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Jason McLennan: The Living Building Challenge

Jason McLennan, CEO of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, on The Living Building Challenge, the race to the world's first living building, and creation of LBC 2.0.

VIDEO: GreenSource Magazine

Maximum-Green “Living Buildings” Take Another Leap Forward

The idea of a Living Building, a high-performance building that produces its own power and cleans and reuses all of its water, is gaining momentum around the world. In an effort to oversee the global development of Living Buildings, the establishment of the International Living Building Institute (ILBI) was announced today at Cascadia’s annual conference, Living Future.

The Living Building Challenge began as a program of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council just three years ago. The idea has sparked the creative juices of design professionals around the globe, with more than 60 proposed Living Buildings now in some stage of design or construction in the US and Canada. A living building is a radical step forward in green building and comes at a time when there is growing consensus that the time for baby steps in green building is past.

The basic concept is that a building can work like a natural system; designed and constructed to function as elegantly and efficiently as a flower. A living building must meet 16 performance measures within six categories (or petals) including site, energy, materials, water, indoor quality and beauty and inspiration.

Jason F. McLennan, author of the Living Building Challenge and CEO of Cascadia, says, “We have been delighted to serve as the incubator for these projects. But Cascadia is a regional organization and the Living Building Challenge has now become an international phenomenon. So, the natural and logical progression is to create an international oversight body.”