ADVOCACY FOR SUSTAINABILITY: BEYOND LEED—THE LIVING BUILDING CHALLENGE

City of Seattle Green Building Program
Lucia Athens, Supervisor of the Green Building Team, City of Seattle

We can be advocates for sustainability in our design practices, in our community and in the organizations we work for and with.

The City of Seattle decided it should focus on its own activities before going out to tell other people what they should be doing, so our initial focus was on our own capital projects. In 1997 we set LEED silver as the target for all projects over 5,000 square feet. The green building policy fits within a larger city framework, overseen by the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

It's important to have a point person, and that's the Green Building Team's role. It's important to build political support, and we have good support from both the city council and the mayor. In the beginning, some people were excited, others skeptical. We work a lot around the idea of the innovation adoption process, working with the early adopters to achieve early successes and letting other people come on board when they see that.

Green building now seems mainstream in Seattle. The city has 10 certified projects in its portfolio and 35 more in process. We work with people to provide ongoing support for the operation and maintenance of those buildings too.

The six-person Green Building Team is in the Department of Planning and Development, but it evolved from the city utilities department. (The utilities department is a natural ally, if you're working to create a green building program.) We serve as advocates inside the city's permitting office to make sure builders can take advantage of incentives and to help them with code issues; and we work to remove barriers to green in the city's codes. We work with other departments, for example with the city's health department to develop a rainwater harvesting code.

We also advocate at the state level, usually with other cities; but people in the industry can lobby more effectively for state changes. The Washington Conservation Voters develops a list of legislative priorities each year, and two years ago it included green buildings.

At the community level: run for office. It's important to have people in elected office who are advocates. People who go into the design professions don't usually think about that, but we need more of them. The man who was mayor in Seattle when we started the Green Building Team was a former dean of architecture.

There are opportunities for advocacy at the neighborhood level. The Ballard library is LEED certified because that community demanded it.

Our current mayor was a leader of the mayors' climate commitment effort; 250 mayors have signed on to meet the Kyoto standards without federal involvement. One of the key areas in that agreement is green building. If your city hasn't yet signed on, encourage its leaders to do so—and then to implement the standards, which will be an important tool.

Some of our lessons learned are: it's important set green design goals early; it's helpful to use LEED and other tools as benchmarking tools; cash incentives help motivate designers to go further; and it's sometimes important to spend the time to get it right.

The Ballard library architects lobbied for an additional two months for pre-design research, and the library director and board agreed. That made a big difference. It's an example too of the value of having an enlightened client who's willing to take risks. The architects spent a lot of time on the design of the book spiral, which was unlike anything anyone had done before; they mocked it up and brought in people in wheelchairs and people with strollers to test it; and they revised the design to make sure it would meet ADA requirements. It's an example of a design solution that works very well but isn't off the shelf, one that requires advocacy to overcome barriers.

Additional Information

Green building best practices:
www.seattle.gov/dpd/GreenBuilding/
SustainableCommunities/DesignToolsStrategies

> Greg Hepp, AIA

Seattle City Hall
Photo: Nic Lehoux