This biographical article is written like a résumé .(October 2010) |
Gail Vittori (born October 7, 1954) is co-director of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, a non-profit design firm established in 1975 dedicated to sustainable planning, design and demonstration [1] [2] where she has worked since 1979.
Since 1993, Vittori has coordinated the center's Sustainable Design in Public Buildings Program, including serving as a sustainable design consultant for the Pentagon Renovation Program's Commissioning Team from 1999 to 2006, numerous City of Austin design projects including Texas's first public sector LEED certified building, the redevelopment of Austin's 709-acre (2.87 km2) former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport including piloting LEED for Neighborhood Development, [3] the new Austin federal courthouse, and the first LEED-Platinum certified hospital in the world, Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas.
Beginning in 2000, Vittori led several national initiatives focused on greening the health care sector and advancing environmental health considerations in green building. Examples include collaborating on the development of the American Society of Healthcare Engineering's (ASHE) Green Healthcare Construction Guidance Statement, and the Green Guide for Health Care, convened by the center in 2002, a project of CMPBS and Health Care Without Harm. She currently serves as a co-coordinator of the Green Guide for Health Care and is founding chair of the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED for Healthcare core committee (2004–2008). Vittori was the 2009 chair of the U.S. Green Building Council's Board of Directors. [4] In 2009, Secretary Janet Napolitano appointed Vittori to the Department of Homeland Security's Sustainability and Efficiency Task Force. In 2011, Vittori was appointed to the GBCI (Green Business Certification Inc.) Board of Directors, and has served as its chair from 2014 to 2019. She is a founding board member of the Health Product Declaration Collaborative, and has served as vice-chair from 2015 to 2019.
In 1989, Vittori proposed a conceptual framework for what evolved as the City of Austin's Green Building Program, the only U.S. program recognized at the 1992 U.N. Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and the first green building program in the world. Along with Pliny Fisk III, she oversaw the program's early stage development through 1992. Austin's Green Builder Program influenced the formation of the U.S. Green Building Council and LEED, in addition to scores of policies throughout the U.S. and abroad. Additionally, from 1988 to 1998, she served on the city's Solid Waste Advisory Commission, six of those years as founding chair, a committee formed in response to a successful initiative co-coordinated by Vittori to cancel a proposed waste-to-energy municipal solid waste incinerator. Her work on establishing pay as you throw recycling residential programs, in addition to recycling programs for the city's commercial and multi-family sectors, has led Austin to having one of the nation's most successful recycling programs. Her work in this area continues with promoting zero waste by 2040, adopted by the Austin City Council in January 2009. Vittori is on the advisory boards of Natural Home magazine and Environmental Building News.
Vittori was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 1998 to 1999, and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she studied economics. She is married to Pliny Fisk III and has two children.
Green building refers to both a structure and the application of processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle: from planning to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition. This requires close cooperation of the contractor, the architects, the engineers, and the client at all project stages. The Green Building practice expands and complements the classical building design concerns of economy, utility, durability, and comfort. Green building also refers to saving resources to the maximum extent, including energy saving, land saving, water saving, material saving, etc., during the whole life cycle of the building, protecting the environment and reducing pollution, providing people with healthy, comfortable and efficient use of space, and being in harmony with nature Buildings that live in harmony. Green building technology focuses on low consumption, high efficiency, economy, environmental protection, integration and optimization.’
Sustainable architecture is architecture that seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings through improved efficiency and moderation in the use of materials, energy, development space and the ecosystem at large. Sustainable architecture uses a conscious approach to energy and ecological conservation in the design of the built environment.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a green building certification program used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), it includes a set of rating systems for the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of green buildings, homes, and neighborhoods, which aims to help building owners and operators be environmentally responsible and use resources efficiently.
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), co-founded by Mike Italiano, David Gottfried and Rick Fedrizzi in 1993, is a private 501(c)3, membership-based non-profit organization that promotes sustainability in building design, construction, and operation. USGBC is best known for its development of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating systems and its annual Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, the world’s largest conference and expo dedicated to green building. USGBC was one of eight national councils that helped found the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC). The current president and CEO is Peter Templeton.
The Rawls College of Business is the business school of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. Rawls Business offers curriculum for both undergraduate and graduate students and received its initial business accreditation in 1958 from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Established in 1942, Texas Tech's business school was originally known as the Division of Commerce. In 1956, the school was renamed the College of Business Administration. Following a $25 million gift from alumnus Jerry S. Rawls in 2000, the school was renamed as Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration.
Energy engineering or Energy Systems Engineering is a broad field of engineering dealing with energy efficiency, energy services, facility management, plant engineering, environmental compliance, sustainable energy and renewable energy technologies. Energy engineering is one of the most recent engineering disciplines to emerge. Energy engineering combines knowledge from the fields of physics, math, and chemistry with economic and environmental engineering practices. Energy engineers apply their skills to increase efficiency and further develop renewable sources of energy. The main job of energy engineers is to find the most efficient and sustainable ways to operate buildings and manufacturing processes. Energy engineers audit the use of energy in those processes and suggest ways to improve the systems. This means suggesting advanced lighting, better insulation, more efficient heating and cooling properties of buildings. Although an energy engineer is concerned about obtaining and using energy in the most environmentally friendly ways, their field is not limited to strictly renewable energy like hydro, solar, biomass, or geothermal. Energy engineers are also employed by the fields of oil and natural gas extraction.
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford (LPCH) is a nationally ranked women's and children's hospital which is part of the Stanford University Health system. The hospital is located adjacent to the campus at 725 Welch Road, Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 1991 and is staffed by over 650 physicians with 4,750 staff and volunteers. The hospital specializes in the care of infants, children, teens, young adults aged 0–21, but sometimes treats older adults and expectant mothers. Lucile Packard Children's Hospital is an ACS verified Level 1 regional pediatric trauma center, 1 of 7 in the state.
Perkins&Will is a global design practice founded in 1935. Since 1986, the group has been a subsidiary of Lebanon-based Dar Al-Handasah. Phil Harrison has been the firm's CEO since 2006.
Sustainable engineering is the process of designing or operating systems such that they use energy and resources sustainably, in other words, at a rate that does not compromise the natural environment, or the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Seton Healthcare Family, also known as Seton Family of Hospitals, is a Roman Catholic-affiliated hospital network in the Greater Austin area. It is a member of Ascension, a not-for-profit health organization located in St. Louis, Missouri.
The Chicago Center for Green Technology was a 34,000-square-foot (3,200 m2) US Green Building Council LEED Platinum certified building located on a plot of 17 acres (69,000 m2) in Chicago's East Garfield Park Community built to showcase green technologies. This was the first municipal and brownfield site to win a LEED Platinum award. This project was completed as part of Mayor Richard M. Daley's Chicago Brownfield Initiative (CBI). The center offered workshops focusing on green technology and sustainable design, a green building resource center, and self-guided or guided tours to visitors.
Land recycling is the reuse of abandoned, vacant, or underused properties for redevelopment or repurposing.
Green building on college campuses is the purposeful construction of buildings on college campuses that decreases resource usage in both the building process and also the future use of the building. The goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, energy use, and water use, while creating an atmosphere where students can be healthy and learn. Universities across the country are building to green standards set forth by the USGBC, United States Green Building Council. The USGBC is a non-profit organization that promotes sustainability in how buildings are designed and built. This organization created the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, which is a certification process that provides verification that a building is environmentally sustainable. In the United States, commercial and residential buildings account for 70 percent of the electricity use and over 38 percent of CO2 emissions. Because of these huge statistics regarding resource usage and emissions, the room for more efficient building practices is dramatic. Since college campuses are where the world's future leaders are being taught, colleges are choosing to construct new buildings to green standards in order to promote environmental stewardship to their students. Colleges across the United States have taken leading roles in the construction of green building in order to reduce resource consumption, save money in the long run, and instill the importance on environmental sustainability on their students. It is a better way to motivate new generation to live a sustainable life.
Pliny Fisk III is a co-founder and co-director of the "Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems" (CMPBS), a sustainable design and planning 501c3 non-profit established in 1975. Fisk also serves as Fellow in Sustainable Urbanism and Fellow in Health Systems Design at Texas A & M University, where he holds a joint position as signature faculty in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Planning. Fisk has previously held positions at: Ball State University, The University of Texas, Mississippi State University and the University of Oklahoma.
Environmentally sustainable design is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of ecological sustainability and also aimed at improving the health and comfortability of occupants in a building. Sustainable design seeks to reduce negative impacts on the environment, the health and well-being of building occupants, thereby improving building performance. The basic objectives of sustainability are to reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources, minimize waste, and create healthy, productive environments.
The California Green Building Standards Code is Part 11 of the California Building Standards Code and is the first statewide "green" building code in the US.
Green building is a technique that aims to create structures that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout their lifecycle – including siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition. A 2009 report by the U.S. General Services Administration evaluated 12 sustainably designed GSA buildings and found they cost less to operate.
"Sustainability," was defined as “development which implies meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”as defined by the 1983 Brundtland Commission. As sustainability gains support and momentum worldwide, universities across the United States have expanded initiatives towards more sustainable campuses, commitments, academic offerings, and student engagement.
Sustainable urbanism is both the study of cities and the practices to build them (urbanism), that focuses on promoting their long term viability by reducing consumption, waste and harmful impacts on people and place while enhancing the overall well-being of both people and place. Well-being includes the physical, ecological, economic, social, health and equity factors, among others, that comprise cities and their populations. In the context of contemporary urbanism, the term cities refers to several scales of human settlements from towns to cities, metropolises and mega-city regions that includes their peripheries / suburbs / exurbs. Sustainability is a key component to professional practice in urban planning and urban design along with its related disciplines landscape architecture, architecture, and civil and environmental engineering. Green urbanism and ecological urbanism are other common terms that are similar to sustainable urbanism, however they can be construed as focusing more on the natural environment and ecosystems and less on economic and social aspects. Also related to sustainable urbanism are the practices of land development called Sustainable development, which is the process of physically constructing sustainable buildings, as well as the practices of urban planning called smart growth or growth management, which denote the processes of planning, designing, and building urban settlements that are more sustainable than if they were not planned according to sustainability criteria and principles.
Healthy building refers to an emerging area of interest that supports the physical, psychological, and social health and well-being of people in buildings and the built environment. Buildings can be key promoters of health and well-being since most people spend a majority of their time indoors. According to the National Human Activity Pattern Survey, Americans spend "an average of 87% of their time in enclosed buildings and about 6% of their time in enclosed vehicles."