Mighty Buildings Interview with Jeremy Madsen

Can the housing crisis be addressed while also tackling global climate change? After all, California needs 3.5 million new homes by 2025 to meet demand and address affordability issues. But construction globally accounts for at least 11% of greenhouse gases, and 28% of greenhouse gases come from building energy use.

Sam Ruben, Chief Officer of Sustainability at Mighty Buildings, recently invited Build It Green’s new Executive Director, Jeremy Madsen, to discuss how to deal with the housing crisis in ways that also account for other major challenges facing our society. Sam talked to Jeremy about his career path, the building ecosystem, and Build It Green’s commitment to a regenerative development approach grounded in inclusivity, community engagement, and collaboration.

Jeremy has spent the past 20 years in the Bay Area working on issues of how the built environment impacts both natural systems and human communities. While with the San Francisco Foundation he played a lead role in establishing the Great Communities Collaborative, focusing on how transit-oriented development can address greenhouse gas pollution, the affordable housing crisis, and other critical needs in Bay Area communities. He then served as CEO of Greenbelt Alliance, leading the organization’s work to protect the iconic natural and working landscapes of the Bay Area and to promote walkable, climate-friendly development within the region’s cities and towns.

You’re really leaning into these ideas of resiliency and regeneration and going beyond just sustainability. As much as we discuss sustainability in our work at Mighty Buildings, I would much rather have people be fluent in regenerative and resilience because that is what matters.

- Sam Ruben Tweet

With Build It Green, Jeremy looks forward to addressing these issues that he has been focused on throughout his career from a new perspective. Build It Green began with cities and building professionals committed to advancing products and construction methods that have less of an impact on the environment around us. Innovative policies, a green workforce, and a community of experts have grown as a result of the organization’s work. Today Build It Green is expanding its perspective, not only advancing construction practices that are environment-friendly, but also highlighting and promoting approaches that will result in entire neighborhoods that give to, rather than take from, nature and that make the human communities that give a neighborhood life more vibrant and strong.

BIG is reconceptualizing the building sector – it’s not a sector or industry – it’s an ecosystem. It involves those already in communities and touches on neighborhoods in a lot of different areas.

- Jeremy Madsen Tweet

Build It Green is excited to engage with Mighty Buildings, a construction technology company using 3D technology to print homes. Mighty Buildings is committed to incorporating passive house elements, zero waste construction, and materials that can be reused or recycled at the end of their useful life. Sam Ruben views his company as a tool to disrupt the construction industry through collaboration and stresses the importance of community engagement as a starting point to best serve the needs of a neighborhood. To hear the full podcast go HERE.

Mighty Buildings Interview with Jeremy Madsen

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