Being inspired and excited about green building practices that go past LEED benchmarks-- that go beyond Net Zero, even-- led me to concentrate on Regenerative (or Net Positive or Living) buildings. I studied various third party certification systems across the world, and from the culmination of this research I created my own checklist or guideline for regenerative design. The fundamental green principals that I focused on presented me a catchy title for this guideline-- Adaptive-reuse, Local and Regenerative Mixed-use, or ALaRM.
The building chosen would be adaptive-reuse, the materials local and/or salvaged and transportation community-accessible, regenerative in its systems and production, and mixed-use in its program as a live/work/retail facility. The site that the building sits at is a former industrial corridor (Kinzie Corridor) in Chicago, and the neighborhood committees want to encourage it to thrive in production once again. Instead of becoming a new warehouse luxury apartment building like in neighboring communities, this building would focus on developing a live/work community in a 21st century green industrial corridor.