Deep Green

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
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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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