Cascadia Green Building Council

The CGBC is the regional arm of the USGBC in the Northwest, covering Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska, making it the only international chapter of the USGBC in North America. Through the efforts of the CGBC, the City of Portland adopted a green building policy and funded a Green Building Initiative, designed to expand market demand and provide support for the building industry. Through the chapter, they offer several educational programs, including LEED workshops, various seminars, and technical training for persons interested in learning more about building sustainable buildings.

In an effort to combine resources, CGBC has partnered with several other sustainability organizations to form the International Living Future Institute, an evolution of the International Living Building Institute, to encourage a global transformation toward sustainability. Their Living Building Challenge is the most advanced and most stringent measure of sustainability in the built environment possible today. It seeks to achieve a level of development in which every single act of design and construction makes the world a better place. The analogy made was treating a building like a flower, in which every piece serves a purpose toward the flower's survival, from the roots to absorb water and nutrients all the way up to the petals and leaves absorbing sunlight, and eventually to the point that the flower dies and becomes food for the next flower. Essentially, the building provides everything it needs for operation, from electricity generation to water collection and recycling. In order to be certified as a living building, the building must be monitored and sustain itself for a year, with no public utility connections. The Living Building Challenge is a fascinating project, but I fear it may never be adopted in many places facing water challenges like North Texas, at least not to the point where buildings are actually certified as living buildings. It would be exciting to see building codes incorporate a similarly stringent set of guidelines, but maybe with concessions for emergency utility connections.