The International Living Future Institute (ILFI) held its annual conference in Seattle last week with the theme of Resilience and Regeneration. Approximately 1000 deep-green professionals from the construction, design, products and chemical industries attended the conference by the publishers of the Living Building Challenge (LBC).  

In what must have seemed like the early years of GreenBuild, the audience rallied behind the illuminating speakers Paul Hawken, Jason McLennan and David Suzuki. Like the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating system, the Living Building Challenge is gaining interest from design professionals and building owners who want to accelerate the green-building movement by adopting a more stringent set of criteria, including net-zero energy and water. The General Services Administration (GSA) recently reviewed the LBC program for potential adoption for federal buildings and were in attendance.

While the many educational sessions focused on resilience, biomimicry and lessons from Hurricane Sandy, the highlight of the conference was certainly not in the meeting rooms, but the recently completed Bullitt Center. The new 6-story commercial building built by the organization headed by Denis Hayes (who spoke at the 2012 International Concrete Sustainability Conference) is registered under the LBC program and is a testament to what is possible to achieve its "Greenest Building In the World" status. The Class-A office building was designed and built to last 200 years, will store and use all its water needs, generate more energy than it uses and offer a working environment that has less toxins than most children’s hospitals. This was accomplished with a 15% construction premium.

NRMCA’s Tien Peng is monitoring the adoption of the Living Building Challenge and used this conference as an opportunity to educate and inform decision-makers on the issues relevant to material selection in buildings.