When the American Institute of Architects and the U.S. Green Building Council jointly announced on May 28 their intent to form a strategic alliance, many in the industry wondered exactly what that meant. One question that arose: Is the AIA getting ready to endorse LEED? “No,” is the answer from both sides, although Peter Templeton, USGBC’s senior vice president for education and research, says he certainly would appreciate the association’s support. “Of course we would like AIA to recognize the value of LEED,” he says.

The announcement, which can be read on the AIA’s Web site, says the groups have agreed to collaborate in the areas of advocacy, education, and research, and have identified at least 10 possible collaborative projects. Scott Frank, AIA’s director of media relations, emphasizes that they intend to form a strategic alliance, not a partnership. He says nothing more definitive can be said until the AIA board reviews the proposed alliance, which it plans to do during its next meeting in September.

The announcement came three weeks after the AIA released its assessment of three green-building rating systems. As RECORD reported, the study was favorable toward LEED, citing it as “a good example of a rating system that provides a measurement of environmental achievement.” Frank says there’s no connection between the study and the proposed strategic alliance. “The two things shouldn’t be connected whatsoever,” he says. “They’re two separate ideas.”

The strategic alliance could mark an important step toward creating some synergy between the groups. While Templeton says they have had “a strong relationship” since the USGBC’s founding 15 years ago, the AIA has worked independently, for the most part, in developing green-building standards and goals. During a forum at the Greenbuild convention last fall, USGBC president Rick Fedrizzi questioned why AIA hasn’t endorsed LEED and asked the association “to tell us what’s wrong with LEED.”

Nadav Malin, vice president of BuildingGreen*, an information provider for the sustainable design community, conjectured that the announcement is ³fundamentally about restoring trust² between the groups. The disconnect at the national level, he says, has been odd, given that in many places, close collaboration is common and green practitioners are often members of both groups.

The prospect of closer ties is exciting to Bruce Fowle, FAIA, senior partner of FXFOWLE, who laments competition between the groups. “There are too many independent green organizations that aren’t necessarily working together,” he says. “What’s great about the USGBC is that it’s being universally adopted. You can have a conversation with practically anyone in the world about how green you want to be.” The USGBC is continuing to improve its system, Fowle says, “and for AIA not to get on that bandwagon would be very shortsighted.”

Source: Architectural Record

When it started preparing for the 2012 Summer Games, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) put two key items on its agenda: contribute to East London’s ongoing revitalization in a sustainable way, and avoid “white elephant” venues that would not be used after the Games end. As part of that vision, in March it announced that American landscape architects Hargreaves Associates and London-based LDA Design will design the Olympic Park. Its site in the long-neglected Lower Lea Valley, which is crisscrossed by waterways, recently was cleared for redevelopment.

Encompassing nearly 1 square mile, the project will be the largest park built in London since the Victorian era. It will include areas for community gardens, wildlife preservation, and concerts and festivals. The design also calls for bicycle routes and footpaths that will connect the Valley with the River Thames for the first time. Hargreaves Associates, which designed the Sydney 2000 Olympic Park, is aware of how much hinges on the project. “It is the centerpiece of Europe’s largest regeneration program,” says firm partner Andrew Harland, “and [it] will have a positive economic and social impact on the whole area.”

Another recently announced project aims to have a lasting impact: In May, the developer Lend Lease revealed the winners of a competition to design the Olympic Athletes Village on a site master-planned by Vogt, a Swiss landscape architecture firm, and London-based Patel Taylor. Whittled down from 400 entries, the chosen candidates are mainly established and emerging names from the U.K., such as DSDHA and de Rijke Marsh Morgan Architects. The overall scheme calls for 13 mid-rises and two 30-story residential towers. Post-Games, the Village will be wrapped into Stratford City, a 180-acre mixed-use redevelopment of derelict rail lands.

Similarly, Olympic venues already underway reflect a concern for long-term use. The 6,000-seat Velodrome, designed by Hopkins Architects, will be reconfigured with road cycle circuits and a mountain bike course, making it a major cycling hub in London. Zaha Hadid’s sinuous Aquatics Centre complex, with its two 164-foot-long swimming pools and diving pool, will be the city’s largest natatorium. And the Olympic Stadium, designed by HOK Sport and Peter Cook, contains a detachable top tier with 55,000 seats that will be removed after the Games. While critics have decried the stadium’s design as too ordinary for a world-class event, the architects say that practical character is precisely what ensures its usefulness well into the future.

Source: McGraw Hill

Washington, D.C., started it all in 2006 with legislation that required certain privately owned buildings to meet LEED standards. Boston quickly followed suit in early 2007, and Los Angeles and Dallas have both passed similar ordinances.

Although the ordinances vary in scope and timeframe as well as stringency, none of them requires buildings to achieve actual LEED certification. This makes the cities responsible for examining building plans for green attributes, presenting financial and organizational challenges.

Although the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the organization behind the LEED Rating System, has noted that LEED-certifiable buildings may not perform as well as LEED-certified buildings, for municipalities, requiring certification presents political and legal challenges.

According to Krista Kline, the urban planning and design coordinator for Los Angeles, the City did not require certification because it is “expensive and time-consuming, and we wanted buy-in from the development community” for the overall green goals. Projects that pursue LEED Silver certification or higher are eligible for expedited permitting that saves between one and six months in the process. Kline noted that requiring certification would make building permits or occupancy certificates contingent on the decisions of USGBC. That situation is legally untenable, explains Kline. “We didn’t want to give USGBC control over our land use.” Although municipalities could incorporate green building requirements similar to LEED into their building codes, the rating system offers both recognition and choice for developers.

“People like LEED as a standard,” said Zaida Basora, AIA, assistant director of administration and architectural services for Dallas and a past board member for USGBC, “so we felt that it was better to go ahead and use it.”

Using LEED as a standard also makes it easy for developers to pursue certification for buildings if they want to do so, since many of the documentation requirements have already been met. In addition to its popularity and marketing cachet, LEED allows developers to choose which credits to pursue.

“We wanted to give flexibility to the development community and didn’t want to quash creativity,” said Kline.

Without certification through USGBC, however, cities must find ways to verify that buildings aren’t ducking requirements. In Boston, where buildings larger than 50,000 ft2 (4,600 m2) must meet LEED standards at the Certified level, an interagency permit-review process has evolved to encourage integrated design and ensure that large buildings are meeting green requirements. All members of a project team meet with representatives from several City agencies before a project is submitted for permit review as well as throughout the design process. The team must submit documentation to the City, approved by a LEED accredited professional (LEED-AP), that shows a project has met LEED requirements.

Coordinating several city agencies as well as project team members represents a shift from the typical permit review process and has not been simple. “There was a learning curve, and it’s challenging, but it’s a steadily improving thing,” said Barbra Batshalom, executive director of The Green Roundtable in Boston, a nonprofit. The biggest challenge, according to Batshalom, was educating city staff about green building and the LEED checklist so that all projects could receive similar assessments. The result has been a more streamlined, uniform review process.

In Los Angeles, the City had to figure out—quickly—how to include green building review in its permit process with little added funding. For now, front-line staff members are being trained to look for a LEED-AP on the project team and the basic requirements for the LEED checklist. Higher-level staff members are being trained to read the checklist and plans more closely. “We know it’s not perfect,” Kline said of this limited review, “but it’s what we could come up with without being punitive.”

To ensure green requirements are being met, every seventh project will be audited by USGBC; if the city finds a lot of projects would not have been certified, it will consider changing the ordinance. Both Los Angeles and Dallas plan to track energy and water use in the new buildings to see if the green building requirements are making a difference.

Source: McGraw Hill