Project Overview
Cascadia GBC

It is time to move beyond Platinum to the level of the Living Building.

Imagine a building that is informed by the eco-region’s characteristics and that generates all of its own energy with renewable resources, that captures and treats all of its water on site, that uses resources efficiently, and for maximum beauty.

The Cascadia Region Green Building Council (Cascadia) is issuing a challenge to all building owners, architects, engineers and design professionals to build in a way that will provide all of us and our children with a sustainable future.

No credits, just prerequisites.

The Living Building Challenge is attempting to raise the bar and define a closer measure of true sustainability in the built environment, at least as far as what is currently possible and given the best knowledge available today.  Projects that achieve this level of performance can claim to be the ‘greenest’ in North America and as close to true sustainability as currently possible.

 When LEED emerged in the late nineties, it filled a huge void in the marketplace as designers all over the country were trying to understand how to effectively define green building and measure it in a consistent way.  Even though the tool was far from perfect, it quickly blossomed and did more for the green building market than anything previously conceived.  When the Platinum level was defined it was immediately viewed as the highest level of environmental performance possible by many and, indeed, it is a significant achievement to attain the Platinum level under the current system.  And yet, Platinum is not the highest level possible but rather it was chosen based on what was likely possible at the time of the tool creation.  Several things have transpired in the short time since LEED 1.0 emerged that put the Living Building Standard in context:

1. LEED has been adopted at a far greater rate than anyone’s expectations and has begun to transform the whole building industry.  LEED has continued to evolve and improve and many municipalities have adopted LEED Silver as a baseline standard.

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3. The USGBC has begun to explore the idea of LEED V3.0 as a major restructuring of how its system works.  The specifics have not yet been determined and the im- plementation timeline is likely another one to two years.

4. Zero energy and zero waste water buildings are beginning to emerge around the country and the cost of wind, solar and other sustainable technologies continue to drop just as it is becoming clear that we are past the point of peak oil and cheap energy. Carbon neutral construction of buildings will no doubt follow.

5. Most significantly, it is clear that major environmental trends such as climate change are directly linked to human resource use and from the building industry itself. The rate of change and potential disastrous scenarios for our communities and quality of life are increasing. It is also clear that public opinion is finally awakening to that reality as evidenced by the shift in mass media attention of the issue, the Clinton Climate Initiative, the Mayor’s Climate Initiative, the 2030 challenge and governmental efforts led by the State of California.

Because of these issues, Cascadia feels compelled to release The Living Building Challenge to provide a signal to the green building industry where it needs to head in the next few years if we are to address the daunting challenges ahead.  Cascadia views this Living Building Standard as an act of optimism and faith in the marketplace to reach high-level goals once they have been set.  Cascadia believes that the Living Building Standard described here will be met in the Cascadia bio-region and elsewhere within the next three years, with increasing numbers of Living Buildings appearing within the next five years.

The Cascadia Green Building Council, as a chapter, views this document as support for the USGBC and CaGBC’s goals by setting a new vision and as a way of raising the bar. 

At the heart of the Living Building Challenge is the belief that our society needs to move quickly to a state of balance between the natural and built environments.  Although highly difficult to achieve, understanding and documenting compliance with our system is inherently easy.  No credits to count, models to create and large paperwork to compile. 

Just sixteen simple and profound prerequisites that must be met. The purpose of the Living Building Challenge is simple – to define the highest measure of  sustainability possible in the built environment based on the best current thinking - recognizing that ‘true sustainability’ is not yet possible.  The Living Building is by definition difficult to obtain, and yet all facets of this tool have been attained in numerous projects around the world – just not all together.  With this standard Cascadia hopes to encourage dialogue on where the building industry needs to head and engender support for the first pilot projects until more and more living buildings emerge.

Some useful guiding information:

This new standard is an evolving tool and specific rules on how to document compliance and to seek living building designation will be presented in a forthcoming document The Living Building User’s Guide, which will be based specifically around what a project has done – not what it likely will do.  A project cannot get a rating before it is completed and operating for a year.

Over time, as market realities change, some exceptions noted in this document will be removed.

The Living Building is performance based, not prescriptive and for the most part does not concern itself with how prerequisites are met, which should be the domain of the design team and owner.

The Living Building does not dwell on basic best practice issues so, unlike LEED, it does not have to focus on so many things.  It is assumed that to achieve this high level standard, typical best practices are being met.

The internal logic of the tool is based on pragmatic experience on what has been built in the marketplace.  As hard as it may seem to achieve – it is achievable.

The standard will work for existing buildings as well as for new buildings.  Specific modifications for existing buildings will be defined in this document or the User’s Guide.

The Living Building Standard works for any building type since it is performance based and therefore based on absolute performance.  As a result, the strategies to achieve it will vary widely by building type, which is appropriate.