Build It Forward

Build It Forward

Build It Forward is about the people, ideas, and decisions shaping the future of high-performance residential construction. Hosted by Nick Falkoff, GM of Auburndale Builders, and produced by PRMEABL_, the name is a play on “pay it forward.” Conversations range from technical decisions and process to people, culture, history, and collaboration — exploring what’s working, what isn’t, and what might be interesting to try next. These conversations are worth having, and worth sharing, because the best buildings come from communities that share what they know and build forward together.

Episodes

October 22, 2026 • 48 mins
Ashley Murphree built herself a tiny house out of a shipping container using every good building science practice she knew. Something in it was still making her sick.

It was not mold. She knew the building well enough to rule that out. But despite testing and doing everything right, the symptoms continued. That experience opened up a question she has been chasing ever since: what else are we not accounting for when we call a buildin...

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John Straube has spent a career breaking buildings on purpose and investigating the ones that failed by mistake.

Test huts exist so that when the experiment goes wrong, nobody gets hurt. The forensic work is the other half. As John puts it, the experiments he could never ethically run himself get run for him, by architects and builders, on real projects.

In this conversation on Build It Forward, recorded in the Building Science Corpo...

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Become the developer. Become the architect. Become the builder. Tim McDonald didn't do this because it seemed like a good idea. He did it because he couldn't figure out any other way to build what he was trying to build.

In this conversation on Build It Forward, recorded at Tim's home on the North Shore of Boston, Nick Falkoff sits down with Tim, co-founder of Onion Flats Architecture, for a conversation that spans nearly 30 years o...

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NESEA just turned 50. And according to Florence McGregor, that's not a moment to celebrate and coast. It's a moment to ask what's next.

In this conversation on Build It Forward, recorded at NESEA BuildingEnergy Boston 2026, Nick Falkoff sits down with Flo, Executive Director of NESEA, in the middle of the conference floor for a wide-ranging conversation about what the organization has become, where it still needs to go, and what it ...

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The building industry has always demanded a wide range of skills. Ace McArleton thinks it's time to widen the circle a little further.

In this conversation on Build It Forward, recorded at NESEA BuildingEnergy Boston 2026, Nick Falkoff is joined by Ace McArleton, co-founder of New Frameworks, a Vermont-based natural building and high-performance construction company approaching its 20th year. Also at the table is Amy Lieb, Executive...

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Most kids never get the chance to hold a tool before someone tells them it's not for them. Mason Lord is trying to change that.

Mason is the founder of TradesUp and owner of Hudson Valley Preservation, a design-build company in Kent, Connecticut with 35 years of preservation and high-performance remodeling work behind it. His path into the trades started at age seven, in a neighbor's basement workshop, after losing his father in fir...

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Katrin Klingenberg didn't set out to build a movement. She was finishing her own home in Champaign-Urbana when a persistent phone call pulled her into a room full of building science legends and nothing was the same after that.

Recorded live at NESEA BuildingEnergy Boston 2026, this conversation on Build It Forward has Nick and Katrin tracing the origin of Phius, the early debates about whether European passive house standards could...

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In this conversation on Build It Forward, Nick Falkoff of Auburndale Builders sits down with Ross Trethewey of TE2 Engineering and This Old House to talk about where HVAC systems are heading, and why that future looks different from what most builders are used to today.

They start with the Studio HPDC barn as a real-world testing lab and how it can function as a community mechanical room, then get into what's driving change in the i...

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In this conversation on Build It Forward, Nick Falkoff of Auburndale Builders sits down with Steven Baczek, Architect, and Amy Lieb, Executive Director of Studio HPDC, to talk about carpentry training, learning culture, and how people actually grow in the trades over the course of a career.

The conversation explores how carpenters and builders learn on the job, why mentorship and asking good questions matter more than memorizing ans...

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In this first episode of Build It Forward, Nick Falkoff, General Manager of Auburndale Builders, sits down with Ben Bogie, Director of Building Science at Building Performance Cooperative, and Amy Lieb, Executive Director of the Studio for High Performance Design and Construction, to talk about why community plays such a critical role in advancing high-performance building.

Rather than focusing on a single product or system, this co...

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Josh Salinger doesn't see any daylight between quality building and high-performance building. Design it well, use the right materials for the project, install them correctly, and test it when you're done. To Josh, that's just quality, and it gets you a building that lasts longer, is healthier, more resilient, more comfortable, and naturally energy efficient.

In this conversation on Build It Forward, recorded in the Building Science...

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