Green building awards - do they matter?
Green awards, green awards. There’s lots of them out there but what’s the point? And what’s the responsibility of people doling them out?
That is the topic, to some extent, of an AIA Seattle forum I’m presenting at tomorrow. I am a guest panelist - the token architectural outsider - along with Lucia Athens of Seattle’s Green Building Team and a host of locally known architects including Marc Jenefsky, Anne Schopf, Peter Steinbrueck, Dan Williams and Rick Zieve. Jerome Diepenbrock, chair of the AIA ethics and practice committee will moderate.
If you’re in the area, you’re welcome to come. It is free but you must RSVP in advance here. I’ll let you know how it goes.
The panel is specifically focused on Seattle’s COTE What makes it Green? top ten awards (to read about the winning entries, click the AIA tag below), its role in promoting Seattle’s reputation for sustainable design and how the award process should be organized in general. But the topics and questions being asked apply to green building awards throughout the country.
What should judges be looking for? Should they be awarding projects that are 
not yet built, like the Kitsap SEED project awarded at left? For built projects, like Corvallis Cohousing at right, should judges require a comparison between energy modeling during design - and actual energy use?
Projects that get awards are honored as the best of the best in their region, state or country… but are teams considering the right things? I don’t have answers to these problems, just ideas. Hopefully, some conclusive advice will come from the panel discussion tomorrow. I’ll update you on how it goes, and please share your ideas with me.
Tags: AIA, awards, Green events, Projects
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May 21st, 2008 at 8:23 am
Excellent blog
As for the present awards it looks like they mix everything: private individual residences with schools or condos… maybe separate categories would be more appropriate? or are those the buildings selected in various categories?
Instead of awards once a year i would rather have a good database, in a blog format that would keep track of all new interesting building. Something like 123 soleil for the Northwest
The best incentive to choose sustainable is to look at existing buildings that work and inspire. But I could not find any systematic and userfriendly data base/blog.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
[...] the point of green awards? I asked that question in a post last week and during an AIA panel discussion the following day, a number of Seattle architects [...]