The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems is proud to announce the release of Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems: 35 Years of Serious Commotion. The Limited Edition Compendium chronicles the Protocols, Policies, and Prototypes that emerged from the nation’s oldest sustainable design non-profit organization.To celebrate the release of the book CMPBS will host a panel of four of our favorite alumni who are continuing to work toward a more sustainable future in Central Texas and beyond.

Event Information:

When: Thursday, April 14, 2011
6:30 - 9:00 PM
7 - 8 PM: Panel Discussion
8 - 9:00: Reception and Book Signing

Where: CMPBS
8604 FM 969
Austin, 78724

Drinks and light refreshments will be provided.

This is an outdoor event. CMPBS is a smoke free environment.

$15 Suggested Donation

RSVP to Center@cmpbs.org

Book for Purchase: $100 plus tax (Cash/Check/Credit)

PANEL:

Lucia Athens, ASLA, LEED AP: Chief Sustainability Officer, City of Austin
Lucia Athens has served as a leader in the green building movement for two decades. Recognized internationally as an authority on green practices, she is a licensed landscape architect as well as author of the book, Building an Emerald City: A Guide to Creating Green Building Policies, published in 2010 by Island Press. She began her career on the development team for the City of Austin’s Green Builder program, the first such program in the United States. Since then, she has served on many prestigious and policy-making boards including the U.S. Green Building Council and the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems.

Michael Gatto: Co-Founder and Executive Director, Austin Community Design and Development Center
Michael Gatto is co-founder and Executive Director of the Austin Community Design and Development Center (ACDDC), a 501(c)3 non-profit whose mission is to improve the quality of life for all by providing sustainable design, planning, and development services to low and moderate income individuals, families, and neighborhoods. Prior to founding ACDDC, Michael was intern architect and project manager at Foundation Communities, a regional affordable housing provider, where he completed his architectural internship during his Rose Architectural Fellowship, and was Design Associate at the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems.

Richard MacMath: Sustainable Design Project Manager, HDR Architecture
With over three decades in the architecture profession, Richard has extensive experience in the fields of sustainable architecture, green building, and community sustainability planning. Areas of expertise include climatic design, renewable energy, zero-energy homes, commercial and residential green building, life cycle analysis of green building products, and municipal sustainability plans. Before joining HDR’s Austin office, he served as a Conservation Specialist Sr. with Austin Energy Green Building for over five years. Prior to that, he was the Architect of Record at the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems in Austin for ten years. He began his career in 1974 as co-founder and principal of Sunstructures Architects in Ann Arbor, MI.

Jim Walker: Director of Sustainability, University of Texas at Austin
Jim Walker was appointed the Director of Sustainability for the University of Texas at Austin in April, 2009. The appointment furthers UT’s commitment to a greener campus and to integrating sustainable practices into daily operations, academics and the University’s role within the broader Austin urban area. Before UT, Jim was the Executive Director of the Central Texas Sustainability Indicators Project. Jim worked at the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems from 1993 - 1995 in various construction and digital design roles.

Praise for Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems: 35 Years of Serious Commotion:

“CMPBS’s 35 Years of Serious Commotion is a magnificent oeuvre. I hope it finds many pathways into the minds and hearts of those who want to transform the world and to those who do not understand how transformable the possibilities truly are. “
Paul Hawken - Author, The Ecology of Commerce

“A wonderful book, which chronicles the many contributions of Fisk, Vittori, and CMPBS since 1975. The scale and scope of those contributions are breathtaking. They have undertaken projects from Austin to Haiti and China and beyond to the whole planet. These amazing projects have fundamentally changed how we design with nature.”
Frederick R. Steiner - Dean, University of Texas at Austin, School of Architecture

A very warm thank you to Sim Van der Ryn, President of EcoDesign Collaborative, for his kind words about CMPBS and our commemorative book: “CMPBS: 35 Years  of Serious Commotion”

“This book and the people who created it -Pliny Fisk and Gail Vittori, and thirty five years of work by them and their team, is simply a Work of Nature arriving just in time to provide the planet with the handbook it needs to survive and thrive. Bucky Fuller wrote the first Operating Manual for Planet Earth. CMPBS exceeds our prescient optimist heros’ wildest dreams. Go Planet!”

- Sim Van der Ryn, President, EcoDesign Collaborative

Copies of the book are still available! Visit our book page to purchase your copy today or join us for our Discussion Panel and Book Signing on April 14, 2011!

Join us for our monthly open house this Friday, April 1 at 6:30 PM. Both of our Co-Directors, Pliny Fisk and Gail Vittori will lead guests on a tour and discuss current CMPBS projects.

If you can’t make it this Friday we hold our monthly Open House on the first Friday of every month. Visit our calendar page for more information about upcoming CMPBS events.

CMPBS Co-Director Gail Vittori will participate in a panel discussion for the 2011 Go Green Conference here in Austin, Texas on April 6, 2011. See “Conference - Go Green Austin Conference - Austin, TX” Gail sat down for an interview with Go Green preceeding the conference. The interview is available on the Go Green website here.

CMPBS: 35 Years of Serious Commotion is generating even more praise!

“This delightful book reviews 35 years of pioneering vision, research, and demonstration by the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (CMPBS), in Austin, Texas. Through hundreds of illustrations, photographs, and descriptive text, CMPBS co-directors Pliny Fisk III and Gail Vittori tell the story of this remarkable organization.”

- Environmental Building News

“Pliny Fisk and Gail Vittori pioneered green building design and contributed much to what we currently call sustainability. With their Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems colleagues, they continue to lead in both theory and practice. We now have a wonderful book, which chronicles the many contributions of Fisk, Vittori, and CMPBS since 1975. The scale and scope of those contributions are breathtaking. They have undertaken projects from Austin to Haiti and China and beyond to the whole planet. These amazing projects have fundamentally changed how we design with nature.”

- Frederick R. Steiner, Dean, University of Texas Austin School of Architecture

Copies of the book are still available! Visit our book page to purchase your copy today or join us for our Discussion Panel and Book Signing on April 14, 2011!

CMPBS Co-Director Gail Vittori will be participating in a panel discussion at the 2011 Go Green Austin Conference on April 6, 2011. The Go Green Conference is an annual conference series for business professionals looking to integrate sustainability into business practices. In its third year, the Go Green Conference will be held in Portland, Seattle and Austin. The Austin Conference will feature representatives of local government, community organizations and business leaders. Speakers include City of Austin Chief Sustainability Officer Lucia Athens, Texas State Representative Mark Strama, Whole Foods Global Vice President Lee Matecko, and Jim Walker, Director of Sustainability for University for Texas at Austin.

Gail will sit on the panel, entitled “Mueller Development As A Model: Concepts to Reality”, that focuses on the redevelopment of the Robert Mueller Municipal Airport through a coordinated sustainability effort. The Mueller Redevelopment is pursuing certification under the LEED for Neighborhood Development pilot. CMPBS serves as the sustainability and LEED consultant for the project.

Gail will join Alan R. Bell, Director for Design and Construction for the Seton Family of Hospitals and Kent Burress, CEO of the Ronald McDonald House Charities on the panel. Seton and Ronald McDonald House Charities have both completed LEED Platinum certified projects at Mueller. Greg Weaver, Executive Vice President of Catellus Development Group will moderate the panel. The panel will take place from 11:30 to 12:30 on April 6.

For more information about the Go Green Conference or to register visit the Go Green Conference website.

Gail Vittori will present a keynote lecture for the Symposium on Sustainability in Health Care on April 21, 2011 at Wright State University in Dayton Ohio. The symposium is co-hosted by Heapy Engineering and Wright State University. The half day education symposium includes Gail’s  keynote lecture followed by panel discussions highlighting regional and national experts on health care delivery, operations and management focusing on “How should sustainability be integrated into the delivery of health care?”

For more information download the informational flyer here.

CMPBS Co-Director Gail Vittori is quoted in the article “New Environmental Designation Expected to Spur Green Health Care.” Gail discusses the forthcoming LEED 2009 for Healthcare rating system. Gail is the Founding Chair of the US Green Building Council’s LEED for Healthcare Committee.

The article is available in the February 2011 edition of Hospitals & Health Networks and online.

For more information about LEED for Healthcare, or the Green Guide for Health Care visit their websites.

Thank you to Ecology of Commerce author Paul Hawken for his kind words about our recent publication CMPBS: 35 Years of Serious Commotion!

“CMPBS’s 35 Years of Serious Commotion is a magnificent oeuvre. I hope it finds many pathways into the minds and hearts of those who want to transform the world and to those who do not understand how transformable the possibilities truly are.”

- Paul Hawken

Copies of the book are still available! Visit our book page to purchase your copy today!

Paul Kirkpatrick of Sustainability Television interviewed CMPBS co-director Pliny Fisk at the 2010 Living Future Conference in Seattle, Washington. Pliny discusses innovative wastewater treatment strategies and the Center’s microbial rockbed filter at our offices here in Austin.

For more information about CMPBS’s work with waste water treatment visit our publications page.

The interview with Pliny Fisk is available here.