Certified Case Studies

Responding to Wind, Sun, and Sea Located in Kamuela, Hawai‘i and set among the rolling foothills of the Kohala Mountains, the Hawai‘i Preparatory Academy Energy Lab was created to educate the next generation of students in the understanding of environmentally conscious, sustainable living systems. The team held several week-long working sessions on the site, an…

Creating Community As its name implies, the Mosaic Centre for Conscious Community and Commerce is much more than commercial office space, but rather is a re-imagining of the work environment as a rejuvenating space that fosters collaboration, creativity, and well-being. Project owners Dennis Cuku and Christy Benoit began the design process by creating a “project…

Practicing Biophilic Design The Sustainable Buildings Research Centre (SBRC), part of the University of Wollongong’s Innovation Campus, was created to test and demonstrate technologies that will inspire the green building movement in Australia. Wollongong is a few hours south of Sydney, on the beautiful New South Wales coast, and the Centre is situated between a…

Embracing Climate The David and Lucile Packard Foundation headquarters is a building that embodies the values that the Foundation supports; one that connects to the context of Los Altos and responds to the California climate. The building takes design inspiration from the “California Living” homes of the 1960s, which emphasized an orientation to the landscape…

Expressing Culture When Glumac had the chance to move their office into the third floor of a 100-year-old mansion in Shanghai’s historic Chang Ning District, they jumped at the opportunity. Given the poor outside air quality, creating a healthy indoor environment was paramount. Taking guidance from Terrapin Green’s 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design, which coalesce…

Practicing Biophilic Design Located in a dense urban neighborhood near downtown Seattle, the six-story Bullitt Center was the first commercial office building to be fully certified as a Living Building. The design team set out to create a building that would last at least 250 years—a lifespan closer to that of a tree than of…

A Flower in the Garden Built to increase visitorship and to promote human-nature interactions, the VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre serves as the hub for a mature 55-acre botanical garden located in the heart of Vancouver, British Columbia. The Center includes a café, an expanded library, volunteer facilities, a garden shop, office space, and flexible…

Biophilic design principles and strategies were firmly embedded in the project through a series of visioning sessions held with each of the Etsy user groups. Following the visioning sessions, a working meeting was held that included a focus on biophilic design and ecology principles, and studies of these concepts were conducted throughout the schematic design…

Immersed In Place Built to further the mission of the Dixon Water Foundation, the Betty & Clint Josey Pavilion educates its visitors, many of them children, on watershed protection through sustainable ranching and the restoration of damaged farmland to native tallgrass prairie. From the time they first started sketching ideas for the Josey Pavilion, the…

Desert Rain is a residential compound, located on a 0.7-acre parcel on the edge of a historic downtown neighborhood. The focal point is the building called Desert Rain: a 2236-square foot, one-story residence with a stucco exterior, graceful rooflines and a striking curved wall which greets visitors on approach. The wall threads through the building…