By Edward Keegan
Over the last decade, the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program has established itself as the preeminent industry standard for rating green buildings. Despite LEED’s remarkable success, however, there has emerged a determined contingent of USGBC loyalists—many with “LEED AP” after their names—who nonetheless feel that LEED simply does not go far enough. These supergreen eco-warriors have united under the banner of the International Living Building Challenge.
The nesting ground of the Living Building Challenge is the Cascadia Green Building Council, encompassing Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. It should come as no surprise that such an initiative would find a home in the Pacific Northwest, long a bastion of environmental pioneering and leadership.
The prime mover behind the Living Building Challenge is Jason McLennan, LEED AP, a Canadian-born architect who was involved with LEED from its early days as a principal at Kansas City-based BNIM, where he worked with the legendary Bob Berkebile, FAIA. McLennan and Berkebile were hashing out the basic outlines of the “living buildings” concept, in print and in public discourse, in the late 1990s, when LEED was still in its nascence. McLellan was project manager on two of the first 10 LEED pilot projects, notably the David and Lucile Packard Foundation headquarters, from which came the Packard Matrix (2001), a groundbreaking study that attempted to quantify the relative first costs and life cycle costs of LEED and living buildings. READ MORE >>
