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BUSINESS NEWS WOODWORKS ISSUES ‘CALL FOR NOMINATIONS’ FOR THE 2018 U.S. WOOD DESIGN AWARDS WoodWorks, an educational initiative that provides free technical support and resources related to the design and construction of non- residential and multi-family wood buildings, is now accepting nominations for the 2018 U.S. Wood Design Awards. The awards recognize excellence in wood design, engineering, and construction, in addition to innovative projects that showcase attributes of wood such as strength, beauty, versatility, cost effectiveness, and sustainability. Projects may be submitted in the following categories: ❚ ❚ Multi-Family Wood Design

❚ ❚ Commercial Wood Design – Low-Rise ❚ ❚ Commercial Wood Design – Mid-Rise ❚ ❚ Wood in Schools

PE, president and CEO of WoodWorks. “We meet a lot of building designers who are excited to leverage wood’s potential, whether it’s to maximize the value of a student housing project or luxury condominium by increasing the number of stories, attract quality tenants with a stunning office building, or design a carbon-neutral school. We look forward to hearing the stories behind this year’s winning projects, and inspiring others with their designs.” Special consideration will be given to recently completed buildings, projects that utilize wood as a dominant structural element, and designs that exemplify new opportunities for wood construction.

❚ ❚ Institutional Wood Design ❚ ❚ Green Building with Wood ❚ ❚ Beauty of Wood ❚ ❚ Wood in Government Buildings

❚ ❚ Durable and Adaptable Wood Structures Projects across these categories will also be selected to receive regional awards of excellence. “Wood Design Awards are a way to celebrate ingenuity in wood design,” said Jennifer Cover,

TIM MCCARTHY, from page 11

physical settings and long-term programming to create a sense of community, and “circulation alternatives” – walkability and other modes of “active transportation” – which research associates with a reduced risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease. “Our findings bore evidence that the right design might programmatically empower and encourage healthier lifestyle choices, helping reduce or prevent certain chronic conditions and their reactive care.” Our collaboration substantiated our original premise that health can be a “deliverable” through design. Healthy living, like LEED, the green standard, could be a primary guideline. And, it’s not limited to physical health – it’s places for people, for community interaction, for mental stimulation, for continued social and academic learning. It’s places that people enjoy being, or being together, as well as facilitating physical activity and fostering social interaction. That’s how our initiative of Designing for Healthy Living evolved – we identified basic elements of design that optimize the quality of complete well-being, for mind, body, and spirit, in creating new communities. Our principles are buildable components of a design that can be applied by anyone reading this in order to infuse their project with the same positive health outcomes. Our findings bore evidence that the right design might programmatically empower and encourage healthier lifestyle choices, helping reduce or prevent certain chronic conditions and their reactive care. We encourage you to try, too, in pursuit of health equity. If you’d like to read more about our findings with the University of Virginia, please visit bit.ly/2sDLsg3 TIM MCCARTHY, AIA, LEED AP, is the managing principal of Hart Howerton. He leads the firm’s sponsored research at the University of Virginia’s Center for Design & Health and is an active contributor to ULI’s Building Healthy Places Initiative. He can be reached at tmccarthy@ harthowerton.com

from “green building” and the environmental science driving the development of buildings, to community planning and the health outcomes of the people who occupy those buildings? Historically, good design choices have proved themselves essential to creating health-giving environments at home, work, study, and play. With the belief that there is no greater achievable sustainability than health and well- being, I’d like to offer our findings on an initiative we call Designing for Healthy Living. Our firm, Hart Howerton, partnered with the University of Virginia’s Center for Design and Health and brought together medical, public policy, and business school participants to verify our firm’s proposed “punch list” for constructing the conditions for improved health. We wanted to find out if the annual worldwide investment in commercial real estate could be made in a “smarter way,” in a way that helped alleviate chronic health conditions. Could building communities in a new way proactively change health outcomes and, by extension, help protect our national economy from the “material” risk posed by rising healthcare costs? “As design helped conquer the epidemics of late 19th and early 20th centuries, what if the design choices we make now addressed the chronic conditions of today – obesity, heart disease, and isolation?” Published jointly in 2014, Designing the Healthy Neighborhood is a synthesis of available studies in a multiplicity of areas, from urban planning to nutrition to gerontology. It makes its focus the community infrastructure necessary to install opportunities for healthy living. We identified nine principles. Some of these principles are pre-development ideas, ideas like “smart location.” Some are design opportunities to embed within plans: integrate nature, mix uses, incomes, and generations. Others, like “pride of place,” rely on both

THE ZWEIG LETTER July 17, 2017, ISSUE 1208

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