The International Living Future Institute (ILFI), and its Living Building Challenge and Living Product Challenge certification standards, are gaining mind share and the attention of the architecture and design communities at a rapid pace.
It’s nearly impossible to gloss over what the ILFI is accomplishing, but for a deeper dive into its world, sustainability experts are attending ILFI’s two annual conferences. In fear of environmental FOMO, we at officeinsight decided to pack our bags and head to the Living Product Expo, held September 12-14.
A few weeks ago, an officeinsight article featured a new development in Cleveland, a city busy remaking itself. Just over two hours east of “The Land” is Pittsburgh, a city about 10-15 years ahead of Cleveland in rejuvenation efforts. As the host city of the Living Product Expo, Pittsburgh is charging ahead in environmental and technology fields, working hard to refashion itself as a leader city in both sectors.
The Living Product Expo brings together “leading minds in the product industry to inspire a revolution in the way materials are designed, manufactured and delivered.” In its third year, the Expo wanted participants to “share and discover disruptive new ideas and technologies that are reshaping their materials landscape, accelerating the pace of innovation and making Living Products possible today.”
The Living Product Expo is refreshing for the fact that every attendee there not only believes and advocates for sustainability efforts, but is committed to taking action to further those efforts and possesses a knowledge of environmental issues well beyond the average person in the A&D and materials communities. Rather than having sustainability people sprinkled throughout an attendee list, almost every single person at this conference was a top “sustainability person” at their respective firm or organization, which makes for a super-concentrated dose of sustainability discourse.
The conference, kept on track by the ILFI’s VP of Products + Strategic Growth James Connelly, was light on vanilla surface-y information and heavy on nuts-and-bolts knowledge of the sustainably product innovations and challenges people are facing.
Attendees were busy with a schedule of spectacular keynotes, a selection of special events around Pittsburgh, product and material innovation updates from companies both big and small, special events, juicy educational sessions organized into tracks, and a dazzling party at Pittsburgh’s magical Phipps Conservatory.
Put a few hundred sustainability junkies in the same room for a few days, and you learn a lot about all the things you can make using sustainable materials. Especially mushrooms…mushrooms are, no joke, a super-food of food- and plant-based building materials. The reps at every booth on the show floor are the sustainability experts at their companies, so the conversations going on among them and attendees could move into more environmentally specific realms; the same was happening in the educational sessions, with attendees learning valuable information and asking questions.
“I spent so much time on the show floor and only got through half of the booths today,” said Chloe Bendistis, a Sustainability Project Manager at The Sheward Partnership, and Expo attendee. “I specify all of these manufacturers, so I’ve been able to get really specific answers and get to the sustainability person at the company, because these are all sustainability people. If I need a certain letter for a client, for every order I make from a company, I can call up that point person every time for that letter.”
One of the most exciting parts of the Expo was a series of built-in slots that companies could use to talk about their new products and other innovative processes they were working on; attendees were treated to what really is a cutting edge view of what’s happening at the product development level.
The Expo also served as a springboard for the Introduction of the new Living Product Hub, a joint partnership between the ILFI and the Green Building Alliance (GBA). Located in Pittsburgh’s South Side neighborhood, the Hub “will serve as a center of education and outreach, connecting innovative buildings, communities and projects to the Institute’s network in order to accelerate regenerative buildings and manufacturing.”
To provide a foundation of support at the Hub, ILFI created an advisory board, “composed of Pittsburgh sustainability leaders drawn from business, academia, government, nonprofits and foundations,” that will provide “strategic advice, connection and support to ensure the initiative’s success” in accelerating sustainable development across Pittsburgh and beyond.
At the conference, Living Product Expo attendees got to meet the Hub’s team, as well as people on the advisory board.
As mentioned above, the Expo’s keynotes hit the mark:
>Paul Hawken. Executive Director, Project Drawdown
Mr. Hawken is one of the environmental movement’s leading voices. His most recent venture is called Project Drawdown, a nonprofit dedicated to researching when and how global warming can be reversed. Project Drawdown actually maps, measures and models the top 100 substantive technological, social and ecological solutions to resolve global warming, scaled to the year 2050.
“The science is incredible. We’ve identified the problem statement; now we need to solve it. I can’t explain to you why no one has done this yet – actually mapped out scientifically how to reverse global warming. Drawdown is a first plan. It’s not perfect, and it will continue to evolve.”
As the opening night keynote, Mr. Hawken gave attendees an overwhelming sense of inspiration. Look for a full officeinsight feature on Mr. Hawken and Project Drawdown in a future issue.
>Suzanne Lee. Chief Creative Officer, Modern Meadow; and Founder, Biofabricate
Ms. Lee is a leader in the emerging world of biodesign and biofabrication. A fashion designer by training, she fell down a rabbit hole learning about material biology. Known as the “one who grows clothes” (check out her TED Talk), Ms. Lee is carefully nurturing a community of people interested in the advancement of biofabrication – the “production of complex living and non-living biological products from new materials such as living cells, molecules, extracellular matrices and biomaterials.”
“Welcome to the Biofabrication Age,” Ms. Lee greeted show attendees. “And meet the new living factories – bacteria, algae, yeast, fungi and mammalian. These are some of the living systems currently being explored for their potential in technology, design and materials.”
Ms. Lee noted huge potential for new design possibilities “because we’re literally growing the material into the shape we want.” Stay tuned for officeinsight’s in–depth exploration of biofabrication, its implications for the interiors and building materials industries, and Ms. Lee’s work.
>Ken Cook. President and Co-Founder, Environmental Working Group (EWG)
The EWG is known as “one of the environmental community’s most prominent and influential critics of industrial agriculture, U.S. food and farm policy and the nation’s broken approach to protecting families and children from toxic substances. Under Mr. Cook’s leadership, EWG has pioneered the use of digital technologies to empower American families with easy-to-use, data-driven tools to help reduce their exposure to potentially harmful ingredients in foods, drinking water, cosmetics and other household products.”
The EWG is doing a lot of interesting work in the field, actively fighting for consumer rights and knowledge. His focus is to draw a line for consumers between the enforceable legal limit for any given substance (what the law says is okay) and the dangerous (unsafe and/or unhealthy) limit science and research establish.
“Does the public know what environmental standards are? And do they know how those standards are set? We’re trying to make people aware of the science behind all of this, and also work toward regulatory goals, involving everything from cost and technology to politics.”
Aside from the fantastic keynotes, the Expo’s educational sessions were full of deep dives into everything from “Traceability of Wood: Challenges and Opportunities for Transparency in the Supply Chain” and “Reverse the Flow: Innovation in Water Handprinting” to “Innovation and Market Disruption: Lessons from the Field,” to name a few. The next few months of officeinsight will feature the best of what we learned at the conference, for your reading pleasure!
The ILFI’s larger annual conference is called Living Future, billed as “the leading event for regenerative design.” Living Future 2018 is happening next year on May 1st-4th in Portland, Oregon. We found the Living Product Expo to be well worth any sustainability- or material-minded person’s time, and we’re excited to see what’s in store at the Living Future 2018 event in Portland.
Until next time, Pittsburgh!