JUSTIN R. WOLF




My writing


Architecture | Green Design | Energy Efficiency 

In addition to my content strategy practice, I work as a freelance journalist covering green building trends, regenerative design, and energy policy for a variety of media outlets, including Green Building Advisor, Fine Homebuilding, Metropolis, Architectural Record, ENTER magazine (AIA Minnesota), and others publications. 

Metropolis Magazine •

Grace Farms Foundation Holds Third Annual Design for Freedom Summit

The summit’s opening keynote was delivered by humanitarian photographer Lisa Kristine, who has documented human rights abuses across the globe, including in brick kilns, stone quarries, gold mines, and fishing villages, where in many instances generations of laborers are indentured over small debts. Kristine’s sobering address and accompanying photos elicited more than a few tears from the audience. From there, the summit’s scope expanded to feature various panels and an afternoon of breakouts
Metropolis Magazine •

Shepley Bulfinch Celebrates Its 150th Anniversary with Boston Exhibition

Few design firms in operation today can claim lineage to those distinguished figures who gave shape and soul to the modern American building form, dating back well over a century. Wright, Sullivan, and Richardson, the so-called trinity of American architecture, are among those hallowed names. A notable exception is Shepley Bulfinch, which is now commemorating its 150 year with an exhibition at Boston Architectural College’s McCormick Gallery, on view through May 7. The firm’s founder, Henry Hobs
ENTER Print Annual (2023) •

Rethinking Remembrance at Lakewood Cemetery’s Net-Zero Welcome Center

This feature appeared in the 2023 ENTER print annual, available for purchase here. The 250-acre Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis’s Chain of Lakes area hugs stretches of Lake Harriet and Bde Maka Ska. Its rolling hills, adorned with seas of headstones, monuments, and lawn crypts, are home to some 200,000 souls, including local luminaries such as Hubert Humphrey, Bobby Marshall, Lena Olive Smith, and T.B. Walker. Like all great civic landscapes, the cemetery’s grounds are a careful composition of
OhmConnect •

IoT and Smart Home Technology: Looking at the Matter Standard

A smart home sure seems like a smart idea. Integrated kitchen, laundry, and entertainment appliances are designed for ease of use and peace of mind. Smart home systems like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings provide useful and intuitive command centers for everything from lighting to dishwashers to thermostats, provided the systems and devices in question are compatible and synced. With more smart appliances and competing systems flooding the home market, it can
OhmConnect •

What is Heating Your Home and What Power Is Producing That Heat?

What type of system is heating your home? For that matter, what is powering that heat? Whether you are purchasing, upgrading, or simply maintaining your home, these and related questions are of critical concern. They are critical, dear reader, because presumably you are keen on having a system that is clean, efficient, durable, right-sized for your home and lifestyle, and finally, efficient both in terms of cost and energy consumption. There are various types of heating systems out there, and
Metropolis Magazine •

Manufacturers Catch Up on Embodied Carbon

One facet of our built environment where this hasn’t truly taken hold is interiors. So-called “hot spot” products such as furniture, flooring, and ceiling materials, among others, comprise a veritable trove of embodied carbon emissions. Only a small percentage of these products currently disclose their carbon emissions through Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), so even if building owners elect to use one of several innovative carbon trackers like the CARE Tool or EC3 (Embodied Carbon in
Green Building Advisor •

A National Definition for Zero Emissions Buildings Is in the Works

There’s an old joke about how standards proliferate. A particular industry (let’s say, for argument’s sake, the one that deals with buildings) gets bogged down by 14 competing standards and definitions of the same thing. The solution is to concoct a universal definition that encompasses all scenarios, one standard to rule them all. The result: the industry now has 15 competing standards. Is this an unfair generalization? Yes. Because the gag’s premise rests of the idea of competition. If varyin
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Contact me to inquire about other writing samples, including ghostwritten articles, website copy, and special projects.

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Art Criticism | Art History

Gallery Crawl •

“Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures” at the Rubin Museum of Art

Memento Mori is the Latin-Christian maxim translated as “Remember that you will die.” It is altogether sobering and, in some perverted sense, comforting; it’s an epitaph for the masses—commoners and kings alike. It is also the subject of the ’s latest offering, of the same name, and although said offering is a modest one, this exhibition is, quite literally, breath-taking.
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