Scroll through the projects below to view the nominations and vote.
Vote by June 29 for your favorite LEED residential project.
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: Mandaue City, Philippines
Being the first LEED for Homes Certified Project in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia Region, this project has gone to great lengths in designing and building to LEED standards, attaining no lower than Platinum Level. This will become a template of sorts to other projects in the area and an inspiration to break other barriers in promoting local green building initiatives.
YY House is a LEED Platinum certified single-detached family home sitting in the middle of a buzzling industrial city in Cebu. It is the first home in the Philippines and in the South East Asian region to be certified under the LEED for Homes V4.1 rating system. The owner and designer intend to inspire fellow designers, builders, and home buyers to aim for sustainability, health, comfort, and low total cost of ownership in creating homes of the future.
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: Bresca, Madrid, Spain
Cal Guerxo is net positive for carbon, water, and energy. “In our first year, we produced 112% of our energy,” he notes. Last year, Cal Guerxo also certified LEED Platinum, achieving the second-highest score in Europe in 2020 with perfect water, energy and material scorecards. “Cal Guerxo shows that renovation projects can reach net positive targets,” Emmanuel says. “We can change the paradigm from reducing negative impacts to making positive contributions.” I am proud of Cal Guerxo. The process has been challenging but the journey with my collaborators has been an ultimate reward. Together we achieved 92 LEED points and blazed a trail for net positive homes.
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: Fort Collins, CO, USA
L’Avenir Townhomes a three story, four unit townhome style condominium project designed and modeled to surpass Net Zero Energy in Old Town Fort Collins, Colorado. The site is a small, non-conforming, 4,600 sf vacant urban infill lot that was formerly an auto garage in the 1970’s. Two orphan petroleum tanks were successfully removed and the site mitigated before construction began in 2019. L’Avenir, which means “the Future” in French, was born because architecture can and should be regenerative. Buildings that are carefully sited and crafted with long lasting, durable and low-maintenance materials, have a positive impact on the community. Buildings that have flexible components that allow for adaptive reuse and energy independence will be conserved, not demolished in 30 years.
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: Portland, OR, USA
Reed College, a small liberal arts school in Portland, Ore., was seeking a solution to increased demand for on-campus student housing, which was driven, in part, by rising rental costs in the Portland area. The college lacked sufficient on-campus housing to support all students who desired to live in the residence halls. Reed’s newest and largest residence hall, Trillium, aims to help solve the housing crunch, and bring 180 first-year students together in a vibrant, socially active environment.
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: Seattle, Washington, USA
This 8-story LEED Multifamily Platinum certified building includes residential, retail, and restaurant space. Adjacent to one of the most sustainable buildings in the world, the Bullitt Center, the project aims to create a building that not only meets the requirements of LEED, but also suits the energetic, environmentally conscious Capitol Hill neighborhood. Health and wellness is central to the Chloe on Madison residential experience. Categorized as a “Walker’s Paradise,” the site boasts a 99 out of 100 Walk Score with “Excellent Transit and “Very Bikeable” designations. There are dozens of amenities and community resources within a short half-mile walk of Chloe: hip restaurants, nightlife, grocery stores, and parks.
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA
The Cincinnati Scholar House is a unique 44-unit LEED Platinum affordable housing development that provides subsidized housing and support services for low-income single parents pursuing a college degree.
The Scholar House model aims to remove the barriers that often prevent low-income single parents from pursuing post-secondary education, and in doing so, aims to break the cycle of poverty and help families achieve economic self-sufficiency. It does this by co-locating numerous support services, chief among them a high-quality early childhood education center. Other services help to connect parents with work study programs, financial aid, mentoring, and other resources. Subsidy ensures that families pay no more than 30% of their income toward rent and utilities.
LEED Certification Level: Gold
Location: Curitba, Parana, Brazil
Located in Curitiba, southern Brazil, Llum is a 20-story multifamily residential project with 15 “suspended homes,” designed to provide families with the comforts of a single family residence and the convenience of an apartment building.
Laguna, its developer and builder, has always seen LEED as an outcome, not as a goal. According to Gabriel Raad, the company’s CEO, “if you build a really comfortable, excellent building, then one of the natural outcomes is LEED.”
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: Kingston, New York, USA
RUPCO’s Energy Square (E2) addresses neighborhood blight at a shuttered former bowling alley in the city of Kingston’s core to answer specific community needs and provide safe, sustainable and affordable housing in a new zero-net energy structure. It is a transformative project in Midtown Kingston—it is the first affordable Zero Net Energy (ZNE) project in upstate New York. The project completed construction in June 2020 and was fully occupied by November 2020. The residents’ electricity needs are met through a 300 KW on site solar array with a projected annual production of 352,000 kWh. The residents and commercial tenants heating and cooling needs are met through a geothermal system.
LEED Certification Level: Gold
Location: Washington, DC USA
The main goal of City View was to develop and build a housing complex that incorporates sustainable building and design as well as promote occupant health and wellness. Located in South East Washington DC, City View has 58 units and was designed and developed with resiliency and energy efficiency in mind.
LEED Certification Level: Gold
Location: Bronx, NY, USA
The Association of New York Catholic Homes goes well beyond simply building to code, bringing energy efficiency and quality housing to low-income residents of the Bronx with St. Augustine Terrace. One of the more prominent high-performance features of the building is the Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) heating and cooling systems, reducing air infiltration and costs while increasing in-unit space. VRFs generate strong operational savings compared to traditional PTAC systems, providing the long-term impact that often outweighs their initial costs.
LEED Certification Level: Gold
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
This 7‐story project provides both housing as well as quality healthcare services for the city’s Skid Row homeless community, an economically disadvantaged area in the heart of Los Angeles.
Impact/Equality
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: San Nicolas, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
Casa Anahuac is the first project to achieve Platinum level under LEED for Homes certification in Latin America. While the construction appears to be traditional, the structure is made of steel elements and the exterior walls are concrete blocks; allowing for a low-maintenance, enduring home, that allows flexibility for future needs. This project considers every sustainable characteristic in the book: envelope specifically designed for the location with continuous insulation all around the home, double-glaze windows and skylights, energy efficient appliances, 100% LED lights, above 50% water savings through low-flow water fixtures, capture and reuse of rainwater (storage up to 10,000 lt.), greywater treatment and reuse (treatment up to 64,750 lt per year), draught tolerant landscape and a smart programmable irrigation system with humidity sensors; HVAC system with continuous air renovation, MERV filters, and occupancy sensor for the exhaust in restrooms; all top with a south-facing roof filled with a solar thermal for domestic hot water and 69 photovoltaic panels that generate up to 4,500 KWh bimonthly.
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: Honolulu, HI, USA
This project invokes an exquisite sense of design, implementing a broad range of sustainable features that epitomize Hawaii’s natural beauty. Nestled in the heart of Honolulu’s Kahala district, this property has been handed down from generations and reimagined in a way that embraces the sustainable ways of Hawaiian culture. The existing home was fully deconstructed, salvaged and recycled to ensure there was the least amount of waste sent to the landfill and materials could be repurposed breathing life from old to new. The site was completely reinvented to manage runoff through various retention wells that wicked to future gardens and landscape beds. Maximizing the solar orientation, the new home was designed for a PV system large enough to achieve Net-Zero and generate battery backup to combat increasing grid failures.
In a state where little emphasis is put on sustainable building, Wai’alae Tropical Modern, integrates sensibility in design, geared towards efficiency and durability in a harsh marine climate utilizing materials and textures that complement the surrounding environment. A holistic approach to a long-time family property that was reinvented to capture the generational equity along the Wa’alae track where some of Hawaii’s most influential memories have been shared, a property transformed by design, to exist harmoniously, as if, on its own, in a vastly urban surrounding, having achieved a positive impact on the environment arising from its presence, all inspired by the tropical sanctity familiar to the land with a refreshing breath of modernism.
LEED Certification Level: Gold
Location: Shenzhen, China
QIANHAI KERRY CENTRE BAYVIEW A1 with a total gross floor area of 185,243 sf has achieved LEED CS v3 Gold requirement in collaboration with EMSI. QIANHAI KERRY CENTRE BAYVIEW A1 is part of campus project QIANHAI KERRY CENTRE.
QIANHAI KERRY CENTRE is a mixed-use complex integrates office buildings, apartments, advocating and practicing the concept of green and healthy buildings. The project is owned by Kerry Properties, which puts sustainability at the heart of everything they do.
LEED Certification Level: Gold
Location: Utica, NY, USA
The Starting Line Apartments project, located in the City of Utica, NY, is a 62,000 SF three-story, affordable housing project, providing long-term or permanent housing. The 60-unit project is named in honor of and serves as the Starting Line to the city’s world-renowned Boilermaker Road Race, which draws more than 19,000 competitors to the historic East Utica neighborhood each year. The exterior cladding blends fiber cement siding and brick with a landmark copper-color metal panel on the corner facing the race – complete with water hook-up for race use. A community room and green-roof terrace also face the starting line.
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: Bronx, NY, USA
MLK Plaza is a 12-story affordable housing building located at 869 E. 147th St in the Bronx and is one of the first buildings completed under the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) program. It provides 167-units of affordable housing available to individuals, 33 of which are reserved for formerly homeless households.
The building was designed with LEED Platinum standards, received ENERGY STAR Certification, and includes a 722 square foot community room and a green roof.
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: Torino, Italy
Palazzo Novecento can boast a double record: it is the first project in Europe to be registered (2016) and certified with the Platinum level (2020) according to the LEED v4 BD+C Multifamily Midrise protocol. Built between 1928 and 1930 by the entrepreneur Riccardo Gualino, designed by architects Pagano and Levi-Montalcini, Palazzo Novecento is considered a masterpiece of Italian Rationalism and is one of the symbolic buildings of the beginning of last century in the city of Turin. Overlooking the wonderful Parco del Valentino, the building, exclusively for residential use, has seven floors above ground and three underground floors, a gross area of about 7,000 sqm and consists of 47 apartments of different sizes. According to the architect Baietto the building encloses in itself a great legacy made of history and values. Every intervention in this building is related to the material of origin, to the consistency of the construction of 1930. Furthermore, in order to respond to the need of parking spaces, very rare in the urban context of Turin, a top-down intervention was made under the building, with the creation of three underground floors used as garages.
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: Memphis, TN, USA
The architect/owner wanted to design a progressive single-family home that represents the values of his family of three while opening up the design process firm-wide to support learning and experimentation in design, construction and operation. The home occupies a 6,000 square foot corner lot that was a greenfield site in a twenty-five-year-old new urbanism subdivision built on a small peninsula of land in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. Sited to frame a magnificent view of the Mississippi River and delta beyond, it relates in comparable scale and simplified massing to its traditional surroundings.
LEED Certification Level: Platinum
Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA
3303 Menlo is a V2008 LEED Platinum, new construction, single family detached home. This was a 6,000sqft home built with Insulated Concrete Form Foundations (ICF). Their foundation walls were insulated to R-24. Additionally, there was R-66 in the floors over the garage, and the above grade walls were constructed with Structurally Insulated Panels (SIPS) as well as very efficient windows (U values in the .18 range).