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Biophilic design supports the health and wellbeing of individuals by connecting people to nature. This includes incorporating elements of the natural world into indoor environments, increasing natural lighting, improving ventilation for better indoor air quality, adding landscape features that bring life to sterile environments, and using mass timber. Benefits of biophilia include reduced stress, increased wellbeing, improved…

Close to 860 million people visited Ikea stores last year, helping it generate more than $50 billion in sales. The world’s largest furniture retailer is using that exposure to drive a unique net-zero goal: a pledge to cut the climate footprint from products Ikea customers use at home by 70 percent by 2030. So far,…

To tackle big risks requires big imagination and big bucks. And, except for annihilation from global thermonuclear warfare, no set of risks loom larger than the continuing atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide. Earth is responding to this buildup through rising temperatures, melting glaciers, expanding seas, migrating species and disease vectors and a…

The School Safety and Security Committee (SSSC) under the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) approved $47 million in competitive grants to improve safety, security, and mental health support for students and staff at schools across the state. The new awards complete the $155 million school safety and security grants program launched in January 2024. “As…

As institutional and commercial buildings continue to struggle against growing backlogs of needed repairs of aging buildings, a growing number of facility managers are asking whether a better approach is to demolish troubled buildings. Now, the US. Department of Defense says it plans to test that approach. From barracks to office buildings, many U.S. Department…

Photo courtesy of Boston Public Schools Teresa Neff-Webster, interim chief operating officer, helps lead school district past pandemic and into a brighter future During a distinguished career in education that’s taken her from Chicago to London and now to Boston, Teresa Neff-Webster has carried one valuable trait through her travels. “Having the initiative to want…