Earlier this month, the first building in the U.S. permitted to treat rainwater for potable uses also became a Living Building—the highest level of ultra-green-building certification granted by the International Living Future Institute. The 10,520-sq-ft Brock Environmental Center in Virginia Beach, Va., is one of 44 buildings to have achieved partial or full certification under ILFI’s decade-old Living Building Challenge, which is considered the most rigorous sustainable design, construction and performance standard.
Over the course of a year, Brock produced 1.83 times more energy than it consumed. The building’s performance “far surpassed all of our goals,” said Mary Tod Winchester, vice president of administration and operations for Brock’s owner, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), at ILFI’s “Living Future 2016” conference. The 10th annual gathering, held May 11-13 in Seattle, had 931 attendees.