GAB Report library
Living Building Challenge
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Prairie Roof Anchors Roosevelt Library in North Dakota
Opening in Medora, North Dakota, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library combines mass timber, rammed earth, and a 121,000-square-foot living prairie roof. Designed by Snøhetta, the project integrates passive thermal massing with an all-electric infrastructure while entering a twelve-month performance audit to verify its rigorous net-zero environmental targets.
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Operational Data From Four Living Buildings Reshapes MEP Practice
Operational performance records from the Bullitt Center, RMI Innovation Center, Kendeda Building, and PAE Living Building demonstrate how engineering assumptions have shifted over two decades, turning once controversial regenerative MEP strategies into reliable building systems.
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ILFI Holds Red List Steady as Polymer Scrutiny Expands
The International Living Future Institute has kept its enforceable Living Building Challenge Red List unchanged until March 2027. Concurrently, an expanded Watch List signals rigorous future scrutiny for whole polymer families, occupational silica hazards, and common HVAC refrigerants.
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Midwestern Adaptive Reuse Proves Closed-Loop Water and Net-Positive Power
Three years of post-occupancy operations at the Stanley Center for Peace and Security in Muscatine, Iowa, show how deep adaptive reuse achieved net-positive energy, closed-loop water autonomy, and significant commercial supply chain reform.
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ILFI Opens Timber Specifications to Indigenous and Community Forests
A practice guide from the International Living Future Institute broadens wood procurement under the Living Building Challenge beyond conventional third-party labels. The framework establishes verifiable ecological benchmarks that let design teams specify timber from Tribal nations and community forests without sacrificing chain-of-custody rigor or facing compliance penalties.
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2019 COTE Top Ten
Congratulations to the 2019 winners of the COTE Top Ten awards program for sustainable design excellence. The winning projects not only met the AIA Committee on the Environment’s rigorous criteria for social, economic, and ecological value but also demonstrated that good design is more than just pretty looking buildings. Many of the winning projects live…
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Live Stream: Southface’s Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable on Kendeda Building
Southface’s Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable will discuss lessons learned from The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design on Friday, March 1st, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The event is sold out but the organizers will be streaming live on their Facebook page at 7:30 am EST. Tune in then at www.facebook.com/SouthfaceInst. The Georgia Institute of…
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Living Future 18
The What: In May 2018, a global community of changemakers will converge at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland to turn ideas into action! The Living Future unConference is the leading event in regenerative design. Join a community of changemakers. This year’s theme is AUTHENTICITY & ACTION, Where Big Ideas Gain Momentum. Living Future is all about cross-industry collaboration.…
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Sonoma Academy Wins Beyond Green High-Performance Building & Community Award
Another win for Sonoma Academy – the school’s Janet Durgin Guild & Commons recently won a Beyond Green High-Performance Building and Community Award from the National Institute of Building Sciences. This is on top of its achievement of the AIA CC Leading Edge Award and AIA COTE Top Ten Award, the industry’s best-known award program for sustainable…
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BuildingGreen’s Top 10 Products for 2018
BuildingGreen’s team recently announced its 2018 Top 10 Products List, a list that is well respected and one to which I always look forward. I’m particularly excited about the AirFlow Panel and the VersaDry Drywall Track, both of which revolutionize the standard methods of building to make it fundamentally simpler for designers/engineers and builders in terms…