Largest Commercial Living Building Achieves Full ‘Living’ Status

PAE Living Building joins 34 others certified

Photo by Jamie Goodwick Portland Drone

The 58,000-sq-ft PAE Living Building in Portland, Ore., is the first privately developed speculative office building fully certified under the rigorous Living Building Challenge of the International Living Future Institute, and one of only 35 fully certified Living Buildings in the world. The certification became official last month, after a year of full building occupation.

The five-story building generates 113% of the energy it needs from solar, captures rainwater for drinking and screens out hazardous chemicals, according to its performance data. It also is one of only a few spec office buildings—and the only Living Building—engineered beyond code minimums for hospital-level seismic resilience.

Nadine M. Post, ENR's editor-at-large for buildings, is an award-winning journalist with 45 years of experience covering trends, issues, innovations, controversies and challenging projects. Post has written about many industry giants, including 10 ENR Award of Excellence winners. And she has covered disasters, failures and attacks, including the 1993 bombing and the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. Project stories include the redevelopment of the World Trade Center; the 828-meter-tall Burj Khalifa; Los Angeles’ Disney Concert Hall; and Seattle's Bullitt Center and Rainier Square Tower. In 1985, Post wrote McGraw-Hill's book Restoring the Statue of Liberty (1986) for the restoration’s architects—Richard S. Hayden and Thierry W. Despont.