Category: Green Architecture

The curious case of the LEED lawsuit

I’ve seen a lot of tweets lately about the LEED lawsuit. While I can’t speak to the veracity of the lawsuit’s claims I can and will weigh in on my own personal opinion of LEED and the USGBC.

I think LEED was incredibly important. It was a first step towards a national shift in the way developers, governments and commercial clients think about buildings and performance. Without LEED we might still be living in a world where green and white roofs would still be found mostly in Europe, where dual flush toilets and waterless urinals would be a curiosity found at Epcot but no where else in the USA, and where post-consumer recycled content percentages would still be found only on paper and not listed proudly on the resource webpage for carpets and other finishes. With all of that said, I think we have outgrown LEED.

I’ve seen a lot of tweets lately about the LEED lawsuit (Giffords Vs USGBC). While I can’t speak to the veracity of the lawsuit’s claims I can and will weigh in on my own personal opinion of LEED and the USGBC.

I think LEED was incredibly important. It was a first step towards a national shift in the way developers, governments and commercial clients think about buildings and performance. Without LEED we might still be living in a world where green and white roofs would still be found mostly in Europe, where dual flush toilets and waterless urinals would be a curiosity found at Epcot but no where else in the USA, and where post-consumer recycled content percentages would still be found only on paper and not listed proudly on the resource webpage for carpets and other finishes. With all of that said, I think we have outgrown LEED.

To fully understand the situation with LEED I think its important to see what LEED certification does and does not actually brings to a project.

  • LEED certification does not guarantee energy efficiency, many of the steps that are involved in LEED design are or should be standards in modern building design. What it does guarantee is a lighter foot print than if nothing environmentally sensitive was done at all. That is to say, a LEED certified building of any level is most likely going to have a better performance than anything built in the International Style; a LEED certified home will be more environmentally sensitive than Phillip Johnson’s glass house, but so would most of the McMansions built today.
  • Under the LEED v3.0 standard for a building to be LEED certified it must be worked on by a LEED AP; all this guarantees is that someone who has studied and passed the LEED exam has been a part of the design team. It does not guarantee that they are a trained design profession, nor does it guarantee that they led the project.
  • What LEED really brings to a project is marketability; people who are not in the construction trades will usually infer that a LEED platinum building is more environmentally sensitive than a non-LEED building, when this is not true. All that the LEED platinum certification proves is that specific building meets a set of standards, but NOT that other buildings don’t. This is the reason that many municipalities are opting to include environmentally friendly regulations which require buidlings to meet certain LEED criteria but not actually be LEED certified.
  • Lastly, the surest thing LEED brings to a project is increased costs. While these costs are minor compared to the overall cost of construction, they can be $.05 a square foot for documentation and application costs alone 1. If you think that this is minor, consider that the new Pei and Partners building at 1000 Connecticut Avenue, NW is over 380,000 square feet and only 12 stories tall 2. This is project is aiming to be LEED Platinum which means that in addition to all of the design costs, this project has had at least additional $19,000 in paperwork costs that have done nothing to improve the environmental footprint of the building.

Where does this leave us? In my opinion we should be phasing LEED out and in its place enacting Green Building Codes, much like California just did. This building codes serve multiple purposes:

  • It gets a private non-profit out of the regulation business. Currently, many school boards, municipalities and local governments have jumped on the LEED bandwagon and started requiring LEED certification for their buildings. This is just plain wrong. A private company should not be in charge of reguating public buildings. We do not outsource our Fire Protection, ADA enforcement and other Health, Safety and Welfare regulations to private companies to enforce, why should environmental design be any different? Especially since it has been shown that indoor environmental quality has a direct impact on the health of building occupants 3.
  • It levels the playing field and returns Health, Safety and Welfare issues to state licensed professionals. USGBC requires at least one LEED AP professional to work on a project for it to be considered for LEED certification. This means that many firms cannot bid on a project unless they team with a consultant with a LEED AP staff member. This means that states are requiring people to have a certification that is not provided nor regulated by the state. Furthermore, if you consider this in light of the above point, it means that non-licensed professionals are the ensuring Health, Safety and Welfare of the public. Consider that the LEED AP on the project is not required to hold any specific level of position nor are they required to have any liability if a project fails to meet its design criteria 4. By the state regulations, this should be something that is regulated by licensed Architects or Engineers. If LEED was phased out and a Green Building Code put in its place, licensed professionals would be liable to ensure that project designs maintain Health, Safety and Welfare statutes.
  • Lastly, Green Building Codes would mandate and ensure that we move into the 21st century with a level playing field for buildings. By requiring environmentally friendly design and materials in new construction this would increase demand, increase production and in turn decrease the cost of these materials. This has been seen with CFL lightbulbs and photovoltaic cells, as these become more mainstream their initial costs have decreased and their efficiency has increased so that they products stay relevant in the market, because they are forced to compete on cost instead of just being an ethically beneficial product. The overall effect of this might not solve our environmental issues (an ailing power grid, a lack of water on the West Coast, suburban sprawl) but it would go a long way to mitigating them and preventing them from increasing.
  1. How Much Does LEED certification cost. ↩
  2. Case Study on 1000 Connecticut Avenue ↩
  3. The EPA’s statement on IAQ and health ↩
  4. LEED AP’s under the 3.0 system are required to complete Continuing Education Requirements and those previously accredited were forced to complete additional testing in order to be considered as a LEED AP for the purpose of a project’s certification. ↩

Solar Decathlon

Today I headed down to the Solar Decathlon on the National Mall. While there I was able to tour 15 of the 20 homes. I was happy to see that the Mall was crowded with people braving the wet and cold to visit these houses, even if that meant that the lines for some of the more award winning homes (like Germany and California) were so long that I chose to see 8 other houses instead of trying to get into them.

These houses all had innovative design solutions to create energy efficient and responsible homes. Interestingly enough, most of the homes used off the rack products, but just assembled them in innovative ways. Where I found the homes to be lacking was that most of them did not fully address their sites. Many of the homes did not interact with the portions of their lots that faced away from the main walk-way (those on the North were predominantly South focused, and those on the south were mainly North focused). Now I know a lot of this had to do with strategic window placement, but for homes which were little more than 15’x50′ rectangles it felt like opportunities to fully engage the site were lost. The teams DID engage the sites, they created decks, plantings and water features, but the houses often did not interact with these features.

One of the things that I found the most informative about the whole competition was not something anyone did, but rather what they were prohibited form doing. Most of the teams had integrated some form of waste water reduction technology through the filtration and re-use of gray and rain water systems. Unfortunately, they were not allowed to use these systems, because in DC it is a violation of plumbing code to use rain or gray water from anything domestic; it can only be used for landscaping needs. Apparently this is standard in many jurisdictions throughout the country. For a city that is trying to be more LEED friendly and at the same time develop its urban neighborhoods, this is a travesty. The student representatives at many of the buildings made it a point to highlight the water savings features and their inability to use them and encouraged visitors to contact their representatives to change this piece of legislation.

LEED, the trials and tribulations of the Green Revolution

I just finished reading an article on the Wall Street Journal’s site about the green building movement and the practical issues faced with training professionals and navigating an unstable and untested market. As a design profesisonal who keeps putting off his LEED exam in favor of other equally worthy endeavors, this article hit home. The problem with green building right now is that the market is so new and untested both for professionals and for the products. The article describes a situation similar to one I recently faced at work. An architect specified a Green product that ended up not being reliably available which caused delays and impacted budget. In the end litigation was reached. Fortunately, in my situation we were able to determine that the LEED point was unattainable even with the specified product, and that we were well within our target status (silver) so a non-LEED approved solution was found which allowed the budget and schedule not to be impacted.

This type of problem is rare in proven markets, when was the last time you heard that concrete or brick was not available? And when they are not, an alternative product usually exists and can be used without detriment to the project. The problem with the current state of Green products is that in some divisions (parts of the construction trade) there may few choices that help qualify for points, and each choice can qualify for differing points, so an alternative product may be the same monetary cost but may cause you to lose LEED credits. All of this coordination (and possible legal exposure) is one of the main reasons that LEED projects demand a high premium on the design fees.

The other major reason for the premium that LEED projects (or Green projects in general) carry (besides the increasing demand) is that the supply of trained professionals is just not enough to keep up with the demand yet. The LEED exam, while well within reach for anyone who is good at wrote memorization, is a barrier for many to achieving LEED-AP (Accredited Professional) status. In my case, every time I start to study for the exam something more germane to my career comes up. The first time it was focusing on completing my IDP, now I am preoccupied with studying for my licensing exams. Once I finish those, I am sure I will be concerned with getting my continuing education credits. Now I know these don’t take up all my time, but as opposed to when I was a student, I have more pressing things to do in my free time than read and memorize a 500 page book for instant recall. I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that, yes professionals know that we SHOULD get accredited, but until it becomes a necessity of our field, or we are offered increased compensation for our accreditation, I have a had time believing that supply of LEED accredited professionals will catch up with demand.

Adaptively reused Circuit Cities, here we come!

With the recent closing of many of the area’s Circuit City stores and the bleak financial forecast, this Sunday’s Washington Post article about what to do with big box stores after they close down, seemed to be fortuitously timed to impact the local planning discourse. For this article, the Post assembled a collection of local architects and artists, such as Darrel Rippeteau, Roger K. Lewis, Esocoff & Associates, et al., and asked them how they would reuse a big-box store.

The graphics in this article are intriguing and open an sub/urban planning discussion on what to do with the trappings of early twenty-first century American development once this business model has changed. The proposals include luxury housing, gardens, vineyards, and other adaptive reuse measures. This is all green and good, but I have to question the safety and cost of reusing these big box stores. Like fast food franchises, big box stores are not built to last. They are not constructed with any concept of their permanence, instead they are meant to go up quick and cheap and come down the same way when the new mega-ultra-super mart opens around the corner. The advantage of reusing old warehouses and factories is that theses large masonry structures were built to last and much of these structure can be re-purposed for less a strenuous program. This advantage would not be present in the Circuit Cities which will soon find themselves lacking a purpose.

There was one proposal that stood out to me, instead of re-imagining the big box store, it adapted the parking lot to a more urban context. The design called for two “linear buildings” surround a “parking module.” This strategy is closely related to one of the common forms for multifamily construction – the Texas Donut. In this strategy the parking garage is surrounded by the program, hiding it from view and creating a “safe” place for parking. This is a strategy that has become quite common in urban fringe development and could be beneficial in creating density within the big box context. The other reason this strategy caught my eye is that in my Thesis project for architecture school, I repurposed the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in New Orleans to create a public plaza and a municipal library. Part of the goal of my project was to acknowledge the big box stores as the modern equivalent of the urban market and to reintegrate them into the civic context.

From Highboy to Turbine

bookcase stair

[Image via Inhabitat.]

So it looks like Dubai is approaching its Po-Mo phase, Philip Johnson beware!

In an almost deferential move, there is a new building slated for construction that looks like a Turbine (see this post at Inhabitat). Instead of going the Masdar route and building a building that generates its power, this building just refers to the shape of turbines as a way of co-opting the green building trend and making it a design statement. In place of power generation, the “turbine” will generate spectacular views of the desert mirage that is Dubai for the dinners in its floating restaurant.
It is interesting to note that the design firm that built this project Atkins Design is responsible for many other projects in Dubai and the arab world including the Burj Al Alrab and the Jumeirah Beach Hotel. One of their projects which I have wrote about in the past is the Bahrain World Trade Center, which has three actual turbines that generate power for the building.

Philip Johnson's AT&T Building

[Image © rieteree all rights reserved.]

The reason I bring up Po-Mo and Johnson is that this project in Dubai seems such a blatant progeny of his AT&T building (now Sony building) in NYC. This building was meant to evoke the prestige and Americana patriotism of a Chippendale Highboy in the treatment of its roof line. Much like the Vana Venturi house brought post modernism to the home and hearth, Johnson’s AT&T building brought the language of Post Modernism to commercial construction. No longer were smooth glass boxes a la mode, instead references to historic forms were used to tie companies to abstract ideas and emotions.

It will be interesting to see if this new tower in Dubai will change the architectural discourse further. Instead of just buildings referring natural elements such as flames and water droplets (Champana’s Dubai Towers and The Shanghai Cruise Ship Terminal) this new building takes it a step further and refers to power that these natural elements can generate without actually generating it. This contradiction seems to say “Hey look at me, I’m cool, I’m a green product, but not really – I’m so hip I don’t need to be green.” Taking this to its natural conclusion, might we start seeing buildings decked out with “faux-to-voltaic” panels and AstroTurf green roofs? If Dubai is the new New York and considered a barometer of the commercial architectural zeitgeist, we just might.

An Urban Plan for a New New Orleans

I submitted the op-ed below to the editorial desk of the New Orleans Times Picayune two weeks ago. I have not received any response to my inquiries, so I assume that they are not interested; if that changes I may have to remove this post. In any case, I would like to present my solution for a sustainable redevelopment of New Orleans:

An urban plan for a new New Orleans.

Although New Orleans avoided Gustav’s wrath, we need to learn as much as we did the hard way from Katrina. Instead of rebuilding the city and the levees as they were, we need to make it so that New Orleans will never worry about a hurricane again.

New Orleans has had a past fraught with disasters: twice fires wiped out the bulk of the French and Spanish colonial city and there have been numerous floods and levee breaks which have altered the city’s shape.  Over the last century we believed that we had bent nature to our will by controlling the course of the Mississippi River and preventing the annual flood. At the same time developers drained the surrounding swamps to make new low-lying easily flooded subdivisions.  The damage caused by Katrina showed this control to be fleeting.

The rebuilding after Katrina was done with the wrong methodology: we treated the symptoms, not the problems. What we needed to do was create a plan to address the environment, the economy and the unique identity of New Orleans, and we still can.  The levee system by itself is not sufficient; overtopping and crevasses are always a possibility.  The city needs a two tiered approach to safety, one which selectively prevents and allows controlled flooding in to create a city that can function with six feet of water in the streets of evangeline.  New Orleans is also facing a similar struggle with its economy; it relies on the tourism industry and the port to survive.  With the current downturn in the national economy there is less money to be spent which will eventually hinder both the shipment of goods and services and the attraction of money to the tourist trade.  The city needs a new sustainable identity.

To save the Crescent City we need to recreate it as a new Creole city by blending the local culture with building concepts from around the world.  The Dutch city of Amsterdam and an area of Peru called Belén both have novel strategies to handle flooding; one is a city that walls off the water and the other is a community that floats atop it.  The older urban areas of New Orleans should learn from Amsterdam and create more raised levees and canals to bring high water from the river and the lake to designated overflows, much like the Bonnet Carré Spillway.  These areas, the former swamps and low lying neighborhoods devastated by Katrina, could be built anew using updated concepts based on the Peruvian strategy; buildings and public plazas that lay on the ground during parts of the year, but float on the surface of the water during flood periods.  These buildings would be anchored in place but allowed to move vertically to adjust to rising and falling water levels.  This strategy could serve as a water recharge basin and allow all rain water to be pumped from the low lying city streets into the new controlled flood plains where it can be treated and released down river or into the lake.  This constant movement of water will work like a bayou and prevent mosquito borne diseases.  These levees and canals will create a more efficient mass transit systems with in the city with boat traffic running atop the water and an enclosed rail system below.

New Orleans should look beyond structures and embrace a new urban identity.  By improving upon the model of Greensburg, Kansas – creating all platinum LEED buildings and aiming for carbon neutrality – New Orleans could brand itself as the heart of the Green movement.  Most of its power needs could be met through hydro electric, solar and other non-polluting forms of energy production.  Water that is collected in the recharge flood plains should be used for plant irrigation, cleaning the streets after parades and other non-potable water needs.  Tax breaks and incentives should be offered to companies that achieve carbon neutrality, manufacture alternative energy products and research new environmentally friendly technologies.  By encouraging organizations like the USGBC and Green Globes to make New Orleans their headquarters, the Big Easy could be the leader at the heart of the green movement. These new businesses would supply New Orleanians with jobs and the city with a consistent source of revenue that would enable a more locally funded rebuilding process.  In addition, the greening of New Orleans will help the tourist industry by making it a destination for cultural and environmental tourism.  The city may have missed the tech boom of the late twentieth century, but it could easily embrace the twenty-first as a model green city.

This redevelopment plan is a bold stroke and some may argue that it is unrealistic; but wasn’t draining almost 100 square miles of swamp for more dry real estate just as bold? It is my belief that without daring aspirations the Crescent City will always be teetering on the edge of destruction.  Yet, by allowing controlled flooding and by bringing in the industry of the twenty-first century, Creole culture and adaption can once again save New Orleans.

-Spencer Lepler is a graduate of the Tulane School of Architecture (’05) with a Master of Architecture and a certificate in Preservation Studies.  He lives in Northern Virginia and is working towards his architectural license.  His blog can be read at http://www.selophane.com/blog

Articles of Interest

Here are some links to articles that have peaked my interest in the last few days:

Green Buildings

Newsweek has an interview with William McDonough, Q&A: The Future of Green Buildings | Newsweek Future Of Energy | Newsweek.com, which focuses on his ideas about the green building movement and the direction architecture is taking. For those versed in Green Architecture, there really is nothing new in this article, but for the general public this can serve as a nice introduction to some of the standard green concepts such as “cradle to cradle design”, densification, green roofs and renewable energy.