The Design Alliance’s Center for Sustainable Landscapes Finds Ultimate Sustainability in the Balance
At the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden, everyone is talking green
The Phipps Conservatory’s Center for Sustainable Landscapes is taking advantage of the organizational efficiencies of the integrated project delivery practice model and applying them to the serious sustainability goal of meeting the Living Building Challenge. IPD will help the conservatory meet the Living Building Challenge’s zero-net energy, zero-net water objective by allowing design parameter changes to be transmitted quickly and efficiently throughout the entire design and construction team.

Chicago COTE Unveils “Cool Tool” for Carbon Reduction
Tool offers 60 customizable strategies for immediate to long-term implementation
AIA Chicago’s Committee on the Environment (COTE) released its “Carbon Reduction Strategies for the Chicago Region,” nicknamed the “Cool Tool,” at the World Sustainable Building Conference in Melbourne, Australia, last month.

Sustainable School Offers Lessons, Best Practices
Ratcliff takes Windrush School to LEED Gold
When AIArchitect last highlighted Ratcliff Architecture’s Windrush School project, the design team was taking a several-pronged approach to integrating sustainability into the program. Now that the project is complete, the LEED® Gold-certified K-12 facility is an educational tool for students and faculty as well as architects who are navigating with clients the nuances—design and business-related—of Walking the Walk to get to green. Here, Project Architect Brian Feagans, LEED-AP, and client Windrush Principal Ilana Kaufman share just a few of the lessons learned and best practices.