USGBC student design competition

Introduction

The U.S. Green Building Council’s mission is to transform the way buildings and communities are designed, built, and operated, enabling an environmentally and socially responsible, healthy, and prosperous environment that improves the quality of life. Our vision at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is to have buildings and communities that regenerate and sustain the health and vitality of all life within a generation.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a framework for identifying, implementing, and measuring green building design, construction, operations, and maintenance. LEED is a voluntary, market driven, consensus-based tool that serves as a guideline and assessment mechanism. LEED Rating Systems address commercial, institutional, and residential buildings and neighborhood developments.

LEED seeks to optimize the use of natural resources, promote regenerative and restorative strategies, maximize the positive and minimize the negative environmental and human health consequences of the construction industry, and provide high-quality indoor environments for building occupants. LEED emphasizes integrative design, integration of existing technology and state-of-the-art strategies to advance expertise in green building and transform professional practice. The technical basis for LEED strikes a balance between requiring today’s best practices and encouraging leadership strategies. It is designed to address environmental challenges while responding to the needs of a competitive market.

Certification demonstrates leadership, innovation, environmental stewardship, and social responsibility. LEED gives building owners and operators the tools they need to immediately improve both building performance and the bottom line while providing healthful indoor spaces for a building’s occupants.

About the competition

USGBC launched its Student Design Competition in 2019 and is facilitated by the USGBC Detroit Region to encourage students to become more acquainted with LEED and experience how it can help transform our built environment. The program continues to grow, improve, and move forward. It is currently open to any higher education student in the Midwest which includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin but there are hopes to become a national program in the future.

Program overview

The program is designed to introduce students to LEED and demonstrate how this global rating system offers regional approaches to environmental and building issues and local resources to help projects on the ground, wherever they are. The competition will recognize exceptional design and planning projects that seamlessly integrate LEED criteria and the strategies for moving towards sustainable resource conservation and operation within their broader design concepts.

Submission options

There are generally three program options to choose from to enter the competition. You may choose whichever option you wish.

LEED for Building Design and Construction with LEED Zero option

Mixed-Use Project

Each round we select an interesting mixed-use project for our students to work off.

LEED for Building Design and Construction with LEED Zero option

Open Category

The projects can be of any type of program, adaptive or new construction, at any scale, in any location. LEED BD+C minimum program requirements must be met to submit. Work must be completed in a design studio or related class within the university's calendar year under faculty supervision and sponsorship.

Other

We generally offer a third category, in which we alternate between LEED Homes, LEED ID+C, LEED ND, LEED O+M, etc.

For more detailed program information see program downloads and useful links

Criteria for judging

Successful submissions should demonstrate design moving towards resource conservation in operations through a creative and innovative integration of design strategies such as daylighting, passive heating and cooling, materials, water, energy generation, and other sustainable systems, through a cohesive and viable solution. Issues to consider include sustainable urban design and urban planning outcomes, community enhancement, land use and effect on site ecology, bioclimatic design, energy and water use, impact on health and wellness, approach to environmental quality, materials and construction, adaptation, long-life considerations, conservation of buildings by adaptive reuse or renovation and demonstrated engineering evaluation methods for resource conservation.

The winning design projects will be selected by a jury of design professionals. Submissions are judged on excellence in aesthetics, design, creativity and function, the suitability of the design solution to the project challenge and the successful integration of the elements of design.

Entries will also be judged for the success with which the project has met LEED criteria, clarity in description of the project solution and merit, the physical organization and effective display of information, and the use of professionally accepted methods and standards employed relative to their field.

Student eligibility

Students must be enrolled in a higher education institution during the time frame of the competition, which includes community colleges through graduate-level institutions. Projects may or may not be entered under course credit but must have a faculty sponsor named. Individual or team entries are allowed as either single discipline or multi-discipline teams. Architecture, Urban Planning and Urban Design programs are encouraged to participate.

Registration (for faculty only)

A faculty sponsor must enroll students by completing the registration form at the link below. Include your entire studio or list only those students or teams participating. Students or teams wishing to enter must have a faculty sponsor who will complete the form. The registration form can be edited at any time by the faculty sponsor and resubmitted.

A registration form must be completed and sent in by the faculty sponsor for students to receive an ID number from USGBC that must be placed on each team’s board and narrative. To learn about the current program and/or past winners, please see below.

Project submission criteria

Here are the required components of a project:

Students can only participate in one project.
Incomplete or undocumented entries will be disqualified.
All drawings should be presented at a scale appropriate to the design solution and include a graphic scale and north arrow.
A registration form must be completed and sent in by faculty for teams to receive an ID number from USGBC that must be placed on each team’s board and narrative (see registration section below for more information).
Project authorship must remain anonymous. The names of student participants, their schools, or faculty sponsors, must NOT appear on the boards, abstract/narrative, program, or studio brief. If authorship is revealed on any submission materials the entry will be disqualified. The project can only be identified by the number provided to you by your faculty sponsor.
Vendor and product names are not allowed in the final submission.

Additional project information can be found under program downloads and useful links

Submission materials and requirements

Successful submissions are those that fully respond to the program requirements utilizing LEED strategies to help demonstrate a project solution documenting innovation in meeting LEED criteria and projects that stimulate thought-provoking discourse of sustainability.

Students or student teams must submit the following materials online:

Graphics/Documentation: No more than four (4) digital boards at 24” x 36” (PDF or JPEG files). These must adequately convey the project’s relationship to topography and physical context, formal and programmatic organization, circulation patterns, and experiential qualities. All drawings should be labeled; indicate scale and orientation where necessary. At minimum, include the following:

Site or context plan
Floorplans
Building / site sections
Perspective or isometric view (digital rendering or model photograph)

Images: Present diagrams, renderings or other images that best display how the project meets the program requirements and LEED strategies. Some measures may require a specific graphic or calculation; others are open-ended. Where applicable, provide labels and notes on how calculated metrics are obtained (basis, method, program used, and assumptions).
Abstract/Narrative: There is a 100-word maximum for each LEED credit achieved. All metrics should include a short description of key assumptions used in the analysis of LEED credits and how points were earned.
Project Concept Statement: There is 1000-word maximum for the project/concept statement that clearly defines the team’s approach/program/intentions/strategies for meeting the program requirements and specifically how LEED strategies helped to achieve those requirements.
A Completed LEED Checklist: indicating the projected points to be achieved by the project.

Submission process

You will need to use an electronic file submission process via Dropbox.com, Google docs or another file transfer service. Your submission must be anonymous. Please see “Current Program” for more details.

Awards and recognition

Awards will be given to projects in all three categories: Mixed-Use, Open Category ND. Awards will be chosen at the discretion of the jury.

Program downloads and useful links

Current program

There is no program open now. The next round will open in the Fall of 2024. Please check back for more details.

Past winners

Learn more about our winners from past rounds of the design competition.

Questions

Please direct all inquiries to our organizer at usgbcdetroitregion@usgbc.org. Please include “Student Design Competition” in the subject line.

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