Living Building Challenge

The Living Building Challenge defines the most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment possible today and seeks to diminish the gap between current limits and ideal solutions. The underlying principal of the Living Building Challenge (LBC) is that all development projects should use nature as the ultimate measurement stick for performance, should generate all of their own energy with renewable resources, capture and treat all water onsite, operate efficiently with minimal waste, and consciously strive for maximum beauty.

The Living Building Challenge (LBC) is a cohesive performance-based standard – pulling together the most progressive thinking from the worlds of architecture, engineering, planning, landscape design and policy.

The Living Building Challenge is comprised of seven performance areas, or ‘Petals’:

• Site
• Water
• Energy
• Health
• Materials
• Equity
• Beauty

Petals are subdivided into a total of twenty Imperatives, or prerequisites, each of which focuses on a specific sphere of influence. Certification for Living Buildings is based on actual performance and is awarded only after a building has been operational for 12 months and demonstrated it has met the Living Building Challenge criteria.