To Make a Greener Building, Start With an Old One

Corporations love to show off new constructions with fancy eco features. For truly green architecture, it’s best to build on structures already in place.

NEXT TIME YOU find yourself in a new-ish US office building, scan the walls visible from the entryway. Within seconds, you are almost guaranteed to find a glittering circular plaque embossed with a leaf. It’ll be topped with the words LEED Platinum—or sometimes Gold, Silver, or just Certified.

In the late ’90s and early 2000s, LEED designation, awarded by the US Green Building Council to recognize leadership in energy and environmental design, was generally revered only in the niche world of architects devoted to reducing the carbon impact of the built environment. But the era of corporate greenwashing has transformed LEED into a badge of status. Recent constructions Apple Park, Google Bay View, and Salesforce Tower all boast LEED Platinum medallions. Amazon’s recently downsized HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia, will likely earn a Platinum plaque when it opens.

The proliferation of LEED plaques might suggest that the challenges of making buildings green have been solved. Scan a proposal for a structure from a major corporation and you will find hymns to biophilic properties that encourage plants to grow on a building, water recycling systems, and transparent photovoltaic glass. Sustainable building technology can be downright wild these days. A wood composite called mass timber can replace the high-emissions steel and concrete usually needed to frame new skyscrapers (as previously touted by WIRED). Nearly half of the energy demands of Google’s Bay View campus are met by its glamorous “dragonscale solar skin.”