Renzo Piano Thumbs Nose at LEED

The new NY Times Building designed by Renzo Piano snubbed LEED certification to find a different path to sustainability. Writer William Bostwick reflects on the LEED checklist and why the system is broken.

1 minute read

August 9, 2008, 1:00 PM PDT

By Tim Halbur


"The project is sustainable in ways that are hard to quantify because Piano incorporated environmental solutions into the fundamental fabric of the design. A 70-by-40-foot skylight and an interior courtyard-garden allow natural light into the tower's offices, lowering electricity use but also defining the look and feel of the whole building. What to LEED is just a single attribute, to Piano is an integral part of the design. This is a radical and innovative idea, and it picks up where LEED left off, moving greenness from a privileged subset of design into a basic design strategy-not a prize, but a process."

Thursday, August 7, 2008 in GOOD Magazine

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