apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

It's all well and good that custom-designed Multi-Million dollar homes here in CA are LEED Platinum rated...

...but developers start getting LEED Platinum ratings for affordable & accessible housing in the rest of the country - That will be real news.

I totally agree. The home is certainly beautiful. However its impact is minimal if it is out of reach of 99% of general populations.

Sadly the LEED ratings are already getting out-paced by the truly progressive sustainable technologies. Some of the greenest buildings being designed and built today are utilizing fully integrated sustainable systems that do not fit neatly into the categories specified and required by the LEED program which translates to more hours and (ironically) paperwork for the owners and design teams so that their building may receive the “coveted” LEED ratings.
I would much rather see owners, designers, engineers and politicians strive for buildings whose end result in not a shiny LEED certificate whose technology is already outdated by the time the doors open but rather strive for creating a set of codes which demand that all buildings reach a respectable level of efficiency from the outset of the construction and lifespan of the building as well as input a program for required future updates and/or a plan for recycling of that building and its materials.

I'm not sure any large home built in the Oakland Hills is sustainable. The land is prone to fires, earthquakes and landslides. Sometimes I think this Leed certification is just a name, like Gucci, or Prada--something for the elite to attain as a status symbol.

I think LEED is more than "just a name" because it has brought so much attention to changing the industry for the better.

The house is beautiful, inside and out. It is also being GreenPoint Rated through Build It Green.

Sadly, yet another example of total greenwash. Spending too much money to build too big a house that just happens to have energy efficient features and other LEED-points does not make it"green".

Look at the house. Is this representative of how we can mass produce houses? No. It's a paean to excessive consumption with a green veneer. Sort of like a hybrid Cadillac Escalade.

Whether it's beautiful or not is beside the point. And LEED is a very flawed rating system (though they're trying to be better, with points taken off for size, for example.)

True sustainability is when you build simple and as inexpensively as possible (that Wolf range takes more energy to build, transport and run, even if it is Energy Star rated.)

Just remember that the first cars or home computers were 'out of the reach of the common man' for a while too and now look at them. I know a home represents a far larger commitment than a PC or even a car, but we as a nation have always been good at mutating and adapting technologies until they could be had by nearly all. Unfortunately it has taken a long time for green design to be a hot button topic and something that people actually look for. Give it a few years...

reduce. reuse. recycle. re-post?