Mar 23, 2009
LEED Bashing Has Become Fashionable — Is That Good For Sustainable Development?
Ever since the USGBC introduced the LEED standard for green building, there have been naysayers and skeptics.
First it was the builders and real estate developers who said that people didn’t care about all that “green” BS, they just wanted the least expensive building they could get. (Or, conversely, the most building they could get for the least amount of money.)
More recently there have been catcalls from the traditionalist movement that green buildings are ugly and therefore inherently unsustainable because they’re “unlovable.” (I wonder how you quantify lovability?)
Now that “green” has become mainstream, the loudest complaints about LEED are coming from people who say that it doesn’t go far enough, or that it’s just a marketing tool or system for racking up points based on the unconsidered application of “gizmo green” technology.
I’m more bothered by the latter groups than the former. While it’s good that there be healthy debate and I’m all for criticism of LEED on the basis that it is too easy to game or that its standards are too vague, I wonder if this kind of scorched-Earth dismissal of LEED isn’t more harmful to the sustainability movement than its intended target.
For example: The coverage of ONE person’s rant against LEED on Treehugger, which gets picked up by mainstream media outlets, is so poorly written and point-missing that it seems as if the author doesn’t really understand what LEED is intended for. (Unfortunately, the kind of coverage something gets all too often frames the public debate about an issue, and it’s critical that the coverage be fair but also accurate. Treehugger’s article is neither.)
So many of the critics of LEED and other sustainability efforts seem to think in a vacuum (or echo chamber) when it comes to buildings and neighborhood development. They seem to want EVERY building to be repurposed and that EVERY building is “historic” simply because it’s old. Unfortunately that’s not the case.
Think of it this way:
Yes, the new office building where the Green Oaks Hotel used to be probably isn’t the most sustainable thing out there. It’s not close to downtown, it doesn’t have housing on the property, there’s a GIANT WALL OF GLASS (one of the biggest rocks thrown by anti-modernists), and I’m sure many more things that aren’t sustainable when viewed from the traditionalist’s perspective.
But look at it this way — they tried. Instead of building a steel-framed building with brick and stone sheathing (an unnecessary waste of materials), they chose to use the structural elements as the exterior of the building. Yes, there’s a glass wall on the damn thing (on the North side, the side least exposed to the sun), and yes, it’s surrounded by parking lot. So what?
You know what else it’s surrounded by? (The building is at the south-east intersection of Alta Mere and 30, in the upper left of this screenshot.) Houses. Schools. Apartments. TONS of shopping. Office buildings. While it’s true that the building isn’t in the heart of urban Fort Worth, it’s certainly not in the middle of nowhere. It’s plenty accessible to the people who live in the neighborhoods around it, public transit services the area, and no new roads are being built to service it. The developers of this project did the best they could with what they had in terms of location and budget, but there is still a vocal minority that insists things be done perfectly or they’re not “sustainable.”
This is the kind of all-or-nothing environmentalism that got the movement shoved to the fringe and locked out of boardrooms and government offices for its first 30 years. Now that we’re finally moving away from environmental absolutism and making progress in these areas, it seems some well-meaning folks want to move us back into proverbial exile.
LEED isn’t perfect. No one — including the USGBC — argues that point, but it’s infinitely better than nothing.
I think you make some solid points here in this article and there is a valid concern that LEED “bashing” becomes a distraction. I share that concern.
On the other hand, there’s a concern that everyone’s trust in LEED will become a problem because LEED, after all, is about market transformation. It has kinks and the bar has been set low in some areas because, as the market transforms, it’s supposed to become more rigorous. Adding rigor is part of the reasoning behind LEED 2009 (and the Treehugger author, to his credit, readily acknowledges this).
But we have to consider two things. First, technology before design is not only a bad idea, but it’s too expensive. Sustainable buildings need less gizmos and more integrated design. Second, the Energy and Atmosphere credits, rely on predictive modeling of a building’s performance, and not on actual building performance. This is a distinction to pay attention to. Some certified LEED buildings may not be all that energy efficient, and that’s what some critics are trying to point out. There should be some teeth with energy performance is all.
In the end, I guess the question is: is all this kicking and screaming going to put us in a better position? In my opinion, lots of smart people are working on these issues already, without the kicking and screaming, so it’s hard to say …
Thanks for your comments, Preston! I’m flattered that you wound up here and would comment without me even linking to you.
For those who don’t know, Preston writes one of the best blogs on the web for info about sustainable development and green architecture. He’s been writing a lot about a couple of things I’m excited about — reusing shipping containers for housing and prefabricated housing, both done sustainably.
I agree and totally understand the concern that everyone’s trust in LEED could lead to problems. There’s no doubt about that, and it’s clear that LEED isn’t perfect in its current form — for example, the current standards don’t make any accommodations for climate with regards to water usage and so on. I understand that there are efforts being made to fix that oversight for the next generation of standards.
I agree that there should be teeth to the certification. I don’t think anyone would wish otherwise, except maybe some builders who still see it as a marketing gimmick. I think there ARE real gains over standard building practices with the current standard, but I agree that it could and should be more rigorous.
What I take issue with is the bombastic tone that so many of the critics take, like decrying LEED as a farce or sham, or saying it’s a scam. Here’s why:
To many people LEED *IS* green building. They don’t know anything about any of it, and they certainly don’t know how to parse the validity of a 20-page engineering argument about why LEED buildings consume more energy than the designers modeled based on R-values and coefficienblahblahblah… They don’t hear any of that. They hear “LEED IS A SCAM.” Period.
And since to them LEED *IS* green building, they say “fuck it” and don’t make any effort to build sustainably, since it’s all a scam anyway.
If the options are a LEED certified building that DOES benefit from the gains made in all of the areas besides energy efficiency, like indoor air quality, siting, brownfield redevelopment, construction waste reduction, wastewater runoff collection/mitigation, material re-use/recycling, and all the other things a building can earn points for besides energy efficiency, or a building made just like every other non-green POS out there, then I know which one I prefer.
All of those steps reduce a building’s carbon footprint, but more importantly, they emphasize sustainability and responsibility on the part of the designer, builder, and owner/operator of the building. That’s the real gain from LEED, in my opinion.
Pete, I’m definitely a reader (long time Dallas native with my dad from Fort Worth). I also think we’re on the same page.
Plus, to say what you’re saying in the last couple paragraphs differently, some of the critics are focusing on energy performance alone. But the benefits of LEED are broader than that, like you said, with water efficiency, indoor air quality, construction waste reduction, use of recycled, reclaimed, local, fsc, or rapidly renewable materials, etc. I think a lot of people credit LEED for creating submarkets for sustainable design and products in these areas — certainly a good thing we want to continue.
I guess we’ll see how all this plays out, but it could just be moot with LEED 2009. I need to dive deeper into the Reference Guide here shortly.
Thanks for summing up my point exactly. You’re right that we seem to be on the same page.
I’m interested in seeing where LEED 2009 is going as well, and I’m looking forward to reading the Reference Guide.
Drop me a line the next time you’re in town — the first beverage of your choice is on me.
I hate to say this Steve but I was looking at a LEED home that was linked off the http://www.fortworthology.com site and it was the ugliest thing I’d seen in architecture in a long time, far eclipsing the usual Bauhaus university garbage I usually think of as the ugliness prize winners. I don’t know if this means that the LEED homes shouldn’t be built, but I do think it’s a very serious problem in terms of general acceptance of sustainable design. I mean, if you gave me a choice of living in that thing or a conventional home with no air conditioning I’d have to think about it.
The idea that in order to be green we have to be ugly is just a major problem.
Don’t hate to say anything here, Sonja.
I don’t know what house you’re referring to, but remember that LEED is just the standard by which the energy efficiency and construction process/materials’ environmental impact is quantified. LEED has nothing directly to do with the overall appearance of the house — there are no aesthetic design requirements.
Remember that Kevin likes to feature the worst of post-modern architecture and claim that all modern architecture is no better than the examples he shows. He has a lot of good things to say about design in general, and he certainly knows a lot about historical buildings, but he’s so biased against almost anything modern that you have to take what he says about modern buildings with a grain of salt.
Having said that, there are certainly modern home designs that I really, really don’t like. But there are a whole lot more that are really appealing and would fit nicely into a neighborhood like mine.
No one thinks that in order to be green we have to be ugly, and I’m sorry you’ve gotten that impression.
I have never tried to hide my biases – I think it’s pretty obvious where I stand.
I’m going to take a guess and say that Sonja might have seen the 100k House, which I’ve linked to several times. I love the ideas behind the house, but the finished product – I’m still going with ugly. Maybe that’s what she’s talking about.
Despite what you might think, I don’t have a general bias against modern architecture. There are quite a few modernist buildings I like quite a lot, and modernism does have a list of great buildings that are undeniable. I just think the ratio of good to bad doesn’t swing too favorably for the modernists, and the number of good *places* that modernism has created after all this time is really unacceptably low. You’d think that people would realize by now how blatantly wrong Corbu and pals were about his Radiant City and other concepts, but to this day I still see the same tower-in-the-park nonsense and other similar mistakes repeated over and over again by the leading edge of architecture.
When people like Koolhaas are put forth as masters of the craft of today and I see their buildings being inuman and making the same sort of mistakes that we made in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, the sort of mistakes that decimated the public realm and led to the wastelands of post-WWII American urbanism – that’s where my distrust of modernism comes from.
Anyway, that’s really neither here nor there for this topic, I suppose.
As an engineer, I am asked on a daily basis the benefits of LEED. Unfortunately my answer is always the same…its not worth the trouble or the expense. As an engineer, it has always been my duty to design the best systems possible to meet the requirements of the owner. We have always had to walk a thin line between performance and cost while assuming complete liability for the systems.
Afer working on several LEED projects with non-professional LEED AP’s (LEED AP’s without architectural or engineering degrees)I have come to the conclusion that any high school kid with a good memory call sit for the LEED exam, pass it, and charge a fee for picking points out of a book. He would bring no experience to the project nor would he assume any liability. Yet this LEED AP is commanding fees that sometimes exceeds the fees of the design professionals.Not a bad little scam if you ask me.
Any architect or engineer that is worth his salt has the knowledge and experience to design a sustainable structure that meets or exceeds the LEED criteria without all the added paperwork and BS that comes with commisioning a project. The project may not get to hang a plaque on the wall with the LEED logo but then again who cares.
ARrrg…this is such a frustrating string for me!! A David Schwarz historic-knock-off lover bashing modernist design and an engineer bashing LEED…
Just a couple of points here without inserting too many of my person views…
“As an engineer, it has always been my duty to design the best systems possible to meet the requirements of the owner. We have always had to walk a thin line between performance and cost while assuming complete liability for the systems.” Very true for most engineers…please note that no where in his normal standards are there required considerations for the overall environment or energy efficiencies other than set forth by local and national codes.. A great number of engineers do not care to take into account whether the materials going into a project are new, renewable, or remotely “sustainable” as long as they are cost effective,will work to the stated standards required, and the architect doesn’t throw them out.
Side note: Most design firms now have LEED Accredited Proffessionals on staff, thus eliminating the need for an additional consultant.
Pete, you were spot-on when you said, “LEED has nothing directly to do with the overall appearance of the house.” One could, if so desired, make a very traditional-looking building that meets many of the LEED requirements. Unfortunately, many of the…um….traditionalist designers have not moved as strongly to the sustainable design principals as their “modernist” counterparts and thus when one thinks of “green design” a modern design is usually the image one sees.
I think it best I don’t comment on Kevin’s modernist comments.
Perhaps it is, GDL. I’m burned out on the topic, to be frank. I don’t dismiss Modernism out of hand, but the militant, “anything that’s not bleeding-edge progressive is bad architecture” stuff coming out of the Modernism camp is just ridiculous. I don’t care if you want to put up a glass box – just make it urban, friendly, and approachable. And don’t act as though Modernism is the One True Path and dismiss any other style as “bad.” Beyond that, I don’t give a flying frack. Have fun.
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