Atlas Trail
Building Green: Standards, Materials and the Bodies Behind Them
Seven stops through this wave own research: the two certifying bodies that anchor sustainable building practice, the energy standard one of them administers, a benchmark it feeds into, and three of the wave own vernacular and structural materials.
Stop 1 of 7.
Institutions and Organizations
Founded 1993: the organization that developed and now administers LEED, the certification system most green buildings are measured against.
Stop 2 of 7.
Institutions and Organizations
Founded 1996 in Darmstadt: the institute that certifies buildings to the Passive House standard.
Stop 3 of 7.
Concepts
The standard itself: the first Passive House buildings went up in Darmstadt-Kranichstein in 1990 to 1991, years before the certifying institute existed.
Stop 4 of 7.
Concepts
A benchmark increasingly written into the certification systems above: annual energy use offset by on-site renewable generation.
Stop 5 of 7.
Elements and Materials
Sustainability with millennia of precedent behind it: rammed earth walls, used from the Great Wall of China to contemporary low-energy houses.
Stop 6 of 7.
Elements and Materials
The twenty-first-century answer: cross-laminated timber, developed in Austria through the 1990s, now enabling mass-timber towers.
Stop 7 of 7.
Concepts
Where every stop above converges: the discipline that ties certification, standard, material and practice together.
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