Living Building Leader program launched

Hi all, I wanted to let people know at Smart Growth that today we are launching our Living Building Leader program. The Living Building Challenge is the Cascadia Region Green Building Council’s call to the design and construction community to pursue true sustainability in the built environment. Imagine a building that generates all of its own energy with renewable non-toxic resources, captures and treats all of its water, and operates efficiently and for maximum beauty. Now imagine an industry ready to design and construct such buildings: these are Living Buildings!
Right now we have at least four building in BC alone that are aiming for the Living Building Challenge: the Robert Bateman Art and Environmental Centre at Victoria’s Royal Roads University, the CIRS building at UBC, VanDusen’s new $20 million upgrade, and SFU’s new day care centre.
Are there more that I don’t know of? Let me know.
There are currently more than 50 Living Building projects in the design or construction phase throughout North America. According to a recent report by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, green building is the fastest and cheapest way to lower North America’s contribution to global climate change. The Living Building Leader program is not for the green building neophyte; it is geared toward architects, contractors, developers, engineers, and other design professionals with technical knowledge and experience in designing and constructing high-performance green buildings.
The Living Building Leader program consists of a series of intensive, advanced eLearning sessions in green building topics, taught by experts in the diverse fields that underpin the multidisciplinary field that is green building. You can find out more on our website, and I hope to hear more about other buildings in our region aiming for this level.
Jessica Woolliams | LEED-AP
British Columbia Co-Director
www.cascadiagbc.org