The AIA Seattle Committee on the Environment announced its top 10 greenest projects in this region but my question to you is did they make the right choices?

Winners of the competition are included in the photos at left and right. At right is Home on the Range in Billilngs, Mont. by High Plains Architects. Below left is Lake Sammamish State Park Beach Boathouse in Issaquah by Patano and Hafermann Architects and below right is the Bertschi Center Project at the Bertschi School in Seattle by Miller/Hull.

The thing is, a competition is only as good as its entrants. Judges said these were great examples of green projects, but said there might be greener projects out there with teams that didn’t know about the competition, or didn’t have time to put together an entry. Entries were open to built and unbuilt projects.

So dear reader, if you were judging this competition and could choose any green project in the Pacifc Northwest and Pacific region, either built or unbuilt, what would your 10 picks be and why?

The competition was open to any project in Alaska, Guam/Micronesia, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Idaho, Japan, Montana, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. There were 56 entries, of which 10 awards and three honorable mentions were doled out at the ReGeneration conference this week. For more on the process, check out today’s story on the awards here.

Do you think AIA Seattle COTE made good choices or not? If you were at the event, what project do you think deserved recognition that maybe didn’t get it, or what project did the judges choose that truly deserved the award?

If you can’t think of 10, I’d still like to hear what you think the greenest top two or three projects in the region are. Let me know!

So you know what the greenest projects in the Puget Sound are…. but what about the country? If you want to find out, the AIA will host a reception in Seattle FOR FREE on April 6 that features submissions and project judging for the year’s AIA COTE Top Ten Green Projects. 

But to attend, you have to register first, and being a high profile event, this might fill up quickly. To do that, press here.

To whet your appetite for what you’ll see, I’ve included pictures of last year’s winners. The picture above is the Hawaii Gateway Energy Center in Kailua-Kona, Hi., by Ferraro Choi and Associates. The middle picture is Heifer International Headquarters in Little Rock, Ak., by Polk Stanley Rowland Curzon Porter Architects. The last picture is the Whitney Water Purification Facility in New Haven, Ct., by Steven Holl Architects.

Award judges include Glenn Murcutt, winner of the 2002 Pritzker Prize. The award winners will be not be announced until Earth Day.

The reception and viewing of award submissions will be at Kane Hall at the University of Washington from 6 to 8 p.m. This is the first year since the AIA COTE’s inception that the judging for the awards is taking place outside of Washington, D.C.

For more information on the awards, go here, or to check out a list of past winners and more photos, press here .