2017 Architect 50: Top 50 Firms in Sustainability

For the second year in a row, Portland, Ore.-based ZGF Architects has landed the top spot in sustainability on the Architect 50. The firm embraced sustainability as a key element of its practice long before LEED became the industry standard. “It’s part of our design process,” says managing partner Ted Hyman, FAIA, “not something that gets added after the fact.”

Ninety percent of ZGF’s projects that were in design during 2016 used energy simulation modeling. The result is a portfolio that combines high performance with design excellence. The LEED Platinum (and net-zero) J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, Calif., generates electricity via two rooftop photovoltaic arrays and uses chilled-beam technology for heating and cooling. For a new U.S. embassy in Paramaribo, Suriname, ZGF responded to the local climate conditions by including green roofs and rain gardens to capture and treat rainwater on site.

Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City (see more photos here)

In Japan, ZGF is collaborating on the design of Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City, which is now the largest LEED Neighborhood Development Plan Platinum–certified smart city in the world. The project, less than an hour from Tokyo by train, is an outgrowth of the firm’s urban planning efforts, particularly its design of sustainable “EcoDistricts.”

For the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Innovation Center in Basalt, Colo., ZGF designed a two-story office building without conventional heating or cooling. The structure is petal certified under the International Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge, and ZGF has closely monitored the project’s energy performance since it was completed in late 2015. “We’re always looking at how we can innovate,” Hyman says, “in order to make greater and greater energy reductions in the projects we’re working on, and not just saying, ‘OK, we’ve got it now.’ Net-zero is getting us moving in the right direction, but we’ve got a long way to go beyond that.”

Top 50 Firms in Sustainability