EcoVillage reaches out to professional building community

EcoCity Cleveland used grant money to assist with the following professional workshops related to the W. 58th Street town homes:

• Green Building Materials Specifications and Standards (in partnership with the Cleveland GBC) featuring Nadav Malin from Environmental Building News (March 13, 2001). This was a half-day workshop followed by an additional half-day intensive with members of the EcoVillage design and construction team to work out issues specific to the development of the W. 58th Street town homes.
• Advanced Residential Design (in partnership with the Cleveland GBC) featuring Betsy Pettit and Joe Lstiburek, town home project designers (April 23, 2001). This was a full day workshop on the fundamentals of green building and the designs incorporated in the W. 58th town homes. Topics included advanced framing, controlling moisture, basements and roofs, indoor air quality, HVAC systems, and alternative energy sources.
• Designing & developing the W. 58th town homes featuring members of the Building Science design team (September 24, 2002). A green building workshop for professionals featuring detailed explanations of the W. 58th construction, followed by tours.
• Ecological Landscape Design workshop (in partnership with the Cleveland GBC) featuring Andropogon Architect's Carol Franklin (March 19, 2002). As part of this workshop, EcoCity Cleveland's landscape architect and project partners presented the plans for the town homes along with a panel that included representatives from the city's park and recreation department, county planning, and others. The project partners tapped the expertise of Carol Franklin and the city and county representatives to acquire additional ideas for successful ecological development. EcoCity Cleveland worked with the Cleveland GBC and Plain Dealer reporter, Steve Litt, to tour Carol Franklin around Cleveland's sites of interest, resulting in a PD feature.
• Managing Green Building Projects for CDCs (in partnership with DSCDO and NPI), community development corporation project managers learned about the details of the W. 58th Street project and resources available in Cleveland for green building.
• EcoCity Cleveland worked with the Cleveland Green Building Coalition to host a weekend workshop in the Cleveland EcoVillage on strawbale construction. People came from far and wide-including a few children from the EcoVillage who earned scholarships to attend. Chris Fox Construction milled wood for the toolshed from a tree that had to be removed on the town home site to create the toolshed frame. The workshop resulted in a strawbale toolshed that the community gardeners now use.
• EcoCity Cleveland hired Jim LaRue in partnership with DSCDO and the GBC to work with the local vocational high school, Max Hayes, to study the feasibility of SEE Studs for use in the W. 58th Street town homes. SEE studs are made from the leftovers of construction stud waste and is a process of recreating building studs from these waste pieces.

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