With a dramatic increase in human population, built environments are playing a central role in energy consumption and environmental pollution. A powerful way to reduce energy consumption, lifecycle costs, and greenhouse gas emissions is to incorporate sustainable design practices in the building design or retrofit and follow with innovative building construction and maintenance. Building enclosure is a place where many of sustainable strategies can be implemented, but the lack of clear performance guidelines can either reduce the effectiveness or completely discourage the use of passive building enclosure solutions. Many recent research studies are geared towards bridging this gap and enabling climate-dependent performance assessment of different passive building enclosure solutions. The present talk will cover research results on thermal behavior of green roofs and strawbale walls as well as natural ventilation of wall cavities. For more information about this seminar, please contact: Bill Fisk(510) 486-5910