Building Connections at BuildingEnergy Boston

At the recent BuildingEnergy Boston conference we had the opportunity to present our collection of architectural surfaces to sustainable architects, builders, consultants, and material suppliers. This is a new business line for Whole Forest, and we learned a great deal from these conversations.

In addition to building new connections within the NESEA (Northeast Sustainable Energy Association) community, we received constructive feedback on our product prototypes. This feedback will help guide our design process over the next few months.

Our mission is to conserve tropical forests that are threatened by rapid deforestation. By working with communities to build a local economy based on sustainable forest management and wood products manufacturing, we foster a healthy relationship between community members, consumers, and the rainforest. Tropical forests are extraordinarily biodiverse, however, few of these wood species are known to the US market. Therefore, Whole Forest has an exciting design opportunity to define a new material aesthetic comprised of the richly diverse colors and textures found in tropical hardwoods.

As well as talking with people about this design opportunity, we also received helpful feedback regarding our concept to mitigate carbon emissions. Whole Forest is pioneering a new strategy for reducing the embodied energy of green construction projects. By conserving threatened rainforests, we are preventing large-scale carbon emissions that would be produced by deforestation. This allows Whole Forest to attach carbon savings to our wood products, and offer our clients a carbon offset—potentially accounting for a large portion of the embodied energy in their project. This is a new concept, and the feedback we received will help us refine this offering to fit the needs of green building projects. 

We aim to continue having conversations with members of the NESEA community, other sustainably focused communities, and sustainable architects/designers at large. If you’re interested in hearing more about our product development and lending us your expertise knowledge, we’d love to hear from you.