This past April marked the 6th Annual Award Competition hosted by the Massachusetts Chapter of the US Green Building Council (USGBC MA).
The awards were announced at USGBC MA's annual Earth Day event, which was located at Two International Place in downtown. This year a new award was introduced - the Massachusetts Green Building of the Year Award. This award is given to the project that most closely exemplifies the chapter's passion for sustainability in the area of design, construction and operations. It acknowledges the building that best lives up to its green design and shows outstanding water and energy performance.
There were two winners for the long-standing Innovation in Green Design Award. This award recognizes projects that are innovative, replicable, and have significant impacts in Mass.
This year's submissions ranged from a LEED Platinum corporate office center to a sustainable landscape design project at a watch factory. The submissions included a large number of entries in the new Green Building of the Year category. The percent of energy savings on these projects ranged from 18% to 70%, and the project size ranged from 15,000 s/f to 2 million s/f.
Jurors for the 2013 awards were: Mark Webster, a project manager at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger; Susan Buchanan, a project director at VFA; and Holly Samuelson, a full-time professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. Jessica Halvorson was the alternate, non-voting, juror. Halvorson directs Bank of America's real estate sustainability efforts. The jury brought considerable knowledge and experience from different industries to the awards process.
The Mass. Chapter of the USGBC's mission is to promote the design, construction, and operation of sustainable buildings and communities in Massachusetts through education, mutual support, and advocacy, enabling an environmentally and socially responsible, healthy and prosperous environment that improves the quality of life. To learn more about the Mass. Chapter of USGBC, go to their website: www.usgbcma.org.
On the following pages are descriptions of the design competition winners and entrants. All of the project entrants are excellent examples of the recent green building achievements in Mass.