The Challenge of Creating Living Buildings
Skip Backus, executive director of the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, discovered something in the process of researching materials for the new building on campus. “We don’t make anything in this country anymore,” he said. Many building materials are still made in the U.S., but simple things like nails and screws are difficult to find. For an ordinary building, that wouldn’t be much of a problem. But Backus is pursuing certification of the building through the Living Building Challenge, which requires all materials to come from within a certain radius of the building site.
The Living Building Challenge was launched in 2006 by the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, a chapter of both the U.S. Green Building Council and the Canada Green Building Council (see EBN Vol. 15, No. 12). A stringent certification system, the Living Building Challenge consists of 16 prerequisites—there are no optional credits. No buildings have yet achieved certification, in part because the Challenge requires buildings to be operational for at least a year before being certified.
