Category: News

Director of the Building and Construction Technology program is the lead author of a new book Alexander Schreyer, director of the Building and Construction Technology program at UMass Amherst, is the lead author of the recently updated “Fundamentals of Residential Construction,” the most authoritative resource on the topic. This newest, fifth edition is thoroughly revised to reflect the industry’s latest methods, materials, technologies and green building approaches, offering the most up-to-date explanations of today’s residential construction systems and current building codes, including the International Residential Code and energy codes. This edition features entirely new materials sections on metals, plastics, and composite construction as well as expanded and updated content on ventilation, air-sealing, decks and outdoor structures. Read on.  NEW BOOK BY ALEXANDER SCHREYER IS THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION ...

Campus flock of sheep will be mowing lawn; public activities focused on landscape, public-use and history The public is invited to attend Sustainable EweMass, a comprehensive demonstration of sustainable land management, Sept. 23 and 24, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies’s meadow, at 650 East Pleasant Street in Amherst, Massachusetts. Long before there were riding lawnmowers, sheep kept the grass short in parks and public spaces. Why not, in the era of global climate change, bring sheep back to help mow the lawns at the University of Massachusetts Amherst? “Sustainable EweMass is meant to be a community conversation about how we use and care for our shared lands,” says UMass Amherst wildlife conservation lecturer, Kelly Klingler. “This interdisciplinary project offers us an opportunity to consider how we might employ sustainable and traditional forms of land management while also promoting inclusive access to green spaces which we know are critical to the health and well-being of...

Professor in the environmental conservation department tackles a complex problem In “Microplastic in the Environment: Pattern and Process,” editor Michael S. Bank, senior scientist at Norway’s Institute of Marine Research and professor of contaminants and complex systems at UMass Amherst, tackles an extraordinarily complex problem that has recently come to popular attention: the problem of microplastics. “This pollution issue is a classic transboundary example of how land-based pollution can become extremely widespread, even entering remote regions including pristine mountainous regions, wilderness areas, and the Arctic and the deepest trenches of the ocean,” write Bank and Sophia V. Hansson, a research scientist at the University of Toulouse and Aarhus University, in their co-authored introduction to the volume.   “Microplastic in the Environment” provides a comprehensive, holistic analysis of the plastic cycle and its subsequent effects on biota, food security and human exposure. Global environmental change and its associated, systems-level processes, including atmospheric deposition, ecosystem complexity, UV exposure, wind patterns, water stratification, ocean circulation and more...

Students and professors in UMass Amherst’s Building and Construction Technology Program constructed the HyggeHaus, as a stage and a model of sustainable living  Residents of western Massachusetts have long marked the start of summer by the opening of the Green River Festival. Now in its 35th year, the three-day music festival held in Greenfield, Massachusetts draws a large crowd hungry for food, fun and dancing.   This year, thanks to students and professors in UMass Amherst’s Building and Construction Technology Program, as well as the collaborative efforts of the UMass Department of Architecture, the Five College Architectural Studies program, and East Branch Studio, festival-goers were able to rock out at the HyggeHaus, a modular, 350 square foot, high-performance, net zero, low carbon accessory dwelling unit that served both as an auxiliary stage and as a model of sustainable living addressing both equity and the national housing shortage.  Hygge, pronounced “hyoo-guh,” is a Norwegian term that signifies “a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being.”...