On LEED, Adaptive Reuse and the Vernacular
Building certification programs such as LEED has been seemingly revered as the panacea to future sustainable development, and not many question its intent and methodology. I was recently reading and article titled “Urban Sustainability and the LEED rating system: case studies on the role of regional characteristics and adaptive reuse in green building in Denver and Boulder, Colorado” by Eric Boschmann and Jessica Gabriel, where they criticize LEED on its heavy reliance on innovation/technology and its lack of emphasis on adaptive reuse and the use of the vernacular. They argue that the rating system erases local architectural methods that has adapted to the local conditions through centuries of experience and replaces them with a money-grab marketing strategy.
They coin the terms “light green” and “dark green” infrastructure which delimitates the methods in which a new construction is attempting to be sustainable in its construction and maintenance. I’ve made a quick table summarizing their points and thought it’d be interesting to share because it’s something that I’ve never really though of before. They of course, argue that LEED belongs in the “light green” category and encourage people to think about ways in which we can take the concepts of LEED, but also encourage vernacular methods of construction and adaptive reuse to be incorporated.
There are two interesting points that I would like to talk about from the case studies of this article that were very informative to me. The first of which is the use of copper-infused rooves in order to reduce the amount of heat energy emitted by the material from the sun as the metal erodes and turns green in color. This method counteracts the effects of the Heat island effect but can also become quite costly in the process. The other is the fact that LEED only rewards buildings for what it’s doing right but doesn’t penalize buildings for what it’s doing wrong. The Environmental Protection Agency Region VII Headquarter in Denver, Colorado is a prime example of this. The building was rewarded points for using “local and regional material” (in this case local bricks) but at the same time, it uses quarried marble imported from India, and forested Bamboo from China, which comes with a huge carbon footprint in its production and transportation.
