After one year, I’m back, this time in Seattle, at the Living Future unconference 2015. As always, eager to learn, to exchange views with the participants, to listen to the keynote speakers and best–practices, togo through the Living Building Challenge. The time for “Do less harm” has passed. It’s time for the beginning of being; the beginning of a Living Future. LF 2015 takes place on April 1-3, 2015, at the Sheraton Seattle, Seattle (WA) and explores a genuine sense of place and community as the bellwether of truly restorative design. The International Living Future Institute is hosting its ninth annual unConference. Living Future is the forum for leading minds in the green building movement seeking solutions to the most daunting global issues of our time. Out-of-the-ordinary learning and networking formats provide innovative design strategies, cutting-edge technical information and the inspiration needed to achieve significant progress toward a truly Living Future.
Keynote speakers:
Janine Benyus is a biologist, innovation consultant, and author of six books, including Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. In Biomimicry, she names an emerging discipline that emulates nature’s designs and processes (e.g., solar cells that mimic leaves) to create a healthier, more sustainable planet. In 2010, Janine founded Biomimicry 3.8 which provides biomimicry innovation consulting, training for professionals, and curricula development for educators.
Raised between Brooklyn and rural Upstate NY, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin appreciated environment and sustainability at an early age. His father, a devout Muslim, taught 5-year-old Ibrahim that the “Earth is a mosque”. Ibrahim retells this moving story in his Amazon Environmental Bestseller, “Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet,” a one-of-a-kind expose of the positive contributions of people of faith to the environmental and environmental justice movements.
Jason F. McLennan is considered one of the most influential individuals in the green building movement today and the recipient of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize. McLennan serves as the CEO of the International Living Future Institute, a leading NGO that focuses on the transformation to a world that is socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative. McLennan is the founder and creator of the Living Building Challenge, widely considered the world’s most progressive and stringent green building program.
The Living Building Challenge™ is the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard. It calls for the creation of building projects at all scales that operate as cleanly, beautifully and efficiently as nature’s architecture. To be certified under the Challenge, projects must meet a series of ambitious performance requirements over a minimum of 12 months of continuous occupancy.
What is an unConference? An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. Unconferences typically feature open discussions rather than having a single speaker at the front of the room giving a talk, although any format is permitted. This form of conference is particularly useful when the attendees generally have a high level of expertise or knowledge in the field the conference convenes to discuss.
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