Date Posted: 10.02.2025
Join us for Greenbuild 2025 Conference and Expo in Los Angeles! Mithun is proud to participate with a series of panel discussions and a project tour throughout the conference. We look forward to connecting with you there.
UCLA’s Sustainable Housing and Resilient Campus Design Tour
Join us for UCLA’s Sustainable Housing and Resilient Campus Design Tour to explore a leading campus in sustainability and innovative student housing in a dense urban environment. This tour highlights strategies used to achieve LEED Gold certification while designing flexible housing like UCLA’s Olympic and Centennial Residence Halls that will also accommodate 2028 Olympic Games participants. Attendees will explore high-performance housing systems, smart grid technologies, decarbonization efforts, renewable energy integration, and ecological landscape design featuring native plants and climate-resilient biodiversity. The tour will examine campus-wide sustainability initiatives in dining, transportation and waste reduction; including Certified Green Restaurants, low-flow fixtures, drought-tolerant landscaping, composting and electric vehicle infrastructure.
With applied research, student engagement and cross-departmental collaboration, UCLA’s comprehensive approach fosters a culture where sustainability is embedded across campus operations. Attendees will gain insight into how one of the nation’s leading universities integrates resilience, flexibility, and climate action into long-term campus planning.
The tour will be led by UCLA sustainability leaders and Capital Programs green building experts, and the Mithun design team.
Location: Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, Los Angeles, CA
Speakers: Simone Barth, Brendan Connolly, Tim House, Nick Wai-Poi
Date & Time: 11.03.2025 | 1:00pm – 5:00pm
Universal Design and Low Carbon: A Symbiotic Relationship
When school feels like an institution, students feel institutionalized. This underscores the importance of providing biophilia-rich environments that reduce stress, improve well-being, and foster student community and belonging in schools designed for universal access. Two recently completed case studies illustrate universal design that is amplified by low carbon, high-performance building strategies. The Creekside Center renovation at the University of California, Berkeley, transformed a modest, wood framed building into a new home for the University’s Disabled Students’ Program. Washington School for the Deaf, Divine Academic and Hunter Gymnasium leverages mass timber to center the Deaf experience in a fully accessible K-12 learning environment, engaging the whole student through heightened sensory experience – responsively tuned to each program, pedagogy and purpose.
Join Mithun partner JoAnn Hindmarsh Wilcox for “Universal Design and Low Carbon: A Symbiotic Relationship,” a panel presentation that will demonstrate how aligning universal design and low carbon strategies can lead to high performing buildings for communities historically marginalized from the design of the built environment. Panelists will share examples of how carefully curated accessibility features can be seamlessly integrated into a building’s architecture, and how low carbon strategies support universal design goals. Attendees will learn how inclusive design and technical research complement each other, creating welcoming and safe buildings for students and staff with disabilities.
JoAnn’s co-presenters are Hansel Bauman architecture + planning founding principal Hansel Bauman, Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects associate Cecily Ng and University of California, San Francisco Real Estate senior program manager for ADA Ben Perez
Location: Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, Los Angeles, CA
Date & Time: 11.06.2025 | 1:15pm – 2:15pm
Don’t Sweat It: Designing for Extreme Heat and Resilience
Over the past decade, we have witnessed an alarming rise in extreme heat, wildfires, wildfire smoke, drought, and floods, often labeled as “unprecedented.” As extreme heat events continue to increase in frequency, intensity, and severity, the threat escalates for significant risk to human health, especially in disadvantaged communities. Schools and multifamily housing are particularly vulnerable to overheating, leading to adverse effects on well-being, educational outcomes, and health equity.
Join Mithun associate principal Mike Fowler and associate Claire McConnell for “Don’t sweat it: Designing for extreme heat and resilience,” a presentation that will share integrated design and building enclosure strategies aimed at mitigating these challenges by reducing peak cooling demand, enhancing passive survivability and improving climate resilience. Aligned with the LEED v5 EA credit to Reduce Peak Thermal Loads and the Passive House standard, attendees will learn the health risks from wildfire smoke and effective measures to protect occupant health. Case studies in hot/dry and warm/humid climates will demonstrate how advanced building enclosure design and thermal comfort modeling – using weather files with the exact conditions of past extreme heat events along with the use of projected future forecasted weather files – can improve safety and comfort during power failures, wildfire smoke exposure and extreme heat events, even when faced with all three challenges simultaneously. Featured case studies include The Bush School Upper School, Princeton University Meadows Apartments, Georgia Tech Curran Street Residence Hall and EPA CCERTA: Missoula Public Health.
Mike and Claire’s co-presenters include Missoula Public Health air quality specialist Kerri Mueller and University of Washington Integrated Design Lab research engineer Teresa Moroseos.
Location: Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, Los Angeles, CA
Date & Time: 11.06.2025 | 1:15pm – 2:15pm
