Overview
Our education and outreach programs connect the Integrated Design Lab’s discoveries and the transformative knowledge of others for the building industry and public through educational programs and other offerings. These include professional education, project-based just-in-time educational seminars and workshops, and high performance curriculum development for professional groups, utilities, energy agencies, and traditional higher education at the University of Washington and other colleges and universities across North America. The goal of this work is to transform the market for the highest performing buildings by reaching out and educating leaders of today and tomorrow in how to meet 21st century building performance challenges with knowledge and policies that favor renewable and regenerative buildings, neighborhoods, and cities.
Our Experience
Our faculty has focused for the last 15 years on assisting practicing professionals in architecture, engineering, construction, development, and building operations to improve their knowledge of energy efficiency. We have delivered many courses at traditional national meeting and conference venues and, more non-traditionally, offered hundreds of luncheon and half-to-whole day project-based workshops. We have pioneered these just-in-time knowledge delivery opportunities so as to increase the meaning and reality of putting high-performance building knowledge to work directly on a project in the office.
Current and recent professional education projects include:

Materials Matter
In 2016-2017, the University of Washington’s Integrated Design Lab partnered with the Carbon Leadership Forum and the Health Product Declaration Collaborative to develop and deliver Materials Matter, a professional education series on sustainable building materials selection.

Integrated Design: Tools and Methods Education Program
The IDL partnered with Seattle City Light and SOLARC Energy Group to deliver a three-series, twelve‐part professional education program focusing on the technical analysis of high‐performance buildings.

Getting to Zero
On behalf of AIA Seattle, the Integrated Design Lab developed the “Getting to Zero” curriculum, a series aimed at providing knowledge about net-zero energy buildings.