Page 37 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

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GREEN BUILDINGS TODAY

Green buildings and sustainable design have been major movements in the design,
development and construction industry since about 2000, with an accelerating inter-
est since 2005, as shown in Fig. 2.1. Here we see the growth of green buildings, in
terms of cumulative LEED project registrations and certifications, both increasing
75 percent in 2007 alone, and 65 percent and 77 percent, respectively, in 2006 versus
the prior year. In this respect, the acceptance and practice of green building
design, after growing steadily from 2000 through 2005, began accelerating in 2006
and 2007.
However, a large majority of such projects are still at a basic level of green
design, as shown by the number of LEED Certified and Silver projects, as a per-
centage of the total. By the end of the first quarter of 2008, total LEED for New
Construction and Major Renovations (LEED-NC) project certifications (U.S. proj-
ects only) numbered 1015 (including the four major systems—LEED for New
Construction and Major Renovations, LEED for Core and Shell, LEED for
Commercial Interiors, and LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and
Maintenance, total certifications were 1405). Table 2.1 shows the relative percentage
of high-performance LEED-NC certifications (Gold and Platinum) represent about
32 percent of the total, with Platinum representing some 50 U.S. projects, or 5 per-
cent of the total. Based this analysis, I decided to focus this book primarily on the
Platinum projects, since they represent the highest attainment level in the LEED
system and are still relatively rare; barely one project out of 20 makes it into the
LEED stratosphere.
As of Summer 2008, the largest LEED Platinum new construction project was the
Oregon Health and Science University’s (OHSU’s) Center for Health and Healing in
Portland, Oregon, developed by Gerding Edlen Development as a building to suit for
the university. This project contains 412,000 square feet of gross floor area in a 16-story
mixed-use medical facility. Completed in the fall of 2006, the OHSU project contains
a 300-kW onsite microturbine plant, 60-kW of building integrated photovoltaics
(BIPV), a 6000-square-foot site-built solar air heater and numerous energy-efficiency

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