14 - Jacob Deva Racusin - New Frameworks
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James: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Marketing Passive House, the podcast where we hear from architects, designers, builders, suppliers, owners, and other experts in the passive house and high performance building space. We'll be talking about what's working and what's needed when it comes to marketing buildings that meet or aspire to the passive house standard.

James: I'm your host, James Turner, and today I'm joined by Jacob Deva Racusin lead researcher at Builders for Climate Action and co-founder at New Frameworks. Jacob, welcome to the show.

Jacob: Thanks so much. It's a real pleasure to be with you. Thanks for having me.

James: My pleasure too. So before we get into it, and for people who are just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit about who you are, what you do, and how you started on your passive house journey?

Jacob: Yeah, absolutely. So you referenced two different companies, so I'll kind of identify myself twice with each company. I do slightly different things there. So with New Frameworks yes. One of the co-founders, I'm also the director of Building Science and Sustainability. So focus on the. On those topics building science and sustainability for, that company's a worker-owned cooperative [00:01:00] based out of Northern Vermont.

Jacob: And we are a design, build, and fabrication firm. We're sort of best known for building bio-based, structurally-insulated high-performance building panels, so wall floor and roof panels that we sell to builders and designers as a custom fabricator. And we also have a line of pre-designed and pre-fabricated small homes that we develop. We also do a fair amount of work with decarbonization and with existing buildings and have an architectural practice as well. so that's my work with New Frameworks. And I started working with them. As a, as a much younger person back in the mid two thousands I got my start initially actually as an owner builder building a straw bale timber frame home in northern Vermont.

Jacob: And got right into the trades working with natural building technologies in the early aughts and connected with Ace. And New Frameworks sort of came out of that work back then and has since evolved and grown over the last 20 years. The other role I hold is with Builders for Climate Action. That is a organization that was [00:02:00] founded by Chris Magwood and Jen Fagan oh, about five years ago or so to conduct research about embodied carbon and climate impacts of building materials and to release the BEAM tool, which is a material carbon emission calculator. So I do a lot of research with BFCA on the climate impact of building materials the opportunities to use bio-based materials to store carbon and and then the calculator, of course, to figure out how to track all of that and account for all of that and the standards and policies that go along with that.

James: Amazing. That's such a rich intro. There's so many directions to go from there. I will say personally, like I, I'm really into the straw bale side of things as well. And I think that a straw bale passive is sort of like, it's, it's gotta be the, the pinnacle, right? Like bio-based and, and yet at also the passive house standard, but I think maybe the BEAM tool, now BEAM is an acronym for something. Is, is that right?

Jacob: Building Emissions Accounting for [00:03:00] Materials. Nice.

James: I feel like

Jacob: oh, so please,

James: I, I, I, well, I feel like that that is in its way an instrument for marketing, passive host. Like, it's like a,

Jacob: absolutely

James: you love measuring things. Here's a way to, to do that. So how, how did that come about?

Jacob: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I'm just gonna sort of amplify what you just said. The, the marketing value, the sort of communications and visit visibility benefit of a tool is huge. And we actually really. Leaned into developing out was initially a a spreadsheet developed for a master's thesis into a full tool because it became an incredibly powerful point of advocacy to highlight the, the quantified value of bio-based. Carbon storage and just how much atmospheric carbon we can store in these building materials and to make really visible to a tool user. Look at all these different materials that do this and all these materials in the marketplace that you might otherwise be aware of. And so tools I found are [00:04:00] just such an incredibly powerful. Place to be in the ecosystem because they connect to manufacturers, they connect to standards bodies, they connect to policy makers in the regulatory space to enact those policies and enact those standards. And they very strongly you know, respond to the market and have this great engagement of people both using the tool and then all of the decision makers who make decisions based on information coming out of the tool, even if they're not the ones crunching the numbers and the tool sits in the middle of. All of that and has a role to play in all of that work. So I just wanted to like, yeah, that's you mentioned like the marketing part of that. Like a lot of people don't think of that when they think of tools, but it's just an incredibly powerful sort of lever for change within the industry. And that was part of the intention.

Jacob: So this, the tool initially came out of Chris Magwood colleague who's now with RMI. Did a master's program looking at the potential of you know, embodied carbon and carbon storing, building materials as a solution for high performance building. And so my background in high performance construction and with New Frameworks, I was doing a lot of [00:05:00] energy modeling.

Jacob: So I did all the energy modeling for his thesis and he built out this incredible spreadsheet of all these different materials and did the embodied carbon accounting for a couple of different types of buildings, like a code minimum and a high performance. Building a single family and then a multi-unit to really just understand and wrap our arms around what's the climate impact from the operational side and from the material side.

Jacob: How do we look at them? How do we think about them? And there was such a phenomenally strong, um, response and resonance around the material side amongst our peers and people were. Essentially clamoring for access to the spreadsheet and to be able to use that resource to help make better material decisions, particularly when they, we've kind of revealed the insight that if you are building high performance construction using super emission intensive materials and particularly installation materials that you can be causing unintended. Near term harm or actually long term harm, but in the near term of the life cycle if you're [00:06:00] not aware of those impacts. And we, our goal has always been to harmonize the exploration of energy and materials and unify strategies for combined strategies to do good across, across that that scope.

Jacob: And so it was because of the strong interest we had, particularly amongst high performance and energy. Conscientious practitioners, they're like, oh my gosh, we, like, we need to know what we're doing with the materials. Like how do we get access to this? That, that gave birth to builders climate action as sort of a home for both the tool.

Jacob: And to turn that spreadsheet into a tool and then to conduct a bunch of research on, again, like, how do we think about this? What are the best methodologies for conducting this analysis? And what do we know? What are we learning? And that's, that's yeah, that's what, that's what it's been ever since.

Jacob: Yeah.

James: Oh, that's great. Yeah, I think I'm friends, good friends with a, a straw bale home builder. And he, when I started talking about passive house, his instant impression was just like, oh, that's like kind of an elite, like,

Jacob: Yeah.

James: you know, [00:07:00] scientific, like. N not, not, not that he's like against it, but, but that I, I feel like that's the kind of thing that something like this can bring those two together where you're like, no, we can do both.

James: Like we can. And, and here's the proof that, that it's worth having the science side of things while also the intuitive, like, this feels natural, this feels healthy, right? Like, I think.

Jacob: And I will say it has been a super fascinating journey for me coming of age as a younger professional, you know, owner, builder come, natural builder in rural northern Vermont, you know, non-college educated, like non-academic. Working with these natural materials is very tactile, very intuitive, very like relational in the work. But having this very keen interest in making sure we do it well and successfully, um, and have like seen [00:08:00] other failures from where people were not considering like moisture management very well or where the buildings were uncomfortable and energy intensive and like, well that doesn't make sense either.

Jacob: And so, I mean, we did a lot of early pathfinding. For how to solve air sealing transitions between, you know, clay and lime plaster systems and timber frames. And he's like all these, oh

James: Hmm.

Jacob: the early technologies we were using to try and like create airtight Construction with very sort of limited knowledge and without access to a lot of the products we have today, a lot of which are from European provenance. We're not using in straw bale construction back in the back in the day. And the conversations I would have with high performance folks trying to like justify and legitimize the use of these bio-based and natural building materials and then go back to my natural building cohort and try to. Justify and legitimize doing airtight construction and thermal bridge, you know, mitigation and balanced ventilation and the number of times they argued with natural builders around like no balanced ventilation's actually [00:09:00] good if we're gonna spend a little bit of energy and technology, like breathing in your home is a, is a good place to invest in that. You're gonna have a refrigerator, you can have an ERV, it's gonna be okay. And then vice versa trying to, you know. Convince folks that are very technically minded, but you know, their material reference points are largely industrial materials and, doesn't it burn and rot and bugs and fire and all the things like legit questions, but like you know, just that, yeah.

Jacob: The, the, some of the preconceived biases we bring into the work from both technical and non-technical environments are, are real and legitimate and are. For, you know, are there for a reason, but it, it's a very exciting space to again, try to like harmonize those, you know, left brain, right brain, like all, you know,

James: Mm-hmm.

Jacob: that community, the polarization pieces.

Jacob: Anytime you can bridge across those, you can come up with the best solutions, I'd say.

James: Awesome. And the BEAM calculator is a great one ring to rule them all type of, to bring those together.

Jacob: get to think about [00:10:00] quantifying embodied carbon impact, and then LCA experts get to think about straw and hemp and,

James: Yeah, yeah,

Jacob: as like, oh no, this is, this is worthy of consideration.

James: yeah. Like as legitimate a material as this foam, even though it wasn't ma, you know? Yeah. I, I, I think that's such a, I think that in itself, like marketing back to people, that the, the way we used to build things wasn't wrong, and like, it wasn't like, oh no, we can't go back to that. It's like, no, no, no. Like there were maybe some things that can be optimized, but.

James: This, this like innate human knowledge is still valid in today. Today's

Jacob: It

James: so ever really in today's climate.

Jacob: Exactly. More so. And that's the thing that's getting, it's exciting is for a long time I felt like I had to really explain to people like, these are not new building materials. Like we as humans have had relationship with wood and stone and grasses and you know, all these materials. We've had relationship with these [00:11:00] materials to create. Structure and habitation for hundreds or thousands of years across the planet. Like none of this is new. We're just, you know, using them in these sort of modern contexts. And what I'm now finally hearing is other people from like the architectural community and engineering community identify that as well and reference earlier resources.

Jacob: And just reference just from a very, not from like some like, you know, high, you know, theory place, but just in this very pragmatic place. They're like, yep, yeah, no, no, we've actually been, you know. These material properties are well known and there's plenty of precedent for using. You know, earth and stone and wood and straw and blah, blah, blah.

Jacob: And it's just nice to actually see that conversation evolve because they're not new at all. It's just we're using them in a modern application. What's new are highly industrialized materials, particularly plastic materials. We've only been working with plastic materials for a. Sort a very very short period of time.

James: A, A blink. Yeah.

Jacob: I mean like within human lifespan for practitioners. Like I, you know, I worked with folks that are near the end of [00:12:00] their career that like didn't have these materials as ubiquitous in their, they remember I, my mentor, like had some of the very. First like foam board products when they were still like, like brand spanking new coming

James: Wow.

Jacob: you know, chemical manufacturing plants.

Jacob: And so we've decided culturally that like to assign tremendous amount of like. Comfort and faith and sort of validation to that classification of materials as normal. And that's, you know, no, I'm, I'm not gonna pass judgment on that, but just to put it in context, like this is within one lifespan that we've normalized our utilization of these materials that have a host of technical liabilities to manage both, you know, in how they're applied in the context of a building and, and moisture and fire, as well as their larger ecological and social impacts. And so. You know, I just feel like we don't necessarily [00:13:00] hold a similar we, we, we, we hold our biases around our relationships with different materials based on how we came into practice and what our experiences and our perspectives are.

Jacob: I recognize that coming from a rural place and working with these materials early has normalized it for me and I can look at them a bit more objectively.

James: Hmm.

Jacob: also recognize that that same perspective. Lend a little more skepticism for industrialized materials as getting like a pass, just 'cause it has an ASTM stamp on it.

James: Yeah.

Jacob: you know, I'll fully own my biases there as well, but it really is exciting being in these places of trying to harmonize across, you know, these different communities and just sort of seeing where the biases might be held. The same way that there's biases against mechanical ventilation in a lot of, you know, natural building and permaculture communities. Understand and respect that bias. I don't share it, and I, again, it's nice to be able to progress the conversation past our initial impressions around appropriate technology and relationship to different materials and what we, what we deem as safe or viable or normative or, or whatnot. It's, it's very fascinating.[00:14:00]

James: Hmm, and we're talking in terms of. Well, I, so something that also struck me as I've gone deeper and deeper into this whole marketing passive house idea is that there's, like, there's the regular regulators, right? Like, I mean, if they won't, if it's illegal to build with your material, or if your standard isn't recognized as

Jacob: Mm-hmm.

James: valid, maybe you can't get a mortgage or you can't get insurance, or like, there's all these like technical roadblocks.

James: Then there's the, the people who are designing the things, not considering those as techniques or. Materials that they're gonna consider when making the design. And there's people building the things, just being like, I don't know what this is supposed to be, but I know how to build a house. Boom, boom, boom.

James: You know, puncture, puncture, puncture. And then there's the, there's like the, the homeowners who are, you know, just trying to do, do the best they can with the resources they have. And then they also think about like the, the families and spouses and the, the people that the, the homeowners or. Or even business people, if it's someone [00:15:00] building for like a multifamily, like they're, they're, they're talking to their network and if their net network is skeptical about,

Jacob: Yep.

James: you know, oh, I've heard this about that you don't like, don't go down that road.

James: So I, I was wondering if in all that mêlée of people, if there is sort of a group that you. Have come into contact with the most, or a group that that seems closest to, to being able to be convinced or if there, like, you know, there's like a cascade, like some, someone's gotta be the, the, the first domino

Jacob: Oh

James: I dunno

Jacob: that's a great question. I'll try, I'll try to keep this somewhat succinct.

James: Me.

Jacob: So or not.

James: Yeah, go for it.

Jacob: Appreciate that. Thanks for the permission. So I, what's been super exciting about working both within New Frameworks as well as as Builders for climate action. If I say BFCA, then I'm referring to,

James: Mm-hmm.

Jacob: trying to keep a little bit tighter is I get to work with like just this.

Jacob: Dizzying array of different participants from like an individual homeowner working class person in a rural [00:16:00] community to like large corporate publicly traded builders that are high production to people throughout, you know, the whole architectural engineering side of things as well as standards developers and policy folks, and people that are actually. In all the technical committees, you know, grinding through standards development, which can be lobbyists from many different interest groups and manufacturers and manufacturers, interest groups. So I get to be like literally in, in working relationship with all of these different folks. And over the course of my, my given week, which is part of what keeps my job very, very interesting.

Jacob: But it gives me the, the perspective on how many different values there are around this work. And like looking at bio-based materials, like what the value proposition is really changes depending on. Who you're talking to.

James: Hmm.

Jacob: the sort of like, the sort of response to the market and I'll, I'll speak to the residential sector mostly.

Jacob: 'cause that's the, that's, that's the, the majority of, of my of my working life is in the residential space. And I, I'll never forget, I was at a conference just about six weeks ago. Um, there [00:17:00] was a largely it was a panel of some of like the larger production home builders and like. Certainly over the course of like the conversation and then even over the course of a couple of folks, one narrative, they would both identify that they need to serve the market and do what the market says, and then also say that. market's going to respond to the things that we put in front of them. Both that there's like, we're like, the market doesn't know, right? Like people don't

James: Right.

Jacob: technical information, they don't know all the details, they don't know all the science, and like, we need to guide them and show the market what is, what their values and reflect back their values in a, in a clear way.

Jacob: And also, oh, we just, we gotta do what the market says. I'm like, Hey, both of those things are. There, there's a tension there, right? There's something about paradox in both following and supporting or leading the market which I appreciate just sort of naming that, because you know, one thing that jumps the, the, the dominant theme that I'll bring up to respond to the question here is the, the [00:18:00] concept of, of a value stack or of co-benefits,

James: Hmm.

Jacob: which is that the, the most durable and, and important. I would say scalable and relevant strategies are the ones that have a stack of value, have a whole stack of different benefits that can meet the needs of a broader diversity of participants in the space. And so just to be very explicit and look at bio-based materials, I can, I, one of my like point leading foci around climate impact and that's where like my career has been dedicated the last 15 years or so. And so I can talk ad nauseam about the, the, the climate benefits of working in biobased materials, the carbon storage potential, the land use, you know beneficial list, serve, supply chain, sustainability impacts, so on and so forth. As well as its utilization in high performance buildings successfully. I could have a whole other conversation around the durability of these materials. Unplastered, like unsurfaced Straw [00:19:00] is a class a fire rated material with no inputs. I can't think of any other insulation materials that don't need some sort of additive to provide a class a fire rated standing unless they're made out of stone.

Jacob: And we can do that with compressed straw. So like, great. We can talk about durability all day long and the benefits there. We can talk about biophilia and the beauty and the aesthetics that come from our relationship with natural materials and, and the, the beneficial human experience that comes from being associated with 'em.

Jacob: We can talk about the lack of toxicity and the health benefits and the healthy home and the healthy building attributes that come from working in the bio-based materials. We can talk about relationship to place and local economy and investment in land-based economies that are the provenance of those materials and can make it economic argument around them.

Jacob: You know, buy local, buy America you know, control over simple supply chains. Investing in aboriginal communities, investing in the. Economies in rural spaces and looking at the relationship between rural and urban economies for sort of regional and more [00:20:00] holistic economic and social health and security like. All of those value propositions exist in choosing to work with like a straw panel. And we haven't even gotten into

James: Amazing.

Jacob: prefabrication or these other like delivery mechanisms that can come along with it. And so like great when we find a strategy that can respond to the different value structures of a. diversity of different participants. Like those are the ones to lean into because we're not going to successfully heal these systemic problems by trying to convince everyone to adopt your value structure. Like that's a, that's a very long game work and I would say involves a lot of hubris and, like, you better be really confident about your value system if you really feel like you need to impose that on other people for your solution to work. And so

James: Hmm.

Jacob: that end, I'm like, great. I work with people regularly that do not believe in anthropogenic climate change. I don't need them to, to find buy-in, in working with high performance straw based construction because they are there for the [00:21:00] comfort.

Jacob: They're there for the local investment, they're there for know, American products and supporting agricultural economy, like great.

James: Yep.

Jacob: go there. We'll talk about that instead. That's fine.

James: Nice. So having having that stack like in your back pocket. I guess makes it easier to talk to, to, to adapt as you talk to different people or notice a conversation going a certain way.

Jacob: Absolutely a hundred percent. And I guess what I would. You know, bringing it from materials back to energy and just maybe to use, you know, this being a, a passive house podcast I, I'm going to shout out one of my early teachers, Robert Bean who's a Canadian engineer who's done, I think just an exceptional job of highlighting the, some of the like significant limitations in focusing on energy efficiency as the core goal because it's one, it's not adopted by everybody. That's not a universally accepted goal. And two, you can have some like pretty negative unintended consequences by only focusing on that without focusing also on [00:22:00] durability or also on environmental or air quality issues.

James: Right.

Jacob: his argument is focus on indoor environmental quality. And if you get that right, then energy efficiency kind of comes along for the ride.

James: Hmm.

Jacob: Everyone wants to be comfortable and healthy and safe in their buildings. That is universal. That's a, there's, you're

James: Yep.

Jacob: anyone that argues you against that.

Jacob: You may have some folks for whom their only priority is first cost, in which case you need to come up with solutions that sort that, you know match that requirement. But no one's gonna argue against healthy, comfortable buildings.

James: Right.

Jacob: sort of, so then the other attributes come along for the ride, if it's not necessary to, you know, lean into those to convince someone.

Jacob: If I ever have to convince someone of a solution, then I've kind of already lost control of the conversation or I'm having the wrong conversation, or I certainly don't know my audience very well.

James: Hmm.

Jacob: those are kinda like my primary takeaways. And I think that for those of us that come from, it's an, it's an interesting thing coming [00:23:00] from. Rural working class communities and doing work in the climate and sort of justice space because those, a lot of

James: Yeah.

Jacob: in those spaces tend to be urban, professional class folks. And what I see is a tremendous. Challenge in communication and empathy. I mean, across both sides, I have a, I have a

James: Yeah.

Jacob: Maybe not totally unique, but I have a, I have a particular experience in being able to bridge those communities on my daily. And I just. C Yeah. Communications it really is underpins empathy. So like, of course we don't understand each other 'cause we even know how to like talk to each other in language that we can understand. So I'm very intentional around understanding who I'm speaking to and then using language that's gonna reflect back. Something that they're gonna like, understand and be interested in and have that see value in and like be worth their time that I'm yammering at them about a building solution. Yes, it's good marketing for sure, but it's also, it's, if I, if I can't do, I guess because I'm interested in scaler change and [00:24:00] transformational change in the industry, if I can't do that effectively, one, I'm not doing my job well, but two, my, my solution's probably not the right solution if it can't be communicated to a plurality of people.

James: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And it's a, keeps you honest, like,

Jacob: Doesn't it though?

James: right. Like you can't, you can't delude yourself if you're like, well, honestly, I, I can't argue this because of this thing that I found out.

Jacob: And, and a great,

James: Yeah.

Jacob: a great example of that last point you made is around embodied carbon. So we've been using, we've been really focused on this metric of embodied carbon or the, the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, the greenhouse gas emissions associated with materials.

James: Hmm.

Jacob: and boy, does that matter to universities trying to hit their climate action plans, municipalities trying to hit their, you know, policy goals you know, environmentally or oriented and environmental justice oriented communities and markets and programs that like meet a metric to be able to capture that impact?

Jacob: A [00:25:00] hundred percent. The vast majority of the market. Does not care. They don't even understand what it is, let alone make a purchasing decision based on atmospheric gas release. Like that is, that is not a winning argument when people are like literally having to choose in many cases between like food and medicine, right?

Jacob: Or just struggling to find housing, period. Like I'm just trying to be realistic about the, the struggles in the market right now. And so we need to find other attributes. That are co-benefits or, or of which the climate impact is a co benefit. People, people really do care about not poisoning themselves and their children like that matters.

Jacob: So

James: Across the board. Yeah.

Jacob: the board. So like health is a good metric to evaluate there. And of course cost and durability, asset protection and durability are like huge. And so when we find the products that hit multiple ones of those, we don't have to talk about. You know, embodied carbon dioxide equivalent metrics.

Jacob: It doesn't Nope. Stop by. We prefer to like build these, you know, comfortable houses that are also really healthy and like long lived and [00:26:00] made of really durable materials. And we like to work in materials that are, you know, sourced from local communities and come from, you know, well managed forest and fields from our neighbors. Like, that's a lot easier for most

James: Yeah.

Jacob: yep, that sounds good. Then this is the low embodied carbon, which avoids the, like, the near term emissions. Like we've lost it in the first three words and like, no, because like, why do they, like, why should anyone really care about that unless they have the.

Jacob: The privilege and the opportunity to care about that 'cause their other primary needs are met. And a lot of people just trying to get a housing solution right now, like their housing needs are not met and they like frequently don't necessarily have the privilege and the luxury to, to make their primary purchasing decisions based on atmosphere, chemical balance, and

James: Yeah.

Jacob: I'm not gonna try to convince them otherwise.

Jacob: And if I'm trying to convince them again that I'm probably doing a poor job or it's not a great solution.

James: Yeah. A hundred percent. A thousand percent.

Jacob: Which, because I love that you're doing a marketing podcast 'cause oh my God, is that important? And that is like, it's been so fascinating seeing [00:27:00] passive house as a concept emerge with like very rapid uptick, particularly in the last, you know, half decade or so. But I also see the challenges of communicating that value outside of, so the, the early adopter, a niche and more technically literate, environmentally literate communities. And that I think some of that is cultural and some of that is I think just part of the growth of any movement and scaler, adoption of any movement. Like there is a translation. Threshold that that ultimately gets hit when you try to move outside of your sort of core, core group. And you know, we've been building high performance construction since the early seventies in North America. It's not a technical problem, it's not an issue of precedence.

James: Right.

Jacob: what, what, what's the issue?

Jacob: Like, why have we not been able to tunnel through that? And I, I honestly believe that a pretty significant portion of that is in how we communicate the value. And when we're focusing heavily on energy, this thing that is intangible

James: Mm-hmm.

Jacob: you, maybe you think about it monthly when you pay your [00:28:00] bills, if you even like make a connection there. You're not literally just trying to get them paid 'cause it's 10 o'clock at night and you gotta wake up in six hours or whatever. Yeah, it's too abstract. It's too intangible. It's not anything that, you know, the majority of people that are not mission driven or technically literate to spend a lot of time in their days thinking about, but they sure do think about if they feel unsafe and uncomfortable in their homes or unhealthy in their homes.

Jacob: Like, yeah, that's, that's real. So if we can talk about the values within those constructs, then yeah, the energy comes along for the ride when we solve for that problem.

James: Yeah. Yeah. I like the fact that with passive house in particular, the, it gets easier the bigger you go.

Jacob: Mm-hmm.

James: what I've been hearing, or like more cost effective, I guess. Not easier necessarily, but yeah, I think that's really, that, that, that gives me hope for. The spread because people making big projects are using big money and people make like, those are the kind of people that

Jacob: absolutely.

James: will just make bloodless decisions based on MA math and numbers.

James: And that's where the BEAM tool would come in and be like, no, [00:29:00] just build it outta a straw. It's all, how could you not?

Jacob: And we're seeing the same way that energy like higher thresholds of energy performance are having these great, great opportunities at those larger scale applications.

James: Hmm.

Jacob: we're seeing the same thing with materials. I mean, now prefabricated straw panels have been used for. I think the largest project now is like 110,000 square meters.

Jacob: So like 350,000 ish square feet logistics facility in Northern Europe. Like,

James: Yes.

Jacob: there's a, there's scale and like just dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of schools and apartment buildings of commercial facilities. And what's really cool is the relationship between scales. And I often hear about scale as like

James: Hmm.

Jacob: unidirectional like goal.

Jacob: That it's like like the goal is scale for its own sake because like, as if that like, which is a very it is a good reflection. Of the, sort of the, the metrics and basis of our economy, you know, growth, it's a growth economy and we have one [00:30:00] metric to evaluate its health and more is better. And so yeah, it makes sense that scale is implied as a metric of success with these technologies. What I've, what I see in energy is kinda the similar thing that I see in. Materials is that it actually starts in smaller buildings to innovate and incubate best practices and technologies and build the value structure and get the technical, technical proof of concept right? Repeatedly over time, you know, high performance buildings started primarily in smaller residences.

Jacob: They didn't start as like. Large logistics facilities being airtight and thermally broken, like that actually came from the residential space initially. Similar with like healthier building materials and low, low impact like natural building technologies like didn't start in these apartment buildings and schools and logistics facilities has started in, in smaller buildings and homes. And then that, it's, that is the place for incubation. And then yes, it can then scale up to larger applications, which is great. Which then paves the way for some of those more systemic and structural barriers around testing [00:31:00] and around codes and policies and economic investment and normalization of the concepts across the industry and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jacob: That then further reinforces adoption and normalization and standardization at in those smaller areas. So they don't just have to be niche and they don't just have to be for early adopters or wealthier folks that can afford the technology or whatnot. There's a real iterative relationship between those scales.

Jacob: And if we can identify that, we can optimize for that and use that to, you know, speed up that process. And I think within the material space, we've learned a lot from how that has and has not worked, as efficiently in the energy space and, and have been learning from that and really having more collaborative relationships with, you know, builders and practitioners across different scales and really trying to collaborate to work at some of these systemic barriers around, you know, code and certification and standardization more collaboratively. 'cause we recognize this is actually, there is a flywheel benefit there.

Jacob: There is a, there is a collab, there is a an [00:32:00] exchange of knowledge and resources and information that move up and down across scales within the industry. And if we're trying to actually accelerate change, we need to coordinate well for that, or we get. Bogged down. And we definitely seen plenty of examples of things grinding to a halt and not having good coordination and not good alignment within the industry.

Jacob: And especially at the residential, non-residential sectors of our industry being, like, so fragmented and like not in good dialogue or engagement with each other. And it's really a li that that lack of coordination is a liability to growth. And when we can actually focus on that coordination, then yeah, we have the opportunity for practitioners at scale to embrace and value and invest in what these smaller practitioners are doing. And a, a adapt those technologies up and then pave the way for those smaller practitioners to have more market accessibility and, and, you know, have some of those standards to be established and some of the folks that are better resourced to be able to invest in some of that industry scale development.

Jacob: And we're definitely seeing that in, in straw. We're seeing that in timber. We're seeing that in a [00:33:00] lot of these bio-based materials like that is what's happening now, which is thrilling. It's really exciting to see that level of industry collaboration, which is not, I would say that dominant cultural practice practice is to be highly collaborative. I think it's kind of like radical and exciting and, and proving to be incredibly effective from, from my little corner of the world here.

James: Very cool. Yeah. Like get, get the a, a big housing, housing developer, give them a, a casita

Jacob: Absolutely.

James: a New Frameworks casita, and

Jacob: Yeah.

James: just like, oh, you can just like, you know, it's a guest house. And then their guests are always like, oh, it's so comfortable in there. And then he thinks, Hmm, maybe I should have some people over, or whatever.

James: Right. Like, yeah.

Jacob: Yep. Yeah, I mean, what's, I, I don't take for granted that we have supplied panels and casitas for non-residential architects own projects. And that to me is like, okay, talk about transformative. I mean, yes, we would love to serve your next project, whatever, there's a code barrier or there's like a standardization barrier or like, you know, maybe we [00:34:00] can't you don't have the production capacity to, you know, meet that project within your timeline or whatever.

Jacob: There may be a number of different barriers there, but the fact that we can give you the experience as

James: Yeah.

Jacob: powerful practitioner in the industry to experience the value and benefit of these materials and have that inform what good can be in building, like that is hugely transformative. And that's exactly that type of opportunity that comes, that, that informs well what are the values and priorities they're bringing in searching materials.

Jacob: Like, might they be willing to invest in some technical development or doing a pilot project or pushing a little bit harder against a code official to to take another look at that assembly. Or, I mean, all, any and all of those are some of the ways that folks that are more. You know, in larger areas or larger, larger scales of the industry that may be like not immediately able to take straw and put it in the next building can actually advance the conversation or say, okay, we can't use straw, but can we use wood fiber installation or can we use a hemp batt product or [00:35:00] like find other ways of valuing a similar benefit and value stack of other products that are in the market that are immediately accessible.

Jacob: And all of those are market signals. They're all, you know, value signals. They show up in very large and very small ways that, again. Colla, like when connected together is is the alchemy of, of industry transformation.

James: Hmm, I, a term occurred to me as we were talking, I thought strawbnb, like a, a network of straw bale houses that you could just test it out, you know,

Jacob: Absolutely. Experience if for yourself.

James: I think for the straw curious.

Jacob: Yep. Exactly.

James: Yeah, I feel like New Frameworks has a, I don't, I don't, I don't know if you don't, do you have like a, a demo house that you put people in and say, you know,

Jacob: We, we

James: around?

Jacob: a, we don't have a rental unfortunately, although that would be, we've talked about that.

James: Hmm.

Jacob: we, we do have, one of our, one of our owners has has one of our casitas in their backyard as an ADU. And so that's available for people to, to check out if they're curious. We also have [00:36:00] just some really wonderful and generous clients in our, in our. Locale who are, who are quite generous around house tours. So we give monthly tours of our shop and some of the buildings around, and I mean, it is like your, your idea there is, is absolutely bang on the experience of people entering these homes and just what their. their experience, like, how it sounds, how it feels, how it's, how it smells or doesn't smell like the, the environmental quality of these homes is like exemplary.

Jacob: How, like the plaster reflect the lights, the, like the feeling of a thick wall when you close and latch the door.

James: Hmm.

Jacob: we've, we've all been speaking within the high performance realm of the, the comfort that comes along with being in these buildings.

James: Yeah.

Jacob: add healthy and beautiful materials that we've got this like. Sub and super conscious relationship too, because we've been on the planet with them for thousands of years, which looks really different than a sheet of like monolithic plaster pl Yeah. Plastic [00:37:00] paint.

James: Yeah.

Jacob: are, that's like meaningful and you don't like the experience of that is, it's hard to describe.

Jacob: It's impossible to capture in photos

James: Mm-hmm.

Jacob: No, you are not wrong about, about get getting folks into the room, so to speak, and feeling out the benefits. It's, it's real for sure.

James: Cool. This has been absolutely great. Before we go, where is a good place for people to find out more about you online?

Jacob: Oh, great question. Well, I would invite folks to check out the New Frameworks.com website for more around straw panels and natural building technologies and the work we're doing there. I would invite people to check out Builders for Climate Action. Dot org, all one word. You can also look up the BEAM carbon tool in a Google search, and that'll get you to the same place for more on the, like the tool and embodied carbon and all the sort of the research work around that.

Jacob: And one other place to look at would be the do a search for the bio-based materials collective. If you're interested in bio-based materials and the, the, the bio-based materials collective is a phenomenal group of not just [00:38:00] building practitioners, but people in academia and across various like forestry and agricultural supply chains, all working to uplift the use of bio-based materials in the built environment across a, a host of different disciplines.

Jacob: So the whole bio-based material phenomena is of interest to you. That's a great group of people to connect with to some really great resources.

James: Awesome. That's perfect and thank you so much for joining me today.

Jacob: Oh, thanks for the opportunity. This conversation was terrific. It's a, it's an honor to be with you. Thank you.

James: Thanks. You've been listening to Marketing Passive House. I'm James Turner and I hope you'll join me again next time.