The new NY Times Building designed by Renzo Piano snubbed LEED certification to find a different path to sustainability. Writer William Bostwick reflects on the LEED checklist and why the system is broken.
"The project is sustainable in ways that are hard to quantify because Piano incorporated environmental solutions into the fundamental fabric of the design. A 70-by-40-foot skylight and an interior courtyard-garden allow natural light into the tower's offices, lowering electricity use but also defining the look and feel of the whole building. What to LEED is just a single attribute, to Piano is an integral part of the design. This is a radical and innovative idea, and it picks up where LEED left off, moving greenness from a privileged subset of design into a basic design strategy-not a prize, but a process."
Read the full story: William Bostwick on the Life and Death of Green Design
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