Tomorrow’s Buildings: The Living Building Challence
Exterior view of the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability, showing the Living Machine waste water treatment system.
by Jessica Woolliams
Research Jessica Wooliams and Jim Taggart
When LEED was first launched about 10 years ago, it filled a huge void in the marketplace because it provided both an effective definition of a green building, and a means to measure green building performance in a consistent way.
Even though the LEED tool was far from perfect, it quickly gained acceptance and began to catalyze a market transformation. When the Platinum level was defined, it was assumed by many to be the highest level of environmental performance possible. While that may no longer be a commonly held assumption, LEED Platinum remains a significant achievement to attain the Platinum level under the current system.
This issue of SABMag features six award winning projects from across the country that represent the best of current building practice in Canada. One of them, Dockside Green, is the highest-scoring LEED Platinum project yet completed and meets most of its energy requirements from an on-site bio-fuel plant, while another, Crawford Bay School, is completely independent of municipal water or waste water services.
As net-zero energy and zero waste water buildings begin to emerge around the country, and as renewable technologies become more cost effective, it is clear that we are on the threshold of a new approach to building - one that strives to realize projects that have no net impact on the environment and thus can be called truly sustainable. For these buildings, the Cascadia Region Green Building Council has coined the term ‘Living Building’, and in November 2006 launched its Living Building Challenge.
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. As Thomas Homer-Dixon says: “the world is changing fast, really fast.” We all have a personal context in which to frame these changes and motivate us to be part of the solution. I have a daughter who will be two this summer. By the time she is six, 80% of BCs pine forests will be dead. By the time she is 92, likely New York City [where her aunts live] will be 6 feet under water.
The Living Building Challenge is simple to explain, but clearly difficult to implement. Rather than offering a system of credits, it instead requires buildings to meet just 16 prerequisites in 7 categories known as ‘petals’: Site, Energy, Materials, Water, Indoor Quality, Beauty + Inspiration, and Process + Leadership. Distilled to its essence, the technical requirements of the LBC are that buildings be net zero in energy, water and waste treatment, carbon neutral and to use only non-toxic, locally-sourced materials. While achieving a truly sustainable building is the ultimate goal, the LBC recognizes that under current conditions - not least energy and water-related legislation - this goal may not yet be possible.
In British Columbia, several teams are actively working on projects designed to meet the LBC criteria. Aside from the Baird residence on Vancouver Island [which has not yet been fully evaluated], none of the other projects we are aware of is currently under construction. However, at least two are in the design development and documentation phase: Busby Perkins+Will’s Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability [CIRS] at the University of British Columbia; and Hughes Condon Marler’s UniverCity Childcare Facility [UCF] at Simon Fraser University.
CIRS is to be a four storey research and teaching building that includes a central lecture theatre flanked by office spaces, an interactive lab space, cafeteria and an atrium. Much smaller, the UCF is a two-storey structure that includes activity rooms and related support spaces for two groups of 25 preschool children, and uses its sloping site to capitalize on a portion of its flat roof as an outdoor play area. Despite the differences in scale and program, many of the challenges facing the design teams - and the strategies used to overcome them - have been quite similar.
To meet the requirements of the Energy Petal, CIRS will initially rely on the waste heat generated by the adjacent Earth and Ocean Sciences building, but also has a geo-exchange heating system should the existing building be upgraded or replaced. Photovoltaic panels and solar evacuation tubes are also planned to meet some of the electrical energy and domestic hot water needs - but at this point these are seen as educational tools rather than cost effective contributors to overall energy autonomy.
Similarly, UCF will get much of its electrical supply from a heat to power district geothermal system not yet in place. The part of the roof not used as play space has an array of solar thermal panels that will supply domestic hot water to the building. There is also a connection to the BC Hydro electrical grid as a back-up and to supply power at times of shortfall. However, the current fee structure [which includes fixed connection and standing charges unrelated to actual energy consumption] will make the cost per unit prohibitively expensive unless a reduction can be negotiated.
For both buildings, municipal bylaws require potable water to be chlorinated, this regulation requiring an exemption under the LBC which identifies chlorine as a ‘red list’ chemical. Both buildings have rainwater collection systems, and ‘Living Machines’ which provide solar aquatic treatment for waste water. These Living machines are a highly visible feature of both buildings, part of a comprehensive educational strategy which in the case of CIRS may ultimately include labelling of all materials, fixtures and fittings with life cycle information.
Surprisingly perhaps, meeting the requirements of the Materials petal is proving to be the most difficult. LBC identifies different radii from within which various materials and products must come - a smaller radius for heavier materials, a larger radius for lighter ones, with relaxations according to the positive contribution each material or product makes to the overall performance of the building. Both buildings are constructed from wood - not simply a case of local availability, but also because of the contribution wood makes to the overall carbon equation for the project.
Some toxic materials - like mercury in fluorescent lighting fixtures, or formaldehyde in glulam beams - are almost impossible to avoid under current conditions, and LBC also acknowledges this reality with exemptions. However some surprises have emerged during the product research for CIRS: no local manufacturer of VOC-free carpet, and only one toilet manufacturer within the prescribed radius [the next nearest is 3,000 miles away in Mexico]. Also, UBC’s approved millwork suppliers are in Michigan, and use neither FSC certified wood, nor VOC-free plywood in their furniture.
LBC’s documentation includes a questionnaire that is sent to potential suppliers asking for a list of materials and additives that go into their products, and where these originate from. What Busby Perkins+Will’s Chessa Adsit-Morris discovered is that while most manufacturers know what goes into their products, they have no idea where these things come from. Thus the LBC adds another level of detail to the educational process begun by LEED, providing information and increased awareness of these issues throughout the construction industry.
Almost every time I speak about the Challenge, the questions that get asked first are ‘what will it cost’ and ‘what is the payback?’ Cascadia’s recent ‘Living Building Financial Study’ is groundbreaking because it shows that the cost to get buildings to this level of performance [net zero energy, net zero water, no toxins, a truly healthy environment and truly sustainable building] is within reach, and in certain building types, it is starting to be an attractive and realistic proposition.
On June 3 this year, Jason McLennan, Cascadia’s CEO, outlined the main findings of this study at a press conference in Victoria. Looking at nine different building types in four different climate zones, Cascadia worked with one of the world’s largest construction companies, Skanska, as well as with SERA Architects, Gerding / Edlen Development, New Buildings Institute and Interface Engineering, and produced in effect 36 answers to the question of cost.
This team conceptually transformed nine recently built LEED Gold buildings into Living Buildings. The LEED Gold projects serve as the baseline, and the team modified the specs to bring the buildings up to a Living Building level. Then Skanska calculated the incremental cost premiums and forecast them through time, based on energy savings, water savings, operations and maintenance and other savings. One interesting finding is that when you push a building as far as you do for a Living Building, certain costs actually go down.
The Cascadia study suggests that certain building types [among them, University and Grade-school classrooms] now have payback times that are increasingly attractive to institutions. The University Classroom in Portland, for example, had a 4-9% upfront increased cost over the LEED Gold project it was modelled after, and a 2 - 7 year payback.
However, these findings may take a while to percolate through the market. Karen Marler of Hughes Condon Marler notes that the UniverCity Childcare Facility is being designed and built on a standard budget, with no concessions or additional money provided to meet its Living Building ambitions. As such, the project’s success will rely heavily on corporate sponsorship in the form of discounted or donated materials and technologies.
Another important finding that was surprising to many was the favourable paybacks of hospitals: between 6 and 16 years in the different regions. Perhaps most importantly, the study reveals the places where we need policy incentives in order to make these buildings work.
In designing the mechanical systems for UCF, Marler noted that the accepted standards for water and energy consumption and even ventilation rates did not necessarily reflect what was achievable under current best practice. She found, for example, that working water consumption out from first principles based on the installation of high efficiency appliances, and the limited number of occupants and hours of operation of the building resulted in much lower consumption figures, and hence lower installation costs than would have been the case with the conventional approach. Similarly, trickle vents connected to a CO2 sensor proved to be as effective as, and much more economical than, a conventional mechanical ventilation system.
The Cascadia study didn’t look at any of the warmer, fuzzier benefits of Living Buildings, such as the fact that students learn better, patients heal faster, and factory office workers take less sick time in green buildings. It didn’t look at any of the externalities that, as a mother, I feel could have been more than justified. It simply looked at the initial cost premium and the period over which this could be recovered.
What will tomorrow’s buildings cost? The numbers show that Living Buildings make more long-term financial sense than the more incremental approach that the building industry has been taking so far. Now is the time to act - if we keep building the way we are building today, not only will our buildings be more expensive financially, but they might cost my daughter’s future.
Jessica Woolliams, MA | LEED-AP is the British Columbia Co-Director of Cascadia Region Green Building council
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Download a full view of the Schematic of Environmental strategies incorporated into the Univercity Childcare Facility [PDF] -Full_view_axo.pdf
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Download a full view of the Cost comparison Matrix for Living Buildings [PDF] - Full_view_matrix.pdf
