Page 43 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

HIGH-PERFORMANCE BUILDING CHARACTERISTICS 21

have a right to ask, “Against what standard are you measuring your design, and
how are you going to prove it?” By following the LEED guidelines, but not doing
the paperwork, the practical effect is that there’s a lot less commitment to the final
outcome.

COMMERCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL BUILDINGS
A green building uses design and construction practices that significantly reduce or
eliminate the negative impact of buildings on the environment and occupants. In the
LEED system, these practices include building location, water and energy use, envi-
ronmentally preferable purchasing and waste management activities, improved
indoor environmental quality and a “continuous improvement” approach to green
building innovations. Though owned by the USGBC, the LEED rating system is a
publicly available document;* it has an extensive committee structure charged with
keeping it current and improving it over time. The current iteration is known as
LEED version 2.2. The LEED v3 system (expected in 2009) plans to have greater
flexibility for building teams to consider regional issues, a stronger focus on life-
cycle assessment and a better way to handle alternative approaches to designing “low
carbon” buildings.
Table 2.2 shows the six major categories in the LEED-NC rating system for new
and renovated commercial and institutional buildings, mid-rise and high-rise resi-
dential towers. At first thought, many people think of a green building as one that
primarily uses less energy and possibly uses recycled-content materials. Looking at
the entire LEED rating system, one can see that the categories of concern are much
broader and more comprehensive than just saving energy. Practitioners in the
design, development, and construction industry in the United States and Canada
have embraced this system over all other competitors. In this respect, it’s fairly easy
to say, “It isn’t a green building (in the United States and Canada) if it’s not LEED
certified.”
From the standpoint of commercial buildings, the LEED rating system is heav-
ily weighted toward saving energy, saving water, and providing higher levels of
indoor environmental quality. However, it’s virtually impossible to get a LEED
Gold or Platinum rating without paying close attention to the sustainable site crite-
ria and to the need to conserve materials and resources. In this sense, I find that
LEED Gold and Platinum projects are fairly balanced across all five main groups
of environmental attributes. For example, Table 2.3 shows the LEED scores by cat-
egory for the two completed buildings at the Arizona State University Biodesign
Institute in Tempe, Arizona. You can easily see that the main difference between the
two projects is the very high level of energy savings in the Platinum project, more
than 50 percent. †

*U.S. Green Building Council [online], www.usgbc.org/leed, accessed July 31, 2008.
† David Sokol, “Crossing Boundaries,” Greensource magazine, January 2008, p. 72.