Our Drexel University School of Engineering ‘s architectural engineering students enjoyed two outstanding guest lectures during the past couple of weeks! I’d like to thank Marc Brune, PE from PAE who just gave an inspiring presentation on their developer-led Living Building. Students saw how it was possible, feasible, and financially sound to build with environmentally sustainable strategies (the Living Building Challenge is the most demanding sustainable building certification out there)! The best part of this course, to me, is to see the high-performance envelope design and passive design strategies implemented in real-world buildings, and how they benefit everyone involved. Thanks, Marc, for an awesome lecture (at 6:30 am your time, no less!) and for answering all our students’ questions.
I’d also like to thank Jessica Clifford, PE from JBCI who came back this year with another excellent presentation on what it really takes to work with building envelope repair and restoration! That’s another area where students have growing interest in, and they always appreciate to see what the day-to-day job looks like — and what are the most common maintenance problems related to each type of building envelope system they’re designing now.
We all learned a lot from you both! Thank you for taking time in your busy schedule to advance education on architectural engineering and sustainability.
