Jason F. McLennan, founder and creator of the Living Building Challenge and CEO of the International Living Future Institute, has been named a Fellow by Ashoka: Innovators for the Public.
This recognition is awarded to individuals whose innovative solutions to social problems have the potential to change patterns across society. Past Fellows include environmental justice leader, Van Jones, Teach for America founder, Wendy Kopp, and Rocky Mountain Institute Co-Founder, Amory Lovins.
McLennan was recognized for his work on the Living Building Challenge, the world’s most rigorous building performance standard. The Challenge, which McLennan developed while a principal at BNIM Architects, calls for the creation of building projects at all scales that operate as cleanly, beautifully and efficiently as nature's architecture, meeting a series of rigorous performance requirements (including net zero energy, waste and water) over a minimum of 12 months of continuous occupancy.
Related Stories
| Apr 5, 2011
Zaha Hadid’s civic center design divides California city
Architect Zaha Hadid is in high demand these days, designing projects in Hong Kong, Milan, and Seoul, not to mention the London Aquatics Center, the swimming arena for the 2012 Olympics. But one of the firm’s smaller clients, the city of Elk Grove, Calif., recently conjured far different kinds of aquatic life when members of the City Council and the public chose words like “squid,” “octopus,” and “starfish” to describe the latest renderings for a proposed civic center.
| Apr 5, 2011
Are architects falling behind on BIM?
A study by the National Building Specification arm of RIBA Enterprises showed that 43% of architects and others in the industry had still not heard of BIM, let alone started using it. It also found that of the 13% of respondents who were using BIM only a third thought they would be using it for most of their projects in a year’s time.
| Apr 5, 2011
Top 10 Buildings: Women in Architecture
Making selections of top buildings this week led to a surprising discovery about the representation of women in architecture, writes Tom Mallory, COO and co-founder, OpenBuildings.com. He discovered that finding female-created architecture, when excluding husband/wife teams, is extremely difficult and often the only work he came across was akin to interior design.
| Apr 5, 2011
What do Chengdu, Lagos, and Chicago have in common?
They’re all “world middleweight cities” that are likely to become regional megacities (10 million people) by 2025—along with Dongguan, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, and Wuhan (China); Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo); Jakarta (Indonesia); Lahore (Pakistan); and Chennai (India), according to a new report from McKinsey Global Institute: “Urban World: Mapping the economic power of cities”.
