New Publication: The Greenest Building

“The Bullitt Center was the type of design challenge architects dream about.” 

Brian Court, The Miller Hull Partnership

 

Mary Adam Thomas’ newly released book, THE GREENEST BUILDING: How the Bullitt Center Changes the Urban Landscape, documents the historic creation of the greenest Class-A commercial office building in the world.

The storyline traces the Bullitt Foundation’s quest for a 250-year structure with unprecedented energy efficiency, which would successfully overcome legal and regulatory hurdles, and help convince the world that solar energy was a viable resource anywhere. What followed was the recruitment of a design team willing to abandon all preconceptions in solving one of the most arduous design challenges of modern day architecture.

The Bullitt Center’s iconic rooftop solar array and “irresistible staircase” have become widely recognized thanks to media sources tuned into the significance of the building. THE GREENEST BUILDING journeys deeper into how, why, what, and who made this sustainable design marvel come to fruition.

Thomas skillfully details the firsthand “lessons learned” and insider stories gleaned from exhaustive research and candid interviews with the pursuers of the acclaimed Living Building Challenge.

Instructive and technically enlightening, the narrative goes beyond the Bullitt Center’s impressive nuts and bolts, cisterns and composting toilets, daylighting solutions and Energy Use Intensity (EUI). The chronicle unearths the insightful approaches, and sometimes brilliant problem-solving precedents born from the team’s uncompromising determination to rewrite what is possible.

While this book is filled with noteworthy innovations, handsome imagery, post-occupancy performance metrics and a critical account of the project’s financial success, it is the passionate voices tied to the hard-won triumph of the Bullitt Center that will inspire readers to reach much higher for their own challenges.

For more information, please visit https://living-future.org/books/greenest-building.

Publisher: Ecotone Publishing – An Imprint of the International Living Future Institute

 

ISBN: 9780982774960

List: $36.95 US
Pages: 184
Softcover, Full Color, Perfect bound, 9” x 9”