Gulf Islands Park Operation Centre: LEED Platinum

Come on, LEED Platinum is great but can't we be a little more visionary?

Leed Platinum should be the everyday standard, not the odd-ball exception.

Instead of reporting on this nice but rather borinbg building, look at what Farr Associates in Chicago is doing (BTW, these guys have done 23 LEED Platinum buildings)...

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/10/12/shaw/

"'Hood Intentions

LEED is expanding to neighborhoods, and Doug Farr is leading the way
By Charles Shaw
12 Oct 2006

Doug Farr was heading into The Grind, a local fair-trade coffee spot in Chicago's swanky Lincoln Square neighborhood, when he ran into Peter Nicholson, the organizer of the city's monthly Green Drinks. The two well-heeled unofficial flag-wavers for the local green scene exchanged enthusiastic greetings, and began discussing the latest goings-on.

Doug Farr.
"Ugh. I'm really over green buildings," Farr said, with a dash of weariness.

Nicholson said nothing, waiting to see if Farr was joking. It was, after all, a strange thing to hear from one of the world's premier green architects. Farr needed no prompting to continue: "We have to do more. We have to think bigger. We have to start thinking about how we can build whole sustainable communities."

"That would require systemic change," Nicholson replied.

"Well, then I guess sustainability is about systemic change."

It was somewhat of an epiphany, and a maxim that both would later employ. But for Farr, it would also become the panacea for his peculiar architectural malaise.

A New Approach

No one disputes Doug Farr's place on the pioneering edge of architecture and planning. His firm, Farr Associates, designed two of the 23 buildings on the planet that have received the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Platinum designation -- the highest available -- and is the only firm with more than one Platinum building to its name. He was recently featured in design: e2, a Brad Pitt-narrated PBS series on the green-building revolution, and his firm -- whose mission is to design "sustainable human environments" at the urban neighborhood level -- is nearing completion of Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature, a cutting-edge book that proposes leadership standards for governments and lawmakers.

Meanwhile, Farr is helping to shepherd the creation of a different set of standards, an outgrowth of USGBC's voluntary, consensus-based LEED rating system that's known as LEED for Neighborhood Development, or LEED-ND. The Council, whose LEED steering committee Farr sits on, decided in 2003 to expand its efforts into urban planning and neighborhood development. The intention, quite simply, was to design America's first green neighborhoods.

With an all-star team including the Congress for the New Urbanism (whose Environmental Task Force Farr also co-chairs) and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the group sought input from Chicago's pioneering Center for Neighborhood Technology and leaders of the smart-growth movement. Together, these experts tackled questions of architecture and design, planning, development, promotion, and the environmental requirements for site guidelines. They even commissioned a study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the first reports that would not only summarize the impact of the built environment on public health, but also discuss how this information can be used to redesign how we live, work, and get about.

Unlike the original LEED program, which rates only single buildings and for which site selection is an afterthought, LEED-ND "will place the emphasis on the elements that bring the buildings together into a neighborhood, and relate the neighborhood to its larger region and landscape," says the council.

McNeighborhoods: this is not sustainable.

In short, LEED-ND seeks to revolutionize the way we look at our living space. It envisions compact, walkable neighborhoods with a diversity of green housing stock and commercial buildings, connected to ample park space, no more than a 10-minute walk from any amenity or mass transit stop. Row upon row of green roofs and solar panels renewing heat, water, and energy, and community recycling stations spread throughout. No parking lots, no McMansions, no big-box retailers, no gated communities. Just living with each other, in harmony with the environment, with a true sense of time and place. And the good news is, aside from the various roof adornments, it wouldn't look that much different from life as it has been lived in America to this point.

It's a shift that Farr says is long overdue. "There is so much effort that goes into designing and building this one small thing, this single green building," he says. "The same amount of effort goes into planning two square miles of regular neighborhood, and that will serve us for the next 200 years. [The focus on individual buildings] just doesn't make any sense."

Sounds like an all or nothing attitude to me. That's not very helpful.

I disagree, I read Treehugger for inspiration, not to read about the unremarkable but nice projects.

I got a lot of good info from this post and since I am an architiect in St. Louis I have already left a message to book this guy to speak at the planning organization I work at. This is the kind of post I read Treehugger for!! This is what spreads new ideas and keeps the green movement advancing.

Sorry you didn't find it "helpful"... I most certainly did. And I think my co-workers will find this inspiring as well. There should be a Treehugger article on this guy. I'm already involved in LEED certified buildings so this Treehugger building article is a bit of a snooze, but comment post on Doug Farr and LEED neighborhoods is a visionary next step. Expensive one-off LEED buildings are nice but they will never make the difference a whole LEED neighborhood would. This has got me excited. More coverage on this, please!

Good for Canada, but I agree, nothing remarkable.

"His firm, Farr Associates, designed two of the 23 buildings on the planet that have received the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Platinum designation -- the highest available -- and is the only firm with more than one Platinum building to its name."

Looks like you meant two LEED Platinum Buildings.

Good catch, anonymous, but 2 is still not bad, and he's done scores of lesser LEEDs buildings. I just did a google on this guy, wow. Darn impressive.

LA: OK, OK, I will do a post on him!

So much confusion...

First, Jimmyjimjim's post has little to nothing to do with the original post. It's very nice what this guy says, and no one's denying his credentials even if he does only have two platinum's to his credit... But how the hell does that take away from the very remarkable achievement represented by this building? You wrote it yourself: 23 platinum buildings on the entire planet--that's not too many. Not even a nieghbourhood.

Just because someone's identified a notable goal, we can't talk about anything else? We have to sit around in a reverent hush, lest our ideas, tarnished by the real world, disturb the Master's vision?

10 years ago, McDonough & Braungart identified the Hanover Principles. Therefore I guess sites like Treehugger shouldn't exist. It's all been covered before.

And grnarch: what's with the "been there, done that" attitude? I'm very pleased that you work on LEED buildings, but I don't. As an aspiring architect, I would love to, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that LEED buildings are still only a fraction of the buisiness out there. In the meantime, I love reading about any green buildings that come along. It gives me both inspiration and practical ideas. Compared to most of the buildings going up right now, this building is *very* remarkable.

I've got news for you people: Farr hasn't built any neighbourhoods. He's doing good work, but his ideas are hardly original. Green/solar roofs. Walkable, compact mixed-use neighbourhoods. These ideas aren't new. I'm glad someone's going to bat for them, with all the wieight and success that USGBC has...

But guess what? Once the standard has been written, people will still need to build green houses for these new neighbourhoods. There will still be old buildings to be upgraded and replaced, and old neighbourhoods or brownfield sites will still need infilling. Vision is great, but it doesn't build houses.

Sorry for the rant, but I find the suggestion that one person's (questionable) vision somehow negates someone else's very good work to be strange, misguided, and somewhat contemptuous.

The shift to sustainability is gaining momentum. What we really need is a form of Sustainable Community Package, that can also be used as integrated retrofitable infrastructure. I agree with Mr. Farr, The problem is the scope of the viewers perspective. The whole thing needs to apply to the dwelling and the community. Fine and dandy to create and design new dwellings or a development that meets the standard but what we need to do is deal with the retrofit of the existing infrastructure. The new stuff is exciting but there is a huge need for the retrofit of our existing non-sustainable communities with replacement infrastructure for the aging technology in the groud.

"When Michael and Judy Corbett began Village Homes in Davis, California, in the 1970s, there was no housing development like it. It featured mixed housing types on narrower streets, greenbelts with fruit trees, agricultural zones among the houses, natural surface drainage, solar orientation, and abundant open space. By the 1980s it had grown to encompass 240 homes on 70 acres, and had become a dearly loved neighborhood with a delightful ambience, lower utility and food costs, and a strong community spirit. "

This is an excerpt from the book Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawkins, Amory and L. Hunter Lovins (must read if haven't already). Farr is a very accomplished ‘green’ architect, but seems this “epiphany”, mentioned in the first post, is about 40 years old already. The idea of a ‘sustainable community’ was pioneered and actually achieved in practice by Michael and Judy Corbett in the 70’s with their company Village Homes.
The sustainable development revolution depends heavily on collaborating and building on ideas, not re-inventing old ones. Do your homework, and you’ll be a much more effective contributor.