The 76 Corlett Drive office development in Johannesburg is targeting an LBC Petal certification. Render credit: Daffonchio & Associates Architects

Believing in a Better World for All

The South African built environment faces numerous challenges and risks. These include cities that are still riddled with the vestiges of apartheid spatial planning; projects currently underway that inadvertently reinforce spatial injustice; scarcity and mismanagement of valuable resources such as water; cities running out of landfill space due to waste management issues; and a lack of climate resilience planning to mitigate the effects of extreme weather impacts such as drought and flooding.

This is a future that many professionals cannot accept and are actively seeking to change. The Collaborative believes in the Living Building Challenge philosophy and comprehensive approach because it holistically addresses the multiple challenges faced by cities.

As a symbol of this commitment and belief in the arrival of positive change, the Collaborative has adopted the yellow-billed hornbill as its guiding animal. A symbol of faith, belief and optimism due to his constant skyward glance, this bird is known as ‘umKholwane’ in Zulu, or ‘Little Believer’.

The Living Future Collaborative SA has adopted the yellow-billed hornbill, ‘umKholwane’, as its guiding animal as a symbol of faith, belief and optimism.

What is the Living Building Challenge?

The Living Building Challenge is a philosophy, an advocacy tool and a certification tool for projects that aim to create Living Buildings. The LBC is an initiative of the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), whose mission is “to lead the transformation toward a civilization that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative”; and which is “premised on the belief that providing a compelling vision for the future is a fundamental requirement for reconciling humanity’s relationship with the natural world.”

The Living Building Challenge certifies buildings that are truly regenerative and contribute positively towards the environment.

The ILFI has an Ambassador Network that spans the globe, on every continent and in every time zone – with 709 Ambassadors in 43 countries, and 89 Collaboratives in 41 countries. Marloes Reinink has been an ambassador for the ILFI since 2015 and, as part of her role, has presented the “Introduction to the Living Building Challenge 3.1” to over 600 people in South Africa. She was joined by Thulani Kuzwayo in 2017 and together they organised and facilitated a Living Future Collaborative for South Africa.

Living Building Challenge buildings can be built in any climate zone in any part of the world.

The core underlying principle of the Living Building Challenge is that buildings should mimic nature and natural systems. Living Buildings are buildings that meet the 20 stringent imperatives of the LBC standard, including being net zero energy, net zero water, using materials that are toxin free, and being beautiful and an inspiration to the surrounding community. The buildings are regenerative, contributing positively to the environment.

The Bullitt Center in Seattle was the very first FULL Living Building Challenge certified commercial building.

As of June 2019, almost 600 projects around the world were registered to pursue certification under LBC and Zero Energy (ZE). The certification is verified after the building has been in operation for a minimum of twelve months and is able to demonstrate compliance based on actual performance.

In South Africa there are already projects that are actively seeking this certification – two residential projects in Oranjezicht, Cape Town; the 76 Corlett Drive office development in Johannesburg (targeting an LBC Petal certification); the Green School in Paarl which is currently under construction and targeting a full LBC certification; and Solid Green’s new office in Parkhurst, which is pursuing the Core certification.

The Living Building Challenge is a philosophy, an advocacy tool and a certification tool for projects that aim to create regenerative buildings.

Inaugural Events

On 20 and 21 November 2019, the Living Future Collaborative South Africa hosted two presentations in Johannesburg and Pretoria respectively, as part of the ‘24 Hours of Reality: Truth in Action’ daylong worldwide conversation about the climate crisis and how to solve it.

The events were held at Boogertman + Partners head office in Bryanston, and Aurecon Centre in Lynnwood, and one tree was planted for every person who attended thanks to One Tree Planted. Guest speakers were Adrie Fourie on ‘Setting the Scene – Climate Reality’, Marloes Reinink on ‘Living Buildings for a Living Future’ and Denise Mall on ‘Taking Action – from Sustainable to Regenerative’. These events, which were both extremely well-attended, set the scene for the public launch of the Collaborative.

Vision and Mission

At a meeting of like-minded professionals in the Magaliesberg just outside Johannesburg on 18 January 2020, the Living Future Collaborative formalised its ‘raison d’être’ and set itself an ambitious set of tasks.

With the vision of bringing change beyond individual buildings, integrating urban systems and communities with nature, and creating a coherent future for South Africa’s built environment, the Collaborative aims to organise quarterly events centred around showcasing examples, workshopping what it means to go Net Zero Water/Energy, introducing the concepts of sustainability at schools, and advocating to bring transformation in policy.

The mission is:

• To advocate for a regenerative future by providing a platform for thought leadership in the area of regenerative design principles and application;
• To transform the building value and supply chain for a living future;
• To promote projects that move beyond sustainability and demonstrate strength in ecological restoration, social justice and cultural richness.

The Collaborative is currently active in Johannesburg and Cape Town, and relies on the collaboration of people that volunteer their time and energy to implement its goals. For more information, please reach out to lbc.collaborative.rsa@gmail.com.

Solid Green’s new office in Parkhurst, Johannesburg, is targeting the LBC Core certification. Render credit: Activate Architecture.

Additional resource:
Living Building Challenge 4.0 Standard

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Our Masters group of 120 individuals was diverse and included many people from developing countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, the Philippines, Indonesia, Iran, India, Peru, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey. I also connected with American, Canadian, Australian and Chinese friends.

UMD Party Evening

The shift from Uber commuting in Johannesburg to cycling and public transportation took a while to get used to. Luckily the Dutch have some cool alternatives for bicycle hire and maintenance such as Swapfiets where you can choose the bike you like at a low monthly subscription. So, pretty soon, I had my own bicycle and I travelled around the city carbon-free and at low cost. Cycling in the Netherlands is easy as roads are pretty flat and the dense urban environments make it easy to get from point A to point B. The drawback, however, is the weather. With the South African climate, it would be bliss (especially for a Greenie like me)!

Kraligen Lake

Due to the colder weather, the traditional Dutch food is mostly starchy in nature. The food includes kroketten (beef or vegetable croquettes), bitterballen, sandwiches, burgers and frietes (fries). The Dutch are also known for their sweet stuff including stroopwafels, speculaas (biscuits), sandwich spreads and chocolate sprinkles. By comparison, South Africa has a wealth of well-priced meat, wines and tasty spices.

Erasmus Bridge, Rotterdam

The Masters course itself comprised 3-month course work and 3-month specialization periods. The course-work period included subjects such as Urban Theory; Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs); and Urban Governance and Finance – at which point I had to deduce whether a Waste-to-Energy plant in the City of Cape Town would be a feasible investment. Unfortunately, no further time was dedicated to the broader socio-economic and health impacts of this feasibility study.

Ghent Study Daytrip

The climate specialization period included a broad range of adaptive and mitigative strategies for urban resilience and vulnerability planning. The interesting thing was discovering just how well-developed South Africa is in terms of sustainable building construction projects and expertise. In a 6-month period, I learned that South Africans and, in particular, the experts in the local green building industry, are very knowledgeable and professional.

With the current 2030 climate action planning goals, it is now absolutely critical for us to work on climate adaptation in South Africa, which is experiencing ever-increasing temperatures and a continued reliance on coal as its primary fuel-source. My thesis, titled ‘Embodied Energy aspects related to Low Carbon Construction in South African Policy Instruments’, took a critical look at the C40 Net Zero Construction Program – examining whether the industry is geared towards achieving the operational carbon reductions goal by 2030, and embodied energy carbon reductions during construction goal by 2050.

Rotterdam River

The project case study that I cited, 4 Ruby Road, is the first project in South Africa pursuing the Living Building Challenge (LBC) rating, which requires a material embodied carbon calculation, giving me the opportunity to conduct my very first embodied carbon calculation.

After thesis hand-in and graduation on 20 September, the year came to a bitter-sweet end and everyone returned back to their home countries. My year connecting with industry experts, both in the Netherlands and South Africa, brought me to a point where I realized that the green construction industry globally, although diverse, is not big enough and knowledge transfer is critical to help us all achieve carbon neutrality. Now back in South Africa, I look forward to applying my knowledge to getting some more carbon neutral construction projects off the ground.

UMD Climate Specilization Graduation

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The Bullitt center

I have been vegetarian for more than twenty years and fully vegan for the last two years. I have made this choice on principle as I do not want any animal to suffer or die just so that I can eat dairy or a piece of meat. Also, due to not eating or buying any animal products, my footprint on this earth is considerably lower (about 1/3) than that of a meat eater. And, provided you eat a balanced wholefood diet and stay away from unhealthy processed vegan fast food, a vegan or plant-based diet is generally much better for your health.

Another thing that I am quite obsessed with is reducing the amount of plastic that enters our lives and ends up on landfills. At home, we recycle (although most plastic in RSA is not even recyclable), but also try to actively reduce the amount of plastic that we purchase. I try to avoid supermarket chains as much as possible, as everything is wrapped in plastic at least once, if not twice. So, our weekly shopping takes place at Carreira Fruit and Vegetables Centre in Randburg. Not everything is plastic-free, but a lot of vegetables and fruits can be bought with considerably less plastic packaging.

Our USA travel plan included a flight from Johannesburg to New York where we stayed for a couple days with friends before flying to the West Coast; then a road trip from Phoenix (Arizona) via Las Vegas to San Francisco, Portland and, finally, Seattle. While booking my flights – a really good deal via Nairobi with Kenya Airways – I obviously ticked the box for vegan meals and did not give the matter another thought until check-in time. But, for some reason, vegan meals had only been booked on the way back to Johannesburg, not on the way to NYC. Aaarrrggghhh!! Luckily, I had bought ready-made vegan meals at one of the supermarkets that I usually try to avoid.

Avoiding plastic on the flight was a difficult experience. For every beverage, you are supplied with yet another plastic cup. I tried to re-use the one cup that I accepted as much as possible, every time I needed a refill of water – this did raise some eyebrows! If you accept a cup for every drink on a long-haul flight, you can easily end up with 8 cups. Plus, there is so much plastic on the food tray that I really had to admire Bea Johnson, author of ‘Zero Waste Home’. If you have not yet read this highly informative and inspiring book, please do so!

New York City is easy for vegan and plastic-free obsessed people like me…if you do not opt for too many takeaways. When we do buy takeaways, we have developed the habit of bringing our own bag and asking servers NOT to add napkins and cutlery. This saves a lot of unnecessary single-use plastic.

After NYC, we fly to Phoenix, where we meet the architects, A-I-R Inc, who are working on our Living Building Challenge projects in Cape Town. And then we move on to the Grand Canyon. We decide against stopping at Trader Joe’s, which turns out to be a big mistake. Trader Joe’s is a great, affordable supermarket where you can get everything you need including a lot of vegan foods. So, while we are staying in a little town close to the Grand Canyon, all I can eat is potato-based stuff! No fresh vegetables to be found within a 100-mile radius – seriously! Steakhouses, on the other hand, are plentiful, so I eat potato wedges, potato fries and potato hash browns. Despite this, the Grand Canyon is awe-inspiring and so worthwhile, even on a potato diet.

Some interesting things that I have noted in the USA:

• There is no littering. Every street is clean. This might be partly due to the 1000 USD (ZAR 14000!!!) littering fine if you get caught!
• San Francisco is a very vegan-friendly city and has a wide range of options to eat or takeaway. Even on the road trip along the West Coast towards Portland, most of the supermarkets, even in the tiniest towns, have vegan options available.
• Plastic is abundantly available, and everything is covered in plastic. I was obliged to relax my obsession in order to preserve my sanity.
• Very few fast food chains have vegan options. I believe that Burger King has introduced the ‘Impossible Whopper’ with the Impossible Burger (vegan meat alternative) but, sadly, this has not yet reached the cities we visited. In this respect, Steers’ vegan burger is a front runner. In NYC, we had some Beyond Sushi which is a plant-based sushi brand (LOVED IT!).
• America has a very consumer-oriented lifestyle, which is very heavy on the environment. It was especially clear in Las Vegas, which has a “consume as much as you can” attitude.

As we continue through Crescent City (Redwood Forest area) on our way towards Portland via Crater Lake, I am overwhelmed by the amazing natural beauty – which might even be able to match some parts of South Africa!

For more on the Living Future Unconference 2019, stay tuned…. to be continued…!

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The Living Building Challenge Standard is possibly the most rigorous green building design framework in the world.

When these principles are applied to a building, the building is required to operate perfectly within the climate where it is located; to harvest sufficient rainwater to provide for the needs of its occupants; and to collect sufficient energy from solar panels and other renewable energy systems to provide the building with all its energy needs. It is also required to provide a healthy indoor environment by using no harmful chemicals in the manufacture of the building materials and furniture, while being beautiful and acting as an inspiration to others.

The Hitchcock Centre for the Environment in Massachusetts is a small 850sqm building functioning as an environmental education centre with a beautiful wooden structure, exposed services and transparent rainwater tanks so children can see the rainwater tank filling up during a storm.

The R.W. Kern Center on the Hampshire College campus in Massachusetts is a 2-storey, 1500sqm building that generates 105% of its energy on site and reduces water consumption by 95%.

The Rocky Mountain Institute Innovation Center in Basalt, Colorado, holds LEED Platinum, International Living Futures Institute Zero Energy, PHIUS+ Source Net Zero, Architecture 2030 Challenge, and International Living Futures Institute Petal Certifications.

Is LBC a reality for South Africa?

As a seasoned green building practitioner, Marloes Reinink of Solid Green Consulting believes that the LBC can, and should, be implemented in local projects. She says, “We are so excited to be working on two residential projects in Cape Town that are registered to be Full Living Buildings under the Challenge.”

This means that the projects are aiming to achieve:

• Net Positive Energy: 105% of all energy used must be generated on site;
• Net Zero Water: water consumption cannot be more than what is harvested from rain, sourced onsite, and recycled from grey/black sources;
• The buildings must be completely pollutant free: all materials will comply with a red list of 23 chemicals that cannot be used;
• Net Zero Waste: almost all waste generated during construction and operations will have to be recycled;
• Beauty & Inspiration: the buildings are being designed to be an inspiration and showcase truly regenerative architecture in South Africa.

Designed by US-based architectural firm, A-I-R Inc, construction on the residential developments is planned to start in 2019, with Living Building certification targeted for 2021.

While the designs are still in their early stages, Darren Petrucci of A-I-R Inc, explains that the brief called for densification of two sites, each accommodating a two-family duplex in place of a single-family house. “Our strategy is to locate the new structure in such a way that both homes can benefit from the solar orientation and view, and have equal access to the landscape. The intention is for the homes to share infrastructure such as the water collection system and an elevator for universal access; and each dwelling has the potential to house at least 100 solar panels.

The architectural form and roof profiles are derived from the maximum benefits that can be obtained through correct solar orientation and light shading, and to optimize the roof areas for rainwater collection. As the buildings are tall and cascade up the mountain, we are manipulating natural air flow to cool the houses – stairwells become vertical vents to passively pull air up to the upper floors via thermal suction. Working with Solid Green allows us to test decisions as we move through the design process to optimise the liveability and performance of the buildings.

A series of gardens is being designed to allow waste water from the buildings to be purified using the landscape as a closed-loop filtration system that concludes in an aquifer from which potable water is sourced. Additional potable water is sourced from a borehole. Rainwater collected from the roofs will be used for toilet flushing and the minimal irrigation required. Composting toilets and a composting system are being incorporated to minimize the sewage and deal with the remaining black water treatment.

Private client, Francesco Svelto, comments:

I have been in the building industry my entire life as a civil engineer and builder. Ecological architecture is a new challenge for me, and this process has been an extremely valuable experience. Our intention is for the buildings to operate as independently as possible, and the measures taken to meet Living Building Challenge criteria all support that vision.

Anthony Svelto, the client’s son and architect with A-I-R Inc, adds

We have taken a futureproofing approach in response to the projects’ context and the water crisis in Cape Town. It makes absolute sense to design resilient buildings both in terms of water and energy consumption. The decisions and investments that we make now will benefit both the liveability and performance of the buildings in decades to come.

Sharing the Message

In 2016, Reinink signed up to become South Africa’s first ambassador for the Living Building Challenge. She says:

The role of an ambassador is to the spread the word about the Challenge in your country. This work keeps me motivated and realistic that there is still a long way to go in terms of greening the built environment.

In the last two years, I have presented at a number of architectural firms, at the Designer, Architect, Specifier (DAS) Conference, and through GreenED, an online learning platform for built environment professionals. It is really motivating to experience the positive feedback from attendees. We all want to make a difference and this standard pushes the boundaries towards being truly restorative.

Biophilic design, an emerging design discipline that connects people and nature, is an important part of the Living Building Challenge.

To assist with spreading the message and sharing knowledge around the restorative principles of the Living Building Challenge, Reinink has started a Collaborative in South Africa. The intention is also to identify regulatory barriers to implementing a Living Building Challenge project, and to lobby Government to bring about policy change. As green design becomes the new business-as-usual, this move effectively takes sustainability in the built environment to the next level.

Solid Green’s office, which holds both a 6-Star Green Star SA Interiors v1 As-built rating and a LEED Platinum v3 Interiors rating, takes waste management seriously with separating and recycling bins for paper, cardboard, metal, glass, plastic, e-waste and general waste.

For more information, please visit www.living-future.org, or email lbc.collaborative.rsa@gmail.com or marloes@solidgreen.co.za.

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