The recently certified Salmon Creek Falls Environmental Center is the first LEED Platinum certified K-12 public school in California, and it is also the first building in Sonoma County to achieve LEED Platinum certification. (The first commercial/non-residential building, that is. I believe that a private residence in Healdsburg was actually the first project to achieve LEED Platinum in Sonoma County.) To the best of my knowledge, the Salmon Creek Falls Environmental Center is the first Platinum rated non-residential building in the entire North Bay region of the Bay Area (Sonoma, Napa, and Marin counties). The Center is located on the site of the Harmony Union Schools (Harmony Elementary and Salmon Creek Middle School) in Occidental, CA, a town in the redwoods to the west of Santa Rosa. The building serves the school district as well as the surrounding community. It includes an auditorium, cafeteria and kitchen, and meeting rooms; and it has many green features, including a vegetated, flower-covered “living roof.”
Here is my listing of all North Bay building projects that have achieved LEED certification to date. And here’s a longer listing of green building projects (of all sorts, not only LEED projects) that I’m aware of in the North Bay.
And a quick update on the stats for LEED Platinum projects worldwide: According to my latest calculations (as of December 2009), 46 states and 12 countries (including the U.S.) now have at least one LEED Platinum certified building. China and Great Britain are the latest countries to join the ranks of those with a LEED Platinum rated project. Within the United States, California—with more than 50 Platinum certified projects so far—is home to more Platinum projects than any other state.
December 17, 2009
If you’ll be in the San Francisco Bay Area during the first week of October, consider attending one or both of these entertaining and edifying events, which will be taking place in San Francisco and in West Marin County respectively:
West Coast Green, San Francisco
Expo + conference on green innovation for the built environment
Fort Mason Center
October 1-3, 2009 (Thursday – Saturday)
www.westcoastgreen.com
3rd Annual Point Reyes Green Homes Tour, Pt. Reyes Station
Organized by the Community Land Trust Association of West Marin (CLAM)
October 4, 2009 (Sunday)
www.clam-ptreyes.org
If you’d like to recommend other green events that will be happening in the Bay Area this fall, feel free to mention them in the Comments section.
September 7, 2009
The new California Academy of Sciences museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park recently opened its doors to the public. The building achieved the Platinum (top-tier) rating in the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building rating system. Designed by Renzo Piano, Stantec Architecture, and Arup, the 410,000-square-foot building is the largest public Platinum-rated project in the world (to date). Featuring a four-story rainforest exhibit, an aquarium, a planetarium, and an enormous (and hilly) “living roof” (AKA a vegetated or green roof) that visitors can access, the museum is proving to be wildly popular. If you go there soon, be prepared for crowds.
For details about the building’s sustainable design features, go to:
www.calacademy.org/academy/building/sustainable_design
If you’d like to know where other LEED Platinum buildings are throughout the country or the world, click here: LEED Platinum Certified Buildings Worldwide. I also developed an interactive Google map of green buildings in San Francisco, and I keep updated lists of green building projects in the San Francisco Bay Area and all LEED certified projects in Northern California.
February 7, 2009
