leed is good but not "it" when it comes to sustainability. Learn about the best methods to harvest wind and sun. What materials and tectonic systems are the best for the condition you are working in, site the building correctly, take into account phenomenology (can snow become poetic?). What I mean to say is: there is nothing to follow only principles to be mindful of.

As far as LEED in itself, it is pretty good, if nothing else better than if there was nothing at all. The one major deficiency IMHO is that LEED is not good enough at adressing issues of energy and materials.

Just keep this in mind: the USGBC is a big organization with lots of people involved in making the standards. These standards are the best a group of people can come up with to slowly change a building sector that is very traditional and economy driven.

My biggest problem with LEED is that some things like building orientation or wastewater or transportation accessibility, which effect the building in a HUGE way, as well as the whole area around it, are given equal weight with other elements which seem to have much smaller effect, or certainly a more local or temporary effect.

I was wondering about the same thing and looking for good books on this topic, that I can learn more about sustainability and how to integrate with our design. Toward a New Regionalism
So far I found "Environmental Architecture in the Pacific Northwest". Any other sugestions?

my issue with leed, particularly as i've seen it seep it's way into the discussion with the public at large, is that it risks becoming nothing more than a branding exercise. that is, people only want to know if a building is "leed" or not. it's similar to the way that some people only want to know if your shirt is ralph lauren or not. it's just dumb and, if anything, i feel that the essence of sustainability revolves around intelligence & thoughtfulness.

on the other hand, i'm not sure that "true sustainability" will ever be acheiveable. we're just too meddlesome as a species and will always be playing catchup with oursselves when it comes to dealing with the environment.

a true sustainability will be, naturally, a process. there is no 'result', no end. as we learn and as the world changes, the processes that allow us to approach a sustainable existence will have to evolve.

the leed program seems to implicitly recognize this in that it, as a program, evolves and allows for nudging and development within the system that's been set up. the fault lies in that they don't EXplicitly recognize this evolution so that users and the public realize that this is a never-ending process. a leed-platinum building finished in 2006 should be considered substandard in 2020. let's hope we've gotten smart enough by then that this is true.

. . . can never be achieved. we can only slow down the change (destruction) we do to the natural environment.

in order to be truly sustainable, we would need to give up all things manufactured that result in emissions, chemicals, VOC's or depletion of resources.

and yes, pv panels and wind generators contribute to depleting natural resources.

the best way to sustain the earth is to commit suicide immediately.

depends on how you do it, vado.

now i'm just being a bastard.

still funny though.

maybe a nuclear war would solve the human problem on this planet. It did quite fine without us....


Nubie- your confusion is understandable. Before tackling the LEED/USGBC brand, read these two books and call me in the morning.

McDonough, Bill; cradle to cradle

McHarg, Ian; design with nature

Also we've had this discussion several times on this forum, so please do a search. Go ahead and resurrecting any of those threads, they should contain most of what you seem to be seeking.

if we all got together and tried just a little bit harder maybe we could finally destroy mankind and all go to heaven. this would make god happy and their wood be no more wars. and the mutant animals that are left can live in piece.

look to the venacular for some good sustainable concepts and influences - buildings that have to be sustainable in order for the culture to survive.

see Bernard Rudofsky - Architecture without Architects

but vado, didn't you know george bush isn't worried about the environment, war or any of the above for just that reason? the rapture is coming, so why worry about the environment? this is all god's plan, and schwarzenegger is working against god by suggesting increased auto standards...damn him.

mark twain used to speak to his friends constantly about his fantasy for ending all life on the planet earth; just five minutes with all the oxygen removed. long enough to kill us all and leave the trees and fish to themselves. of course, he was suffering from depression, but it is still funny.

there is no such things as true sustainability. leed is better than nothing. the european version is tougher/better. i am guessing that the rapture is NOT going to happen, so we might as well try not to mess with the planet too much. if we can. leed is a fairly decent first step.

heck, even some of the evangelicals are getting into environmentalism these days. apparently some of them have read the parts of their bibles that talk about stewardship. humility is also a good word found inside bibles, but a quiet one, and thus hard to hear when you're busy thumping on the cover.

The idea of sustainability is a nice one, but as a buzzword it is such a blunt instrument, and as such, can be a little too easy to dismiss. to keep the idea of sustainability from hovering in midair as a glittering generality, it's important to descend as quickly as possible into specifics, and establish some kind of baseline from which to start measuring. which LEED offers, even if it may not suit the loftiest possible goals at all possible times. as steven ward says, it should be thought of as a point in a process, not an end in itself.

LEED cert. is good if you have the money...of course..if you have the money , then the points are a ploy to justify the building's existence. okay, so it is a free market society and I profit sometimes but I still say the points are a symbol for our optimism...

These environmental-shock jokes beg our common dismissals through half-baked conceptions of our ontology, to such a skewed level of denial, only cynicism and perverse denial aids acceptance...So yes, it is drastic and overwhelming condition we participate in (from Bill McDounough's point of view), yet the medium is the message.

Consider this (and please excuse my spelling)-

"true sustainability" is ecologically out of line with the current model of western civilization. Continual economic growth, which is what western capitalism is based on, has no basis in reality, as growth can only be equated to resources and energy available on the planet, and both of thise are finite. In light of this, a serious change in cultural idenity and values are in order. We cannot live with the expectation to continually increase our material and energy use indefinitely. True sustainabilty will only be achieved by adjusting our values and desires to reflect the realities of our environment. To me, this seems to mean that we will have to learn to appreciate the less tangible things in life; relationships with friends and family, our community, the opportunity to be emotionally and physically healthy, etc... , because fundementally, we must learn to live with drastically less energy than what we are accustomed to. In light of this, the whole disscussion on LEED seems a little narrow sighted. While LEED is certainly a step in the right direction, it promotes more of a policy of "doing less bad" than a policy of "doing good" (to paraphase Bill McDonough). And it is a program that is fundementally concerned soley with building science and performance, not the larger societial issues surrounding sustainabiilty. As an example, there's nothing that says that Wal-mart can't have LEED certified buildings, but globalized consumerism in the style of Wal-mart and other "big box" stores is a far greater problem than whether 75% of the building has daylight and views, or the bathrooms have low-flow toilets (to borrow a few credits from the LEED ratings). Perhaps a building rating system based on a zero or positive-net energy standard would be a stronger, albiet more difficult goal to strive for. It seems that there is enough urgency at this point concerning the environmental crisis that those of us in the building industry should no longer be engaging in projects that are "less bad", only in those that do good.

-end rant

Indeed, LEED is only a gentile push in the right direction, more so as it comes from the building industry that used to be remorseless, self-indulgent, egotistical, and masochistic to the point of self-destruction. It's not an absolute singular solution to all life's problems and i don't think that LEED certified buildings are at all truly sustainable in the global sense that is being described here, only that it is a marketable commodity that tries to eliminate the sick building syndrome.

I recently found this paper on sustainability on the changethis website.

beyond sustainability

He argues that the current focus on solving the problem of unsustainability and that is hurting our ability to become truly sustainable.

"And so we need a radically different way to visualize sustainability and to think and act about it. And it begins with a simple argument: Reducing unsustainability is not the same as creating sustainability.
I propose a radically different conversation about sustainability, one that begins with a new definition. Sustainability is a noun and is an end, not a means. Sustainability is a characteristic of living systems. It is different from the lasting qualities of inanimate objects. We would never describe granite as having sustainability. We might speak about its durability, but never its sustainability. To me the most basic symbol of sustainability is that of flourishing. It pertains to both human and other living systems...."

Check it. It is an interesting read.

LEED is nothing but a marketing ploy all around the block. The perfect mixture of politics and finding loop holes in the guide manual wording leads to rated projects. A lot of costly high tech devices also makes it curiously overcomplicated and non-regional. Trust me, I've seen the whole process in action.

LEED has many many demerits - it is a rating system. the goal would be to hit X+1 credits to make it to gold/platinum whatever - not to be more sustainable and go beyond - also i have a problem with its points weightage - you get the same 1 point for reusing 50-75% of a building as the same point for site selection (you really would have to select a bad site to not get that point)

Also i have a problem with sustainability being a trend - it is not a trend - it is simply intelligent architecture that had been performed for centuries before the advent of modern 'luxuries'(also gives luxury of unintelligent architecture) like electricity etc,......vernacular architecture s the true sustainable architecture - that does not mean we go back to living in igloos and teepes - use the same concepts in modern
architecture

I would question if all the paperwork and electricity used to document the leed points for a project are worth the projects sustainability - if your building is sustainable - thats great - why spend more money, time, electricity and paper for getting a LEED rating

Having said that if its going to make some big bad companies a little more sustainable - its a good thing and its worth it - if LEED is making sustainability popular - although inherently wrong - (william donough might say less bad is no good) i say more good is no bad

Anyways those are some of my thoughts - have many more - email me at [email protected] for more - would love to continue the discussion -

my attitude about leed is changing somewhat. just wrapping up a project that would likely have been fairly high-performance via leed ratings, but we made the decision to just approach the project as a holistic 'sustainable' exercise, achieving efficiencies, energy savings, local use of materials, and use of recycled/reused materials wherever possible. sort of like niket suggested, leaving the leed program behind.

well, without our ability to point to the potential leed recognition, the construction manager has been able to successfully talk the client into gutting the project of most of its 'sustainability'-oriented characteristics. they've ignored the systematic/holistic way the project was put together and simply deleted individual elements willy nilly.

if we were using some sort of quantitative measure, we would have had some way to combat this but all we were able to say was 'but, but, but...'.

as a consequence, now this project will not only NOT be energy efficient and conscientiously constructed, it's now probably worse than normal. huge south-facing windows have had our sun-management elements deleted so the building will be subject to overheating and glare. (when the sunshades were deleted i asked if we could also delete the return air ducts from the hvac. it's about equivalent in my mind.) materials will now be sourced from the cheapest rather than the best or closest. etc.

Steven- as always spot on for the pros and cons of being green..

LEED isn't the only rating system out there. Not that there is a rating system for every site condition, designing the best building regardless of what level of certification recieved is the mark of a true green building. If being certified is the leverage needed to keep the project from being VE'd to death, then LEED has served it's purpose.

Check out the article on page 6, here, 'LEED Update'. I know the author...

great quote treekiller, the true mission of LEED and sustainable design is when their rating systems are obsolete

i love Feldstein!!!

and we did what to the beaver, bison, mink, whales, and passenger pigeons in the name of western expansion?????

vado you would, weirdo.

(I say that self-reflectively)

((what does that even mean?))

niket- I've noticed the same thing about the point weight. Except I believe that things like site selection should get MORE points, because the potential damage done by mis-siting a project (in terms of transportation, utilities, neighborhoods) is so enormous. But definitely, re-use is a big one, too.

How do you guys convince your clients to jump on the LEED bandwagon? My office does a lot of private schools, and they are absolutely dead-set against comissioning (Pre-Requisite), so we can never get them to do it, resulting in projects like what Steven describes above. They say they want to be green, but without that system holding them to it, the best bits get VE'd out.

wow. i've never heard of a client 'dead-set against commissioning'. it seems to me that particular type of client would benefit the most from building commissioning (as i've witnessed first hand) because commissioining should result in the building performing as designed (in terms of HVAC and electrical systems are concerned). the yearly energy savings from a properly performing building alone could pay the fee for the commissioning agent. I'm surprised that the O&M group of the private school isn't an advocate for it. rationalist, what are their main arguments against commissioning?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Do they need any other arguement? Basically, these schools have a sufficient operating budget as a result of their exorbitant tuition, but have trouble coming up with construction capital. So they balk at any up-front costs, and are constantly trying to defer expenditures until "later."

It's not just one of them, either. It's a trend with the private schools. Our next shot is going to be to try and convince them to work with CHiPS, because all of the public schools are required to do that, and we're hoping they might respond to the arguement that, "well, you want to be better than the public schools, right?"