Top Ten Winner: New Occupant Survey
COTE commissioned occupant surveys of three Top Ten winners. The Center for the Built Environment at UC-Berkeley is performing these surveys, and the first one is now available—it’s a study of Sidwell Friends Middle School in Washington, DC, a project by Kieran Timberlake Architects. The first section is a high-level overview of the building’s performance. It contains basic metrics by category. Section two contains information at the question level. Section three contains information from and about the occupants.

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No Building Is An Island: A Look at the Different Scales of Energy
by Michelle Addington
Harvard Design Magazine aims to provide a forum for thoughtful and articulate practitioners, journalists, and academics, primarily from architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design and planning. Essays, images, discussions, book reviews, and recent projects appear regularly. Subscription information can be found on the magazine’s web site.

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Going Green: Strategies for Any Project
by Ted Shelton
The Journal of Green Building, the first publication to present practical articles and peer-reviewed research for the architect, builder, engineer, and all related professionals of the built environment, announces two free online tools for subscribers to their 2008 publishing season—Tips and Strategies on How to Successfully Implement LEED and Professors’ Green Picks. The first of these sections will offer helpful advice on earning points in various LEED categories; the second section will identify materials and technologies that yield superior sustainable performance. Subscription information for the Journal of Green Building can be found at the journal’s web site.

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Top Ten 2008 Winners:
PPTs, PDFs, and Web Site Resources

We celebrated the 2008 winners at the convention in Boston, both in a session and at an event at the EpiCenter (a 2007 Top Ten Winner), which was sponsored by NanaWall and GreenSource magazine.

GreenSource covered the Top Ten program in grand fashion this year—on the cover, chronicling the history of the program (founded in 1997), and devoting a full case study (http://greensource.construction.com/projects) to each of this year’s winners. Their lineup of writers tell the stories behind these benchmark projects.

As always, you can see the current (and past) Top Ten Green Projects Winners on the AIA Top Ten site. Did you know that you can also get a copy of the 2008 Top Ten PowerPoint presentation (or as a PDF here)? Additionally, the 2007 winners are available as 2- and 12-page case studies here.

Advancing Sustainable Design Around the Country
News from a selection of COTE chapters around the country

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A Proposal to Include Building in Carbon Trading Plans
by Huston Eubank

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Sharing for Strength, Changing the World:
Sustainable Design Leaders from Firms Gather to Share Best Practices
by Pauline Sousa, AIA

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An Introduction to the 50 to 50 Tool
by the AIA Sustainable Discussion Group

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Greening the AIA Honor Awards
by Anne Schopf and Henry Siegel

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AIA & USGBC Formalize the Collaboration
At summer’s start, the leaders and boards of the AIA and USGBC signed a letter of agreement to work together; AIA and COTE’s presence will be strong at Greenbuild this year as usual.

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Going to Greenbuild this year?
We’re hatching a plan for a COTE casual networking event on Wednesday, November 19, 6-8 PM. Come to Lucky’s Lounge on Congress Street (a short walk from the convention center) to meet COTE colleagues and share best practices about how your chapter is educating members, collaborating with USGBC and other allied organizations, and more.