Purpose Building Partners with the Centre for the Sustainable Built Environment

About 20 years ago I was invited by Vivian Loftness, Head, School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University to visit the Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and participate in the annual meeting of their Advanced Building Systems Integration Consortium. This group included industry partners like BASF, Owens Corning and Turner Construction who annually sent representatives to meet with the university researchers at the Center.

The exchange of ideas that took place between the researchers and the leaders in the industry was clearly valuable to both parties. The researchers got direct feedback on how their work could create impact. The industry leaders got immediate access to the latest knowledge related to high performance buildings and, through their interest and questions, influenced the direction of future research.

When Shoshanna Saxe contacted us at Purpose to engage with the UofT’s new Centre for the Sustainable Building Environment as industry partners I was excited to work with her to create the conditions for success that I had seen at Carnegie Mellon. We look forward to creating an active dialogue with the UofT research team and our industry peers and to create a virtuous cycle of advancement in low-carbon infrastructure in Canada.

- Douglas Webber, P.Eng, LEED AP

Read more about the Centre for the Sustainable Built Environment here.