This year, METROPOLIS recognizes the architect Michael Green with its inaugural Planet Positive Visionary Award for his pioneering work with timber architecture and his vision for architecture that is fundamentally grounded in nature and the earth.

In 2012, Green gave a TED talk titled “Why We Should Build Wooden Skyscrapers” that seeded a new idea in the minds of architects all over North America. “We have an ethic that the Earth grows our food,” he declared, “and we need to move to an ethic in this century that the Earth should grow our homes.” Since then, the mass timber revolution, with Green at its vanguard, has helped transform the construction industry and changed how we think about forestry and forest-based economies. Michael Green Architecture, the firm that Green co-leads with Natalie Telewiak, has completed some of the most significant timber buildings in the world, and has been recognized with over fifty international awards for design excellence.

Resources

Michael Green Architecture

Michael Green: Why We Should Build Wooden Skyscrapers

T3 Minneapolis by Michael Green Architecture

The 2026 Planet Positive Awards Project and Innovation Finalists

33 Articles That Show the Future Is Mass Timber

This episode is presented by Teknion

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Listeners of Deep Green know that we have a big problem with office furniture. In 2018, an estimated 12 million tons of furniture went to landfills in the United States alone, and eight million tons of that was office furniture.

Not cheap e-commerce or flat-pack couches or low-quality furniture. These were desks, workstations, and ergonomic chairs that probably had many more years of life left in them. Now, if we could divert those pieces to new projects and give them a second life, it could mean some money for the original owners, savings for the new owners, and a whole lot of good for the planet.

That's where Reseat comes in. In this episode, created in partnership with Reseat, host Avinash Rajagopal sits down with the company’s founder and CEO, Brandi Susewitz. Building on Susewitz’s deep knowledge of the furniture industry, Reseat is making an increasingly big impact through furniture reuse every year. Listen to learn about what's new with the Reseat platform, how the challenges and opportunities around circularity and design have changed, and why furniture is still a key lever in our transition to a circular built environment.

Resources:

Reseat’s Mission

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This Earth Day, Deep Green brings a special conversation. Join host Avinash Rajagopal as he sits down with Marybeth Shaw, Chief Creative Officer, Design and Marketing at Wolf-Gordon, which is partnering on this episode.

Across two stints totaling more than two decades, Shaw has helped lead and shape Wolf-Gordon’s creative vision across fabrics, wallcoverings, wall protection, and acoustics. Among her many contributions, she has pushed the boundaries of collaboration with artists and designers from around the world.

In this episode, Rajagopal and Shaw explore Wolf-Gordon's approach to material innovation and product development through the lens of sustainability. They also discuss the evolution of the manufacturer's offerings—CLAIR, RAMPART Resolve, and RAMPART Fiber—as a way to better understand the strategies design-forward companies are using to advance healthier, more sustainable materials.

Resources:

Wolf-Gordon Sustainability

This episode of Deep Green is presented by Wolf-Gordon.

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What makes a story earn attention in today’s design media landscape? In this episode of Play with Matches, host Tiffany Rafii sits down with Avi Rajagopal, Editor-in-Chief of Metropolis, to unpack how products, projects, and brands break through—and why most don’t. From editorial judgment and timing to positioning and cultural relevance, Avi shares what separates the pitches that land from the ones that get ignored.

Metropolis | Show Transcript

Think you’d make a great guest on Play with Matches? We’d love to hear from you.

UpSpring is a strategic PR, marketing, and growth partner for firms and product companies shaping the built environment. For more than 17 years, the agency has helped architecture, design, development, and building product brands turn expertise into market authority.

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METROPOLIS recently released its first U.S. Sustainable Design Report, produced in partnership with Interface, offering a deep dive into the state of sustainability in American architecture and design. Over the coming weeks, we’re speaking with leaders who have a bird’s-eye view of how we can build more sustainably here in the United States—what wins we’ve had, what challenges remain, and where we should focus our efforts.

In this episode of Deep Green, host Avinash Rajagopal is joined by Holly Samuelson, Associate Professor and Fairchild Career Development Chair at MIT's School of Architecture and Planning. She's a building scientist, an architect, and an educator whose work focuses on how building design impacts health and carbon emissions.

At MIT, she directs the Livable Spaces Lab, an interdisciplinary research group advancing healthy, energy-efficient buildings for people and the planet. The lab combines computational and experimental methods to tackle urgent challenges, including heat, vulnerability, thermal resilience, indoor air quality, carbon emissions, and the future of building design in a shifting energy landscape.

Listen in to hear her take on the current state of sustainable design in the U.S., how energy performance and occupant health are increasingly connected, the biggest roadblocks to mainstreaming sustainable strategies, and the tangible steps architects and collaborators can take to create healthier, lower-carbon buildings.

Resources:

Livable Spaces Lab

METROPOLIS Interface U.S. Sustainable Design Report 2026

This season of Deep Green is presented by Interface.

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METROPOLIS recently released its first U.S. Sustainable Design Report, produced in partnership with Interface, encapsulating the state of sustainability in American architecture and design. On Deep Green, we’re speaking with leaders who have a bird’s-eye view of how we can build more sustainably here in the United States.

Gensler is the largest architecture and design firm in the world. With more than 6,000 professionals working across 56 offices, the firm generated $1.88 billion in revenue in 2024—that’s billion with a “B.” According to the firm’s recent Resilience by Design report, its 2024 portfolio is projected to avoid emitting 19.6 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide.

In this episode of Deep Green, host Avinash Rajagopal is joined by Katie Mesia, firmwide design resilience leader and director of sustainability at Gensler. A central part of Mesia’s role is shaping Gensler’s culture to help the firm attain its goal of carbon neutrality by 2030.

She consults on deep sustainability strategies for projects around the world, working to reduce carbon emissions and minimize environmental impacts. She has also championed Gensler’s product sustainability standards, helping drive industry-wide adoption of more regenerative materials in architectural interiors.

Listen in to learn how large firms can shift culture at scale, what it really takes to reach carbon neutrality, and where the biggest opportunities for impact lie today.

Resources:

METROPOLIS Interface U.S. Sustainable Design Report 2026

Gensler Product Sustainability (GPS) Standards

Genlser Resilience by Design Report

Design Forecast 2026 | Gensler

This season of Deep Green is presented by Interface.

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METROPOLIS recently released its first U.S. Sustainable Design Report, a deep dive into the state of sustainability in American architecture and design. Over the coming weeks, we’re speaking with leaders who have a bird’s-eye view of how we can build sustainably here in the United States—what wins we've had, what challenges remain, and where we should focus our efforts.

In this episode of Deep Green, host Avinash Rajagopal is joined by Lindsay Baker, CEO of Living Future, the nonprofit behind some of the most ambitious and comprehensive frameworks for sustainable and regenerative design in the built environment. Through initiatives like the Living Building Challenge, Living Future advances a vision of buildings that give back more to nature than they take, creating places in true harmony with life itself.

Baker brings decades of experience across nearly every facet of sustainable design and construction—from her early work as a program manager for LEED, to serving as WeWork’s first head of global sustainability and impact. Together, they discuss regenerative design, transparency in building materials through the Declare label, and what it will take to move from reducing harm to actively restoring the ecosystems we build within.

Resources:

METROPOLIS Interface U.S. Sustainable Design Report 2026

International Living Future Institute

Living Building Challenge

Declare Label

This season of Deep Green is presented by Interface.

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For the last three decades, METROPOLIS has been advocating for better spaces, buildings, and cities that make a positive impact on people and the planet.

We recently released our first-ever Metropolis x Interface Sustainable Design Report, a deep dive into the state of sustainability in American architecture and design. Our partner in this endeavor is Interface, a flooring manufacturer that has been a pioneer in transforming American manufacturing.

Since its visionary founder, Ray Anderson, challenged the industry to do better in the mid-1990s, Interface has worked to reduce its environmental impact, draw down carbon emissions, fight waste and climate change, and help accelerate the transition to a circular economy.

In this episode of Deep Green, host Avinash Rajagopal is joined by Jay Lanier, global head of market sustainability, and Mikhail Davis, director of global market sustainability, to discuss the company’s journey and its ongoing efforts around circularity.

Resources:

METROPOLIS Interface U.S. Sustainable Design Report 2026

Interface Sustainability

This season of Deep Green is presented by Interface.

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