by Brianna Crandall — July 18, 2012—The Living Building Challenge, known as the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard, was selected last month as the winner of the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, the prestigious annual design science competition named “Socially-Responsible Design’s Highest Award” by Metropolis Magazine. The Buckminster Fuller Challenge awards $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a holistic, systems-based solution that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems. The Challenge was chosen from a pool of 122 entries from around the globe.
The Living Building Challenge is administered by the International Living Future Institute and was created by Institute CEO Jason F. McLennan. It calls for the creation of building projects at all scales (from single-room renovations to whole communities) “that operate as cleanly, beautifully and efficiently as nature’s architecture.” To achieve certification, a project must meet 20 rigorous “Imperatives” (including net-zero energy, waste and water) over a minimum of 12 months of continuous occupancy.
The Institute certified the first projects to fully achieve the Living Building Challenge in October 2010, proving that the Challenge is attainable now, using existing technology, says the group. Approximately 140 more projects, spread across eight countries and 28 U.S. states, are currently in progress. Living Building Challenge Ambassadors, skilled volunteers dedicated to advancing the Challenge in their home communities, are active in twenty-one countries.
“Winning the Buckminster Fuller Prize is a huge honor for us,” says McLennan. “When we first launched the Living Building Challenge in late 2006, we really went out on a limb. We didn’t know how the building industry would respond to such an ambitious, performance-based building standard. Less than six years later, our Challenge is changing the way buildings worldwide are created, renovated and operated. Our current focus is bringing the Challenge up to the community and city scales, and the recognition offered by the Buckminster Fuller Institute with this award will help accelerate the international adoption of the strategies embodied by the Living Building Challenge at all scales.”
In their official statement, the Buckminster Fuller Challenge jurors noted that the “Living Building Challenge successfully shows how humans and their built environment can be harmoniously, benignly integrated within ecosystems. Above all, its rigorous standards and daringly innovative, revolutionary approach to building are already having a considerable impact on the thinking of designers and architects around the world, influencing all levels of design and technological approaches, radically pushing forward the field.”
