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Climate-Responsive Design: Balancing Resilience, Thermal Performance and Embodied Carbon with Concrete Masonry

1.0 CEU

This course explores how using concrete masonry units (CMU) in the built environment provides an integrated approach to climate-responsive design by simultaneously addressing three critical sustainability strategies: resilience, operational energy use, and embodied carbon reduction. Participants will examine how CMU construction offers inherent solutions to modern building challenges, from natural disasters and extreme weather events to energy conservation and carbon footprint reduction. The course demonstrates that CMU structures perform beyond code requirements without additional measures, providing durable, cost-effective buildings that support community resilience while contributing to low embodied carbon goals.

Objectives

  1. Describe architectural versatility of concrete masonry construction and how CMU offers countless colors, textures, and finishes.
  2. Summarize how concrete masonry offers inherent resilience strategies that exceed building code minimums and discuss how concrete masonry can help to redefine affordability by reducing repair and recovery expenses after extreme events.
  3. Investigate how concrete masonry’s thermal mass provides energy efficient designs and reduces operational energy use. 
  4. Explore groundbreaking industry research demonstrating concrete masonry’s low embodied carbon and investigate three key factors: lower cement content from unique manufacturing, accelerated carbon sequestration, and hollow core design reducing concrete volume.

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