Colin Rohlfing, LEED Fellow Discusses Regenerative Design & Sustainable Leadership

 

The Green Impact Report Quick take: A masterclass in transforming sustainable building practices into regenerative design, featuring insights from HDR's Director of Sustainable Development on pushing beyond net-zero to create net-positive impact buildings.

Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Colin Rohlfing serves as the Director of Sustainable Development for HDR's Global Architecture practice, where he leads a team of 20+ sustainability experts. With over 20 years of experience, Colin has been recognized on BD+C's "40 Under 40" list and is a frequent speaker at major events including TEDx and SXSW.

🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Colin shares revolutionary approaches to sustainable design:

Key Insight #1: The Evolution Beyond Sustainability

• The Challenge: Traditional sustainability metrics have become watered down over the past 20-30 years.

• The Solution: Implementing regenerative design frameworks that target pre-industrial revolution performance metrics.

• ROI: Achieving net-positive impacts in energy, carbon, water, and human health.

Key Insight #2: Mass Timber Revolution

• The Challenge: High-carbon traditional building materials and construction methods.

• The Solution: 75+ mass timber projects, including first-of-their-kind healthcare facilities.

• ROI: Reduced embodied carbon while maintaining structural performance and expanding into new building types.

Key Insight #3: Electrification & Resilience

• The Challenge: Fossil fuel dependency in building operations.

• The Solution: Full building electrification with integrated resilience strategies.

• ROI: 99% of California projects now all-electric, with growing adoption nationwide.

Sustainable Soundbite "We can't just improve slightly from what it was 30 years ago when we had ecological disasters and poor air quality. We do need to go back to pre-industrial and agricultural revolution metrics if we're truly going to figure our way out of this mess that we're in." - Colin Rohlfing

Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps:

1. This Week: Start tracking both operational and embodied carbon in your projects.

2. This Quarter: Implement energy modeling with payback analysis on all projects.

3. This Year: Develop regenerative design metrics for your practice that go beyond traditional sustainability targets.

Connect & Learn More

• 🌿 Connect with Colin: LinkedIn Profile

• 🗒️ Read the transcript: Full Episode Transcript

• 🔗 Watch Colin's TEDx Talk on regenerative design at Ted.com

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