About us
The Center for Building in North America was founded in 2022, with the goal of studying building codes and construction policy in the United States and Canada in comparative global context, and proposing avenues for reform to bring our codes in line with those in other developed countries.
We will be publishing research on the construction industry, codes, and practices, focusing first on vertical circulation – things like staircases and elevators, which make up the core of our buildings. While these elements are easy to overlook, they define how buildings are laid out, and can be the difference between apartment buildings with long, hotel-like double-loaded corridors with all luxury studio and one-bedroom apartments on the one hand, and buildings with more efficient, family-friendly layouts on the other.
The United States and Canada are global outliers in many aspects of multifamily design and construction, and much of our research will focus on introducing North Americans to standard ways of building abroad – especially practices in high-income democracies in Europe, Asia, and Oceania, with better fire safety outcomes than ours – and comparing the codes that drive these differences in costs, livability, efficiency, and safety.
Beyond research, the Center for Building provides technical assistance to groups in the United States and Canada who are interested in bringing international best practice to our own codes and construction industries.
Our Team
Stephen Smith
Executive Director
Stephen founded the Center for Building in 2022, after a career in journalism covering real estate, planning, and transportation, and then a stint at a real estate tech start-up.
He lives in a five-story building in Brooklyn with a single stairway (and no fire escape) built in 2015, and wishes it had an elevator.
John Lansing
Director of Plumbing Standards Research and Development
john.lansing@centerforbuilding.org
John joined the Center for Building in September 2025, after a career as a plumbing designer. He sits on a number of plumbing code committees around the world, and had contributed to a number of code sections in the Uniform Plumbing Code before joining the Center for Building.
He lives in Portland, Oregon in a mixed-use, all-electric apartment building with tilt-and-turn windows, within walking distance to seven full-sized grocery stores.
Board of Directors
Michael Eliason
Michael is an architect, and and founder of Larch Lab in Seattle. His formative work experience was in Germany, where he learned how out of step American codes and practices are from the rest of the world. He has inspired a movement across the US and Canada to find alternatives to the double-loaded corridor, including the Center for Building.
He lives in an accessory dwelling unit with his family in Seattle. While he appreciates the abundant natural light and ventilation, he is looking forward to the day when the city embraces proper, family-friendly point access block apartments – ideally mass timber ones built to passive house standards.
Ben Furnas
Ben is the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a non-profit group that advocates to make New York City more pedestrian-, bike-, and transit-friendly. He was previously the executive director of The 2030 Project, a Cornell University initiative to accelerate climate solutions, and before that, director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Climate and Sustainability, under Mayor Bill de Blasio.
He lives with his family in a second-story apartment in Brooklyn, which has both north- and south-facing light, thanks to its single-stair floor plan.
Julia Vitullo-Martin
Julia is a political scientist and journalist, who served as editor of Mayor Koch’s Commission on the Year 2000, assistant commissioner for Policy and Planning at the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, senior fellow at several think tanks, and too many other roles to count.
She lives in a courtyard building on Manhattan’s West Side, which would be illegal to build today for more reasons than Julia’s had jobs. She enjoys light on multiple sides, cross-ventilated windows, and a perfectly serviceable elevator that, during a building-wide renovation, was replaced, as mandated by the Department of Buildings.
John Zeanah
John Zeanah, AICP is the Chief of Development and Infrastructure for the City of Memphis, Tennessee. In this role, he leads a cross-functional team of agencies responsible for planning, building safety, housing, transportation, public works, and community and economic development. Prior to this role, John served as the Director of the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development for over seven years. Among his accomplishments, John led the development and adoption of the Memphis 3.0 Comprehensive Plan, the City’s first comprehensive plan in 40 years and winner of the American Planning Association’s Daniel Burnham Award of Excellence for a Comprehensive Plan in 2020 and a Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism in 2021. John is also Principal and Owner of Interval, LLC, a planning and policy advisory firm that specializes in helping public sector clients better understand, implement, and improve their plans, policies, codes, regulations, and processes.
Center for Building in North America, Inc.
Brooklyn, New York
Design Studio Folder
Development Carlo Schlatter
General contact
info@centerforbuilding.org
Stephen Smith, Executive director
stephen@centerforbuilding.org