What not to miss at Greenbuild: SITES and sustainable landscape design

Heading to Greenbuild this year? To help you plan your days, we’ve listed some of the offerings focused on SITES®, a rating system for developing sustainable landscapes. SITES is being used by landscape architects, engineers, architects, developers and policy makers to align land development with innovative sustainable design.

EO and USGBC join forces to drive sustainable development

Energy infrastructure can have a significant environmental and social footprint and lead to landscape-level impacts, even while serving as a necessary development pathway. Voluntary standards and rating systems are recognized as some of the most effective tools to drive innovation in sustainable development. The proliferation of quality programs provides an opportunity for systems to work together, democratizing access and streamlining implementation and verification for even greater impact.

A deep sense of place at USGBC Kentucky's Sustainable SITES Workshop

Recently, USGBC Kentucky hosted an inaugural workshop to train 58 regional professionals on the SITES rating system, the most comprehensive program of developing sustainable landscapes. Architects, landscape designers, sustainability officers and policy makers from all over the state of Kentucky met to learn about regenerative design, the benefits derived from sustainable landscapes and the SITES rating system and certification process.

Pre-design site assessment in SITES and LEED: Why it really matters

A comprehensive site assessment is a critical step that you want to complete before the design process of any project. Without it, you are not taking full advantage of the site you’ve chosen for your project. Not to be confused with an Environmental Site Assessment (Phase I ESA), which mostly looks at risks associated with the site, a pre-design site assessment primarily looks at the assets of your site so that you can maximize the effectiveness of your design—programmatic and monetary.