifth Living Future, and every year we talk about the dramatic improvements that need to be made in the next decade to ensure a sustainable future for our planet. That being said, sustainability has never looked like a certification or accreditation to me; it looks like a challenge to push the status quo every day, even in the face of failure.

LR: What initially drew you to a career in sustainability?

MC: Growing up in Los Angeles with asthma, air quality was always a visible and personal problem for me and had me thinking about sustainability from an early age. As I got older and learned more about the different facets of sustainability and the opportunities to improve the health of our people and planet, I knew that this was what I wanted to focus my career on.

LR: What does this year’s theme, “Unity + Inclusion,” mean to you? How does this translate to your personal or professional life?

MC: Unity + Inclusion means including all communities and stakeholders in our decision making. Marginalized communities are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change, pollution, and resource scarcity, and that concept is not a new one. In my personal and professional life I’ve found that if you look hard enough, there is always a strong tie between sustainable solutions for the environment and sustainable solutions for people. I try to always remember that.

LR: You are presenting on “Contractor Contributions to Embodied Carbon Reduction.” Why do you feel it is important to discuss this topic at Living Future? What do you hope conference attendees will take away from this session? 

MC: I think there needs to be a paradigm shift where contractors and construction companies are at the forefront of sustainability in the built environment. The work and research being done around embodied carbon has shown that contractors have a huge impact on a project’s pollution and resource footprint, which is why this presentation topic is important to me. I hope conference attendees will leave Living Future 2021 inspired and equipped with knowledge that will help them push past business as usual when they go back to work the next week.

Hear more from Mark and his co-presenters during “Contractor Contributions to Embodied Carbon Reduction,” on April 22 at Living Future 2021!