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New LEED Standards Will Apply to Contract Interiors

The preliminary program will be introduced at NeoCon in June.

Dave Platter -- Interior Design, 4/22/2004 12:00:00 AM

The U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit group that promotes environmental responsibility within the building industry, is extending its most important program to include contract interiors. Interior Design magazine is partnering with the Green Building Council to promote the new initiative.

The new focus on commercial interiors is part of the first expansion of the Council's flagship Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program since it was launched in 2000. The program, better known by its acronym, LEED, is also in the process of expanding to include existing buildings.

In addition to promoting environmental sustainability through such measures as energy conservation, LEED also focuses on overall health conditions by improving indoor factors such as air quality.

By giving owners, developers and architects a yard stick against which they can rate their new buildings, LEED for new construction has encouraged the development of more than 160 million square feet of registered high-performance green building projects to date. The new emphasis on commercial interiors promises to have an even greater impact.

"I remember the pie chart that shows the new construction market is maybe three or four percent of the total construction market," said Keith Winn, vice chairman of the USGBC committee that is developing the new LEED-CI standards. "Commercial interiors are more like a third of the market."

According to Winn, LEED ratings for commercial interiors "have a much greater potential to influence good decision making."

The new standards will evaluate tenant build-outs on criteria such as energy usage. For example, taking advantage of natural sunlight to illuminate interior areas will improve a contract interior's LEED rating. Conversely, specifying inefficient lighting systems that gulp down huge amounts of power will reduce it.

The standards will also encourage designers and contractors to choose locations in existing green buildings, and to employ water efficiency, green materials and high indoor air quality, said Winn.

The Green Building Council will publicly unveil the new LEED for Commercial Interiors (CI) at the upcoming NeoCon 2004, in Chicago in June. The unveiling will begin a period of public comment and Winn expects the standards to receive final approval by the Green Building Council by September.

Interior Design magazine is assisting the Council in the launch. The magazine will dedicate a special issue of its e-mail newsletter, "LiveWire," to LEED-related topics, and will also create a Green Resource Guide as part of its online and print Buyers Guide. In September, Interior Design will publish its first-ever magazine-within-a-magazine dedicated exclusively to environmentally projects, products and innovations.

"Green interior design is simply the right thing for our industry to do," said Mark Strauss, Interior Design 's v.p. publisher. "The technology is available and the knowledge is available, and we want to make sure every interior designer in the country knows about the new LEED program for commercial interiors."