The 2009 Greenbuild Expo draws to a close on my forth day of activity. It was only a partial day for me with a morning session about building component reuse. Three presenters talked about various projects around the country where buildings were either being designed for disassembly, or were deconstructed. One facinating example was a 275,000 square foot warehouse building in the Port of Oakland. On a property co-owned by the port and the Navy, the building was built in the early 1940s as a supply processing center to support war efforts in the Pacific Theater. The warehouse was constructed almost entirely out of salvageable wood. In an effort to recover as much value from the existing building as possible, it was disassembled rather than demolished. In the end a significant percentage was reclaimed. Go to stopwaste.org for a video of the Building 802 process. It's pretty interesting.
I find closing plenary sessions are usually anticlimatic and boring. Last year Janine Benyus was amazing, but this year was supposed to be Carol Browner - Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy in the Obama Administration. But she was a no-show. Her replacement was another White House advisor, but not someone I was familiar with. In the end she presented a run down of administration initiatives that align with green building development, but none of it was new material.
I closed out my 2009 Greenbuild experience with a quick tour of the bookstore, puchased a book by Peter Gleik about the state of the world's water, and then an evening with friends. All in all it was a good conference. My primary complaint would be that the expo floor wasn't open long enough. The event gets bigger each year and more manufactures are added, yet the time available to visit hasn't changed. Another day would have been perfect. I'm hoping that next year's event in Chicago will expand so that attendees can manage both the floor and educational sessions. What I found myself doing this year was ditching sessions I paid good money to attend so that I could see more of the floor. If nothing changes next year I may do an expo only pass and skip the ecucational sessions. That's a much cheaper route.
Next week I'll be listening to all of my exhibitor interviews and posting some interesting back stories and personality profiles. Please look for those.
Written by Kevin O’Donnell, fundamentalist at thread collaborative. To read more, please visit our web site.
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