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This year’s annual AIA Convention in Philadelphia featured panels with both Bill Browning and Chris Garvin, who shared insights on global sustainable building trends and evidence-based design.

To an audience of 140 attendees, Bill spoke about how high-performance design is addressing energy goals on the panel Building a Global Sustainable Practice: Thinking Locally for Global Impact. He discussed his experiences with some of Terrapin’s past project work, including a net-zero energy community in Florida, and New Songdo City in South Korea. In the session, Bill was joined by Steve Jones, Senior Director, Industry Insights Research at Dodge Data & Analytics, Lisa Bate, Managing Principal Shanghai, Executive Vice President Asia at B+H Architects, and John Mandyck, Chief Sustainability Officer at United Technologies. Overall, the panel emphasized how green building is becoming essential for architects and corporations to remain competitive globally. As Bill put it, “If you’re working internationally, you have to be aware of green building practices.”

Phoebe’s suite of tools analyzes the built environment from an ecological viewpoint to reduce environmental impact, increase financial gains, and support human health.

Chris’ packed panel session, Neuroscience, Evolution, Ecology: A New Look at Humanism in Architecture, was attended by roughly 400 people. The session explored human biology in the built environment and how we experience architecture. The panel also included Tim Culvahouse, Principal at Culvahouse Consulting, Nora Newcombe, Professor of Psychology and Principal Investigator of the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center at Temple University, and Aniruddha Das, Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University. Chris provided an overview of Terrapin’s work in biophilia, bioinspired innovation, and Phoebe, or ecological design, and how each of these topics bridges science and design disciplines for improved performance and human health.