Massachusetts Tops the List for LEED Certified Projects

The US Green Building Council (USGBC) announced the annual ranking of Top 10 States for LEED, honoring the states throughout the United States that made significant strides in sustainable building design, construction and transformation over the past year.

This year, Massachusetts topped the list with a total of 136 LEED-certified projects representing 3.73 SF of certified space per resident. This year’s list has the highest average (2.55 SF) per capita of LEED-certified space among the top 10 states since 2010.

Four of the nine states included in the 2015 list increased the square feet of space they certified per resident in 2016 (Massachusetts, Colorado, California and Virginia).

Sustainability is an integral part of our practice at PAYETTE. Because of our practice specialization, we tend to see some of the most energy-intensive structures being built. We embrace our responsibility to minimize their environmental footprint to the fullest extent possible – sometimes by employing cutting-edge technology, and other times by boldly challenging the conventions associated with our building types.  We are actively involved with the AIA 2030 Commitment and over fifty of our firm’s projects have achieved or will achieve LEED Certification, including five LEED Platinum projects. 

By integrating our Building Science team into every project we design, we are able to explore and implement ways to reduce the environmental impact. This was very much the case with the Northeastern University ISEC. Given the initial desire for a curved façade, the Building Science Group worked with the team to determine how to deliver a curved façade that met the sustainability goals for the project. The sun shading system was developed through an iterative process that considered both building performance and the design. The end result is the result of a truly integrated design process wherein the building science informs the design intent and vice versa.

If you are interested in learning more about our ISEC project, register for the guided tour on March 1st hosted by USGBC Massachusetts Chapter. 

In addition to the ISEC at Northeastern University, our firm has two more interdisciplinary science buildings reaching completion in Boston this year – the Tufts University Science and Engineering Complex and Boston University’s Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering – both of which are tracking LEED Gold.

We are proud to see that Massachusetts is at the top the 2016 USGBC Top 10 States for LEED list.