In 2007 I achieved two of my personal goals, 1. To be a developer, and, 2. Build an office building for my company. In 1981 I started my first “real” job out of college at Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM). I was told that SOM always wanted to be in a building they designed. While JL Architects will never be SOM, it was still in my head. While I had always been conscious of energy and resource conservation, the green building programs were just getting started. In designing and building my family’s home in 1993, and then our company’s home in 2007, I took into consideration many of the tactics of passive conservation and post-consumer recycled materials. Formal accreditation was not on my radar due to the cost of LEED.
Stepping Up Last month we took the first step in correcting that shortcoming; our office building achieved an Energy Star score of 85. This means that our building performs in the 85th percentile in a pool of its peers; buildings of a similar size, use and climate location. It is especially pleasing because the Energy Star standards were recently updated to reflect improved building performance due to code updates and tighter regulations.