IDID Conference Assessment at AIA New Hampshire

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Integrated Design/Integrated Development

IDID 4 has now come and gone. A year's worth of planning, and it seemed the day was over in a flash, probably because everyone present was occupied and engaged — just as we hoped— and the schedule was jam packed! We had some breaks, though — two outdoor sessions, and the best lunch and dinner we've served yet!

The event really spanned three days, with LEED New Construction training on Thursday and Green Building tours on Saturday.

Friday's venue, Crotched Mount Rehabilitation Center, was an inspired choice. Holding the Conference at a place committed to sustainable design sets an example and a tone that pulls the whole group together. We not only had the Crotched Mountain CEO and visionary Don Shumway supporting our mission, he presented for the second year in a row. The Crotched Mountain staff went beyond all expectations, making us feel welcome, supported, and well fed (This is not the last you'll hear about the food!).

Thursday's LEED New Consturction Technical Review Course brought in nearly 70 attendees, and we've heard it was a full day. Arriving to set up for the next day I ran into several participants as they were leaving, and their exuberance was palpable.

Friday's conference, with 130 participants, opened with an overview of the opportunities to leverage NH DOT's $3.5 million to support community planning in the I-93 corridor. Kate Hartnett also outlined other initiatives such as a regional "natural services network" sparked by the NHDOT work. Cliff Sinnott described parallel innovations in conservation planning on the Seacoast. Carolyn Russell had great slides and information about new techniques to reduce and then manage stormwater.

Don Shumway and his team of planners presented the Crotched Mountain campus master plan to create and sustain healthy environments for the community that are beautiful, energy efficient, sustainable, and protective of their land heritage. The session was followed by tours that led different groups to various highlights on the campus.

Before lunch James Childress FAIA of Centerbrook Architects and William Maclay AIA, William Maclay Architects, talked about their winning projects in last year's IDID Excellence in Sustainable Design Awards Program. Both of these projects were inspiring. The clients seemed to shine in the presentations just as much as the building. It was clear that much of the design was a reflection of the leadership of the organizations.

Our Panel on Municipal Sustainability proved inspirational. NHPR's News Director Mark Bevis was smart and funny and the perfect moderator. Angela Vincent of Nashua made it clear that small steps can make a difference. Christa Koehler, talking about Keene, did a great job informing us about that community's green energy focus. Peter Britz from Portsmouth discussed the Portsmouth Library and the process of undertaking the first municipal building in the State to seek LEED certification. We wonder if the success he described might inspire support for additional LEED municipal buildings?

Barbara Batshalom's talk, "The Dollars & Sense of IDID," was highly appreciated and popular, and she clearly knew her audience. Learning about the hidden or overlooked costs of traditional design was enlightening and yet another motivation toward sustainable design and building practices. We've asked her to write something up for the NH Forum about this, so keep your eyes open for that.

Hikes of two proposed accessible hiking trails that are part of the Crotched Mountain Outdoor Recreation Master Plan were offered at the end of the day — a much needed break to stretch legs and build up an appetite, for an incredible banquet of locally grown, organic, and healthy food (Is dessert ever healthy? Well as close as we could get!)

After dinner we heard from Steven Strong on "Sunlight is Life." His PowerPoint presentation was a tour de force that convinced many in the audience that PowerPoint presentations, in themselves, are not automatic snoozes. Steve's acerbic wit punctuated a tour of not only what is possible, but what has been done, with hundreds of examples of aesthetically and architecturally integrated solar projects ranging from small residences to global corporate headquarters. He repeatedly made the point that solar heat and electricity generation is a viable route out of our (quoting Pres. Bush) "addiction to oil." Example after example was shown of buildings, even whole European towns, that are now energy exporters because of solar. They demonstrated ways to negotiate through the coming fossil-fuel bottleneck expected by mid century. Strong painted an alternative to more wars, suffering populations, increased pollution, and global warming, and a new era in which we plug in our cars in solar-cell-shaded parking lots, ride solar powered trains, and live and work in non-fossil fuel buildings. If you missed this presentation this time, don't miss the next one. You won't go away with out some kind of reaction!

The day after the conference was the national tour of "green" buildings, organized in New Hampshire by NH Sustainable Energy Association. More than 20 of us from the conference grabbed our box lunches, got on a bus, and headed out for a day of adventure. The first stop was a mill in West Peterborough that is in the final stages of being redeveloped by the ever-energetic Luc Monzies. From there we went to the first stage of a co-housing development in Peterborough. This in turn was followed by a house that is a living experiment, owned by an installer of energy saving products. Finally, we got to the Harris Center in tiny Hancock and marveled at their octagon meeting room, high performance envelope, and wood pellet boiler.

The tour on Saturday was a new event for IDID. It seems from the conference evaluation that it was a hit:

"The tour on Saturday and specifically the Peterborough Union Mill project was fantastic, because of the passion and knowledge of the project engineer/architect, Luc Monzies. In my opinion, his contribution to the overall success of the conference was significant. " (Harry Seidel, ALAE Design)

Biographies of the speakers

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