Look out LEED, your standards may be obsolete sooner than you think. At least if architect Jason McLennan has his way. He has inspired a race by more than 60 teams across North America to design the very first Living Building, one that would generate its own energy with renewable resources, use only water falling on the site, be free of red list toxic materials, be designed beautifully, be suited to regional characteristics and not on virgin land, and would maximize people’s access to fresh air and daylight.

The uncomfortable truth about how buildings are built today is that they demand quick payback over long-term returns, according to one observer, and the Living Building challenge is designed to get people to start thinking about the priorities associated with how buildings are constructed. As McLennan puts it, it has a lot to do with what we value.

“It’s asking people to rethink what they value,” McLennan says. Consider, he says, that for the average $60,000 to $80,000 spent on a new Seattle house for what’s considered the de rigeur two-car garage and bonus room, you could install energy-generating systems such as solar panels “and never have an energy bill.”

Of course, when you tried to sell the house without that garage and bonus room, “appraisers and lenders would punish you,” he says. But “instead of valuing size, shouldn’t we value quality?”

In many ways these days we are being required to ask the value question, so perhaps it’s time we started doing it with our buildings as well.

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