1. Pitt Magazine
Bright Green Way by Alan S. Gintzler
Bright Green Way
The building you’ve entered is alive. Its flexible skin converts sunlight to usable energy.
Its eyes are windows that clean themselves and darken against glare. The building you’re
in knows your needs. Its rooms sense heat and cold, adjusting automatically. Its roof is
capped with antenna-like turbines harvesting wind for its own power consumption.
The building you’re in is self-sustaining. It breathes, circulating air as a pair of lungs. The
paint on its walls never ages, never cracks. Run-off from rain is channeled, stored, and
treated in-house. The building you’re in is smart, but it could be smarter.
Fostering the cause of “smart” and “green” construction is the Mascaro Sustainability
Initiative (MSI) at the University of Pittsburgh. This pioneering, multidisciplinary
undertaking is advancing the filed of sustainable engineering through innovative
research, outreach, and education. Sponsored by green contractor John Mascaro, The
Heinz Endowments, The Dominion Foundation, and the George Bevier Estate, MSI is
jump-starting the engineering of new materials and methods that incorporate
sustainability in design.
From his 11th
-floor office in the antithetically ungreen, ‘60s-era Benedum Hall on the Pitt
campus, Eric Beckman co-directs MSI with a mix of zeal, easygoing intelligence, and
humor.
“Green is not a state of being, but a process of continual improvement,” says Beckman.
“Each succeeding generation should be greener than the last.”
A self-described “half-chemist and half-engineer,” Beckman received a Presidential
Green Chemistry Challenge Award form the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in
2002 for his innovative work with products and processes using carbon dioxide in
environmentally safe, efficient, and economical ways.
As an example of green engineering in building materials, Beckman cites self-cleaning
plate glass. He explains the process whereby solar radiation breaks down dirt that
subsequently washes away in rain.
Among the cutting-edge materials now being explored under MSI sponsorship are
smarter, maintenance-free coatings you’ll someday use in the house of your dreams.
Beckman’s team is using computer simulations to design self-healing coatings sensitive
to defects in their own material. This “healing” engages a process of “self-assembly”
driven by thermodynamic sensing.

2. Certifiably green buildings today—exemplified by the nearly 1.5 million-square-foot
David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh—earn status through the U.S. Green
Building Council’s Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) program.
LEED measures sustainable design features, such as water reclamation, nontoxic
materials, and energy efficiencies.
Yet smart buildings today are just not smart enough. This is the guiding principle of
green engineering as articulated by Beckman. Seated at his desk, swiveling his chair to
his computer, then rising and walking to a different part of the room, he calls attention to
the variable room temperature.
Finding ways to monitor and remedy the problem and meet the needs of a building’s
inhabitants, Pitt scientists are exploring the design of a low-cost, low-energy central
nervous system for buildings that can quickly adjust interior conditions to suit occupants
and maximize efficiency.
With one-third of the world’s energy, water, and materials consumed by the built
environment, the need for sustainable construction would seem apparent. Industry,
however, requires demonstrable evidence that redesign of a product will save money.
Beckman, armed with what he knows from experience about science in the service of
sustainability, describes MSI’s goal of pulling—not pushing—industry and society.
Energy savings are calculable. Employees in fresh-air environments are more productive
and less prone to illness. Health care costs to employers are lower. Manufacturers can do
better, observes Beckman, than spending 20 liters of water to produce a two-gram
microchip. With cost efficiency comes savings, and industry is pulled along the alluring
green way.
With 12 seed grants under way or approved at Pitt and a partnership being extended to
Penn State researchers, MSI is sowing innovation. Results of seed grand research spawn
longer-term grants from government. Plans call for funding to support green in the
engineering curriculum, along with funding for undergraduate research projects. MSI
hosted its biennial conference on sustainability in April 2014, and the future already
looks greener.
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