LIVING BUILDING CHALLENGE: REGISTRATION
Happy Earth Day! This year we’re excited to add an installment to our Living Building Challenge blog series, tracking our progress with Curveball, which will aim to be our first project to achieve a Living Building Challenge certification, as well as the first residential certification at CORE level or higher in California. The Living Building Challenge is an ever-evolving certification program enacted by the International Living Future Institute, and is considered the world’s most rigorous proven performance standard for buildings. The regenerative design framework aims to create spaces that give more than they take – connecting occupants to light, air, food, nature, and community. LBC certified buildings are self-sufficient, remain within the resource limits of their site, and create a positive impact on the human and natural systems that interact with them. We hope that Curveball can serve as a case study in residential buildings that not only mitigate their environmental impact, but also are net positive and regenerative. Click here to see an interactive map of current registered and certified projects.
Our most recent milestone involved successfully registering the project with the ILFI as a living building – a process in which the institute scrutinizes the application, ensuring that the building’s design will at least reach the CORE certification standards, which even without obtaining additional “petals,” are extremely rigorous. A major hurdle in the approval of our application involved communicating the unique significance of the site and its surrounding community – the Santa Lucia Preserve. The Preserve is a land trust that includes 18,000 acres of protected land, as well as 2,000 acres of land strategically carved out for residential development. Once a parcel is purchased within the 2,000 acres of land dedicated to development, the owners commit to dividing the site into homeland and openland – meaning that a very small part of the site can contain a building footprint. The owners act as stewards of their own lots, with help from the Santa Lucia Conservancy, which is dedicated to the conservation of the other 18,000 acres and works to keep that land open for public use.
Our team had originally identified the project site as an ecological habitat (Transect L1), but with guidance from the institute, reassigned it as a Rural Zone (Transect L2). We were able to present evidence that the project site was formerly developed (ranch lands), and hence not an undisturbed site. Our documentation for the Ecology of Place Petal will include extensive research and documentation about the history of not only the Santa Lucia Preserve, but also the site itself and its significance to the local ranching community, as well as the preserve’s continued commitment to the Rumsen Ohlone tribe.
After achieving this major milestone (project registration), we are feeling confident in our ability to achieve an LBC CORE certification and have a renewed sense of motivation to pursue additional petals – most significantly the Energy petal, which would require the structure to function with net positive energy. We are also excited to pursue the Materials petal, which would ensure that the building avoids the majority of the toxic materials and practices identified on the Red List. The process involves a significant amount of advocacy, transparency, and cooperation from our industry partners to move towards a truly responsible materials economy.
Additionally, we have benefitted greatly from seeking guidance and support from our peers – we spoke with the MFLA, Piechota Architecture, and Cello Maudru Construction teams about Silver Oak Winery, a local example of a Living Building certified project. Their willingness to guide and share has helped us immensely and inspired us to document our journey and provide guidance to our peers and community in a similar fashion.
JUST LABEL
The Living Building Challenge certification requires a member of the project team to be Just Label Certified – and we’re excited to announce that Feldman Architecture will be pursuing Just certification as well this year. The Just Label is an additional ILFI certification for businesses and corporations, acting as “a nutrition label for socially just and equitable organizations.” As a voluntary disclosure tool for organizations rather than a certification program, it’s a transparency platform for organizations to disclose their operations, including how they treat their employees and where they make financial and community investments. Our CSR Committee is currently working to investigate and self-report on our studio’s performance and policies in categories such as Diversity & Inclusion, Equity, Employee Health and Benefits, Stewardship, and Purchasing and Supply Chain. Upon completion, we’ll be able to share our scorecard publicly, identifying where we can improve, new policies we’ve enacted, and where we already excel. Stay tuned for more!
In December 2016, Feldman Architecture pledged to the AIA 2030 Commitment and created an Action Plan as a road map to designing carbon neutral buildings by the year 2030. In our Action Plan, originally published in 2018 and updated annually, our studio selected a series of goals to focus our sustainability initiatives around over the next 3-5 years, one of them being designing and building a Living Building Challenge certified project.
The Living Building Challenge is an ever-evolving certification program enacted by the International Living Future Institute. The program is considered the world’s most rigorous proven performance standard for buildings. The regenerative design framework aims to create spaces that, like a flower, give more than they take – connecting occupants to light, air, food, nature, and community. LBC certified buildings are self-sufficient and remain within the resource limits of their site and create a positive impact on the human and natural systems that interact with them.
The Living Building Challenge consists of seven performance categories, or “Petals”: place, water, energy, health + happiness, materials, equity, and beauty. Based on the building’s performance in these categories, 3 certification pathways are available to pursue, Living Building Certification, Petal Certification, and Zero Energy Certification.
Feldman Architecture is excited to announce that as of this summer, Curveball will be our first project to attempt to achieve a Living Building Challenge certification. Situated in the Santa Lucia Preserve, a 20,000 acre land trust, the design for Curveball prioritizes sustainability, flexible spaces, and connection to the outdoors, artfully placing two gently curved forms on an open pad within a grove of oaks folded into a steep site. The design respects the existing landscape, and orients public and private spaces towards both distant views, as well as intimate moments with dense tree canopies.
Prioritizing fire resiliency and sustainability, our design envelops the building in durable, low-maintenance modular weathering steel panels and aluminum windows. The eroded material aesthetic reinforces the conceptual merging of architecture and landscape, and a green roof seamlessly emerges the structure from the hillside.
With Curveball, we aim to achieve full Living Building Challenge certification, however, as this is our first attempt at working within the constraints of this rigorous program, we may pursue a Petal or CORE certification. At this point in the process, the potential challenges include access to solar energy in a densely treed site, access to water, and materials selection – the design may not include any redlist items.
We are fortunate to be embarking on this certification process with a group of extremely talented consultants, listed below. We look forward to sharing our progress along the way, highlighting our challenges and successes with our community. We hope our journey encourages others to engage with regenerative design, as well as to crowdsource best practices in the certification process.
Landscape Architect: MFLA
Structural Engineer: Daedalus Structural Engineering
General Contractor: RJL Construction
Mechanical and Energy Consultants: Positive Energy
Civil Engineer: L&S Engineering
Surveyor: Whitson Engineers
Geotechnical Engineer: Haro Kasunich & Associates
Sustainability Consultant: Corey Squire, Department of Sustainability
LBC Consultant: Phaedra Svec, McLennan Design
Water Systems Consultant: WaterSprout
Planting Advisor: RANA
We are excited to announce the results of our AIA 2030 Commitment data reporting for 2021. Our combined portfolio, which includes 11 projects totaling over 42,000 square feet, came in at an overall predicted 98.13% EUI (energy use intensity) reduction, far exceeding the current goal of 80%, and just below our ultimate goal of 100% EUI reduction (or achieving net-zero energy use) by the year 2030. 75% of our projects reported from last year met the 80% target, with 5 projects predicted to achieve net-zero energy use. Our findings indicate that a drastic reduction in our projects’ gas use combined with increased PV production made the biggest difference in a nearly 30% jump in our portfolio over previous years.
While this data only represents predicted energy use and post-occupancy data will need to be collected and analyzed, this is a huge step in the right direction towards our commitment to reducing our work’s carbon emissions and a net-zero energy future. Stay tuned as we continue to report our progress and findings on our blog. Onward!
Looking forward to 2022, our committee has listed three primary areas of focus: Sustainable Design Workflow, Education and Knowledge Sharing, and Strategic Planning. By setting goals within each of these areas, we hope to continue to refine our internal processes, increase our general firm knowledge on sustainable design best practices, products, and systems, all of which will work to align our overall initiatives with our firm’s strategic goals.
In terms of our in-house workflow, our committee plans to continue to improve our project checklist and increase transparency for our project teams. Check-ins will continue to take place at regular intervals throughout the design process to reinforce our standard sustainability practices and goals. We also plan on auditing our process documentation with a consultant from the Department of Sustainability who will assist us in further refining our focus.
More specifically, our committee is largely focused on better understanding our projects’ carbon footprints, accounting for both the embodied and operational carbon that results from their construction and use. In efforts to develop a better understanding of our projects’ embodied carbon, we’ve continued our deployment of Tally on select projects, an embodied carbon measurement software, while also beginning to analyze typical building assemblies that are common in our work.
Life Cycle Assessment study of the embodied carbon in building components using data from Tally
Regarding our buildings’ operational carbon, we intend to begin leaning more heavily on post-occupancy energy use data to not only have an accurate accounting of a project’s actual energy use, but also to better predict the energy use of future projects early in the design phase. As we continue towards our 2030 goal of net-zero operational carbon for all new projects, it’s becoming clear that we must not rely solely on theoretical modeling alone.
And although we’ve identified that bringing a higher level of organization and carefully vetting and documenting our processes are key to us realizing our goals, we also feel that a big part of furthering our sustainability initiatives depends on keeping our entire staff educated on current and emerging sustainable technologies and products, through the sharing of our own research as well as engaging with our peers. This year, we plan on holding quarterly sustainability focused information sessions and presentations with the entire firm as we continue to develop a deeper understanding of our practice’s roles in the bigger picture of climate awareness. In terms of Strategic Planning, this will also allow us to better align our firm’s strategic and sustainability goals, further engraining sustainability as a cornerstone of our firm’s future.
This Earth Day, we are reflecting on the current state of our world and our community. As an organization, we are committed to sustainability now more than ever, and more conscious of how the rapidly changing world around us affects not only the spaces we design, but also our team that so beautifully designs them.
With COVID 19 changing the status quo, it’s a good time to reflect on our mission and our values. It also seems like a great time to highlight a few updates about our 2020 sustainability efforts, and to refresh our passion and commitment to leadership in the sustainability space.
As a milestone year in our industry’s journey towards carbon neutrality by 2030, we are happy to report our progress in a newly updated Action Plan. In December of 2016 Feldman Architecture signed onto the 2030 Challenge and AIA 2030 Commitment, two programs that are promoting a vision that calls for all new buildings, developments, and renovations to be carbon-neutral by 2030. As part of this commitment Feldman Architecture’s Sustainability AOE has crafted this Action Plan to serve as a roadmap to help us achieve our goals, as well as to encourage more sustainable practices within the firm. In it we outline short and long-term goals in areas that go beyond just sustainable design, including community outreach and office culture.
This year, we are releasing a 2020 update to our sustainability Action Plan on Earth Day– outlining our progress from the past year and highlighting both what we have achieved and where we can improve. A highlight includes our recently launched Zero Carbon Operations Plan for our office.
Secondly, this spring, Jonathan Feldman was appointed to the AIA California COTE (Committee on the Environment) which works to educate and inform the design community about environmental and preservation issues and advise the organization on policy matters affecting the practice of architecture. Jonathan is excited to be serving on the communications subcommittee, working alongside peers to drive our industry in a sustainable and responsible direction.
And lastly, we are excited to say that our newly appointed Sustainability Integration Leader, and longtime FA Associate Ben Welty, is working with AIA SF on programming for their Sustainability Symposium this fall. Stay tuned for more!
With 2020 just days away, it’s a good time to reflect on our big picture sustainability objectives as a firm, and acknowledge all that we have accomplished over the past year- keeping in mind our goal to be Carbon Neutral by 2030.
This year, our goal was to pass our Title 24 Energy models by a minimum of 10%. In 2019, we averaged a 13% compliance margin across our reporting portfolio.
Translating this information into our 2030 reporting and looking through the lens of the EUI (Energy Use Intensity) of our project portfolio, in 2019 we averaged a 68% reduction from baseline energy use. Although this did not meet the 2030 goal of a 70% reduction, we did improve by 4% over our 2018 reporting portfolio. Each year, we are moving closer and closer to the baseline target, which is rising to 80% in 2020.
This year, we also created an internal sustainability checklist to track project goals across a variety of phases. Our team is working on integrating conversations early on in the design process, outlining sustainability goals and ways to improve our building’s energy and thermal performance. We now use Sefaira, an energy tracking and modeling software, to perform energy and lighting studies for each of our projects – bringing energy performance into the design process at the project’s conception.
Furthermore, we now look at our projects in terms of their Carbon footprint, both operationally and embodied. Thinking more holistically about our project’s CO2 footprint, instead of just their EUI, allows us to weigh the gas and electric usage differently in each of our projects, giving us a better sense of how close we are to our 2030 Carbon Neutral goal. Stay tuned for an update on our carbon metrics in the first quarter of 2020!
– Sophia Beavis Duluk
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