Zonda - Resource Library

Resilience has become a central idea for assessing how our social, economic, technical, constructed, engineered, and ecological systems can withstand and bounce back from a man-made or weather- and climate-related disaster. Globally, wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, typhoons, high winds, hail, coastal and valley flooding, sea level rise, heat waves, seismic activity, extreme cold, ice storms, and snow melt have destroyed ecosystems, caused loss of life, damaged property, disrupted healthcare and financial networks, and in some cases, brought essential services to a halt. During this presentation, we’ll discuss the composition, performance, and application of engineered polymer siding and trim and capped polymer cladding to illustrate the benefits to home and building owners when construction materials are selected with resilience and sustainability in mind.

Consumers are increasingly interested in understanding the environmental impact of the products they use. This course will help you understand how the choice of building materials can have profound impacts on local and global ecosystems, as well as on consumer preferences. “Green building” practices have expanded beyond operational energy efficiency to include factors such as minimizing the embodied carbon impact of a built structure along the supply chain.

As a result, wood’s role as a sustainable building material has become increasingly important. Compared to nonrenewable materials such as steel and concrete, wood is renewable and stores carbon throughout the lifetime of the material. Wood also uses less fossil fuel than substitutable materials (e.g., steel and concrete) across the supply chain, from harvest to manufacturing, transport, installation, maintenance, and disposal or recycling. Procurement of wood building materials from sustainably managed forests creates a sustainably built environment and also supports forest biodiversity, soil and water health, wildlife habitat, social and economic goals, etc.

This course will demonstrate how using wood as a building material contributes to forest sustainability, especially in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Conscious planning, designing, and developing for wellbeing is a growing trend in the design industry. Indoor air quality, thermal comfort, acoustics, and lighting in a building, among many other factors, can significantly affect the productivity and comfort of building occupants. Light is one very important tool that can be used to improve the mood, productivity, attention span, and overall health of occupants because it is the main driver of the visual and circadian systems. This course will explore the connection between lighting design and wellness and will examine a new advanced LED chip technology that provides blue peak free lighting that mimics natural sunlight (meaning the traditional harsh blue peak found in most LED technology has been reduced). This technology is being used to improve occupant wellbeing in healthcare facilities, schools, and offices, among other commercial applications.

Achieving carbon neutrality and protecting the world's water supply are vital to the AEC industry because of the significant impact buildings have on the environment and occupant health. The structures that we live, work, and commune in use a vast amount of the energy and water consumed on the planet for building operations and maintenance.

Over the past two decades more and more organizations, from private companies to federal governments, have taken steps to minimize their impact on the environment and, more recently, on society's wellbeing as a whole. This has been accomplished through sustainable building design, social accountability, and ethical economic practices. This course will discuss a Net Positive approach to design and business operations.

Presented by Fernando Pages, this presentation serves as a resource and primer for product specification and complements the book Architectural Design for Traditional Neighborhoods published by the Vinyl Siding Institute (VSI) in 2019.

This course aims to provide design professionals full control of the design’s aesthetic outcome with polymeric sidings, trim, and ornamentation, respecting the architectural style, target market, and project budget. These specifications will refer to traditional architectural features in the language of art.

This effort aims to put the power of good design details and recommended installation practices within the architectural designer’s easy reach.

This presentation will examine the recent trend toward steel-timber hybrids – as a subset of the wider trend toward mass timber – in high rise buildings.

It will overview where this is happening, and what the advantages and challenges are, focusing on some of the key case studies employing such systems.

Learn how vacuum insulating class (VIG) units are different from typical architectural insulating glass units (IGUs) and how VIG technologies can meet a vast range of needs, ranging from energy savings and occupant comfort to acoustic improvement.

This course also examines the energy performance of VIG units compared to traditional product options and reviews specific code requirements that VIG products can meet and exceed.

This course will examine Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) through the lens of the A/E/C industry and building product manufacturers. It will review the evolution of ESG from the 1980s when organizations began to regulate and manage pollution, improve labor and safety standards, and improve other negative outcomes of economic growth. The three pillars of ESG will be discussed generally, then from the perspective of the A/E/C industry, and finally through the lens of a window and door manufacturer and their specific ESG agenda. The course will conclude with a case study that achieved Living Building Challenge certification and helped both an architecture firm and window and door manufacturer achieve ESG goals.

This On Demand CEU is a recorded presentation from a previously live webinar event. This course will explore the versatility of wood plastic composites, with a specific focus on composite rainscreen cladding. It will cover the sustainability of wood plastic composites from manufacturing, performance, and life cycle perspectives. We will also discuss color and design options for composite cladding, as well as applications in the residential and commercial sectors.

This course will explore mass timber construction, including the different types of mass timber products that are manufactured from Douglas fir, spruce-pine-fir, and Southern pine species; their performance and environmental benefits; and applications for this type of construction.

The course will also examine the importance of Western red cedar as a sustainable building product that introduces biophilic design into a space, and how it can be used to complement mass timber construction in both interior and exterior applications.