Architects and a small army of tradespeople made it happen in Santa Monica ... and in Amherst ... in Decatur ... in Virginia Beach ... and perhaps soon it will be realized in Accokeek. There are 11 buildings in the U.S. and Canada that have been certified under the Living Building Challenge (LBC)—the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard.
LBC combines requirements for net-zero energy and net-zero waste and water. And if that weren't hard enough, the building can't be constructed of toxic materials. In fact, one of the really helpful resources found in the standard (PDF) for all building professionals is the "Red List" of toxic materials and chemicals.
Unlike LEED, the Living Building Challenge requires actual, rather than modeled or expected, performance. Before an LBC building can be certified, projects must be operational for at least 12 consecutive months.
By comparison, LEED is a walk in the park. It's simply a design standard, which doesn't account for the performance of the project. This has drawn fierce criticism in the past. Henry Gifford touched off a firestorm by examining the energy performance of LEED buildings. And at least one LEED-certified project—a middle school in Boulder, Colorado—has suffered some serious indoor-air-quality complaints.
Scrambling to fend off the critics and keep pace, the USGBC has introduced the LEED Dynamic Plaque—a "building performance monitoring and scoring platform" that enables users to track any building's performance (it doesn't have to be a LEED-certified building but uses similar scoring criteria) and features a digital "plaque" where a building's performance score can be dynamically displayed. It's a noble effort but perhaps more sensational that it needs to be.
