IT'S ALIVE: Leaders in the emerging Living Building movement define a living building as "a structure that generates all of its own energy with renewable nontoxic resources, captures and treats all of its water, and operates efficiently and for maximum beauty." Pictured: the Omega Center for Sustainable Living in Rhinebeck, N.Y., which hopes to become a certified living building in May 2010 after it is a year old.
Image: Omega Center for Sustainable Living
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Dear EarthTalk: I recently heard the term "living building". Can you explain?
—Rebecca Gordon, Seattle, WA
Over the past couple of decades, architects and builders looking to green their projects turned to the addition of various piecemeal elements to save water here or cut down on electricity there. Those who added more than a few green touches could apply for and get certified by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) under its Leadership in Energy and Efficient Design (LEED) program. While these efforts have been laudable—essentially launching the green building industry as we know it today—they represent merely the infancy of what green building might someday become.
The concept of the “living building” has now emerged as a new ideal for design and construction. The Cascadia Region Green Building Council (CRGBC)—the Pacific Northwest chapter of the USGBC—defines a living building as a structure that “generates all of its own energy with renewable nontoxic resources, captures and treats all of its water, and operates efficiently and for maximum beauty.” The group has been pushing for adoption of the concept by construction industries here at home, and also helped to launch the International Living Building Institute to promote the concept internationally.
“We view our role as the organization that is meant to ask the really tough questions, to push the boundaries as far as possible,” says Jason McLennan, CEO of CRGBC. To this end, in 2006 the group launched its Living Building Challenge (LBC), a “call to the design and construction community to pursue true sustainability in the built environment.” So far 60 different projects around North America are vying to meet the high standards of the LBC, which exceed even the highest status of LEED certification.
The first building to be completed for consideration under the LBC program is the Omega Center for Sustainable Living, in Rhinebeck, NY. The 6,200 square-foot, one-level building, which serves as headquarters for the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, features a geothermal heating and cooling system, solar panels, rain gardens that direct water run-off to irrigate plantings, a 4,500-square-foot greenhouse that helps filter wastewater for reuse, “daylighting” design that brings natural light indoor to minimize electric light usage, and eco-friendly building materials all around. It was designed—per LBC criteria—to be “net-zero,” meaning it uses no more energy than it generates itself. Once the building has been in operation for a full year next summer, CRGBC will audit it to see if its performance lives up to the green hype. Dozens of other LBC contenders around North America will be audited, as well.
Of course, the costs of creating a living building today are very high. Achieving net-zero can be especially costly, and stands out as one of the biggest obstacles to greater interest in the living building concept. Another challenge is finding materials that meet LBC standards, since many common building materials—such as PVC piping for wastewater transport—off-gas chemicals and have other hazardous attributes. LBC also expects builders to source locally as many materials as possible to boost local economies and make efficient use of nearby natural resources. McLennan remains confident that costs will come down as green materials, technologies and methods become more commonplace within the general building industry.
CONTACTS: USGBC, www.usgbc.org; CRGBC, www.cascadiagbc.org; International Living Building Institute, www.ilbi.org; Omega Institute, www.eomega.org.
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Add CommentDoes the requirement that a living building "treats its own water" refer only to treating collected water, or does it also apply to waste water handling, like gray water systems and anaerobic digesters that product methane?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn Corkscrew swamp of Florida there still may exist a publicly accessible working wastewater to fit-to-drink water system in the nature park shared by the Audubon society. Unlike autonomous systems in spacecraft, earth based systems have the benefit of reduced impact and even beneficial membership on an environment of our choosing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe costs of creating a Living Building are not as high as one might think... Refer to our Living Building Financial Study, completed in Spring 2009 that evaluates 9 different building types in 4 climate zones: www.ilbi.org/resources/research/financial-study
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSciAmese Cat - the program also includes black and gray water handling. For more information, download the Standardand refer to Imperatives 5 & 6: Net Zero Water and Ecological Water Flow. (www.ilbi.org >> The Standard >> 2.0)
"LBC also expects builders to source locally as many materials as possible to boost local economies and make efficient use of nearby natural resources." This is the central idea of Gandhian philosophy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't get it.Most of this stuff is simple science,some of it decades old.Rooftop waterheaters for one,and collecting rainwater for watering gardens and lawns is another.Come on ,why make things more complicated than they need to be?Why hasn't someone come up with a backyard algae growing device, I understand some species can double their volume in 24 hours using just dirt,air,rainwater,and sunlight,then the machine just wrings it out then saves the water for reuse and burns the algae for fuel,and all this could be put together in one complete system,which everyone could easily operate,only having to add soil at some point during the process.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe only buildings i know that are green are the ones painted in that color. the term "green building" is a misnomer because any man-made edifice is necessarily environmentally intrusive. with a majority of the world's population already living in cities, the intrusion will expand. buildings will grow vertically as space becomes more valuable so the use of concrete and steel will increase. more and more roads will get built and we will crowd out everything that is natural. lets redefine the way our living and working spaces should be transformed for long term sustainability.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisForget the tires....and we have Michael Reynolds Earthships. All of his technology can be used if you just replaced the tire walls with massive masonry inside and out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am perfectly happy to let the chips fall where they may but at the outset I am curious why it is "more green" to have, say, an on-site sewage-teatment system that one which is community- or even region-wide? That's implicit in "living building" philosophy. But where are the numbers? On what basis do we assume or state that it is better?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can concede that using natural rainfall for use on site makes sense. Or that treating storm-water run-off on-site makes sense ecologically. (It can also be a cheaper, too.)
But there are economies of scale in many human activities and I would expect to see them in waste-treatment as well.
There's another element. It would seem that the living buildings goal would limit the size of buildings. If you are going to rely on natural rainfall to supply drinking water for an apartment building, that would limit the number of apartments you can handle on a site or encourage spreading out ("sprawling") over larger areas.
It might work and be effective but color me skeptical at this point.
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