What’s the greenest kind of new building, you might ask? For many people here in the Pacific Northwest, that answer would be ‘a living building’.’

What’s that you say? A building doesn’t live; it exists! People live!

That’s the way buildings are thought of now, but the whole premise behind a living building is to change that idea to make a building function - (skeptics don’t roll your eyes yet) - like a flower that gives and takes from its environment. (more here).  Living buildings are self sustaining. They produce their own energy, treat their waste and reuse water, among other bits.

Developed by Jason McLennan of the Cascadia Green Building Council, I wrote one of the first stories about the green guideline in April 2007 here.

Only problem is, there aren’t many of them out there yet.

There are a handful of them however, and one is being developed by the Alice Ferguson Foundation in Accokeek, Md. The foundation operates programs that help kids and teachers connect with nature (ever heard of “green shock” before? Apparently lots of kids and teachers go through a period of shock when faced with non-urbanized nature). I wrote about this project in a story last week here.

The project, pictured in this post, has two buildings that work collaboratively to combine the strengths and weaknesses of each for the highest benefit. One building, called the Moss Building, will have 12,000 square feet of overnight space for students, kitchen and teaching labs. The second building, the Grass Building, will have 4,000 square feet of training space for visitors.

Solar panels from the Grass Building’s 72-kilowatt photovoltaic system will provide all the energy for both buildings. The Moss Building will supply water for both buildings from cisterns in its basement.  Buildings will also create no trash and use on-site materials in construction. They will have composting toilets, a constructed wetland to treat gray water, a living wall, and will convert rainwater into potable drinking water.

That’s a tall order for a project that won’t be complete until 2010. And so far it hasn’t been easy and it hasn’t been cheap (the total budget is around $10 million). But it has been informative.

Tracy Bowen, executive director of the foundation, said she’s had to be “a pushy broad” to get the building as green as it’s looking. She also said integrative design has an awfully long way to go in the design profession as a whole. Want to know what she thinks is missing? Stay tuned tomorrow when I’ll answer that! question! 

Tags: Green projects, LEED, Living Building, Maryland, Projects

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 5:02 pm and is filed under LEED, Living Building, Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.