OK, then…please take the following in the spirit of constructive criticism and with the understanding that I’m only basing these comments on the photographs.

That said, I think that this highlights some of the problems with the prescriptive method of green building certification.

1. I can believe that the polyurethane insulation reduces the energy load by 70%, but there are many other ways that this performance could have been reached. Polyurethane foam is an industrial petrochemical that is highly toxic, containing elements such as isocyanates, benzene and toluene.

2. From the photos it appears that the landscape is not what it could have been. The building is surrounded by lawn and what appears to be impervious parking lot pavement.

3. From the photos on the architect’s website, the building work spaces do not seem to have very good levels of natural daylighting, a consequence of the square proportion of the building footprint.

4. The building seems to be located in an office park, not in a walkable neighborhood. It sets itself away from the street and its public face is generally cold and unwelcoming.

In short, I would not want to have to work there every day.

While it technically may have met the requirements of 64 LEED point categories, it should, in my opinion, not be held up as a paragon building model by which we should be designing our sustainable cities.

Maybe we should take this as lesson and try to move toward more performance-based rating systems that place an emphasis on holistically designed environments of aesthetic and biological health, and that reward the implementation of organic systems and vernacular methods of energy conservation.