Science and Engineering Complex, Harvard University, Boston, MA

Living Building Challenge (LBC) Materials Petal certified in April of 2021.

Integrated Eco Strategy researched more than 5,600 building materials for this 544,000 square foot building.

IES began working with Harvard in 2016 to help achieve Living Building Challenge (LBC) Materials Petal certification for the university’s Science and Engineering Complex (SEC), the school’s most significant new building in a generation and the largest LBC project ever built. This required, in part, contacting each manufacturer of every one of thousands of products needed for the massive building, and requesting transparent disclosure of all ingredients, place of manufacture and other details depending upon product type.

IES assembled a dedicated team of healthy building materials researchers—an industry first—and began creating Red2Green (R2G), a comprehensive software platform to streamline research and organize documentation. The evolving database helped the team gather and systematically record all SEC project research (more than 10,000 hours work over nearly four years), report findings in real time and be LBC audit ready at completion.

TEAM

LBC Consultants – Integrated Eco Strategy

Architect – Behnisch Architekten

General Contractor – Turner Construction