LEED Has Theirs, I Have Mine by Saxon Sigerson, AIA

I admit to being a reductionist. Along with

all of humankind and my buddy David
Letterman, with his top ten list, I like to
simplify the world around me. A curious
contradiction is that, while people like it
basic, beauracracies tend to make things
complicated. Such is the case with our
California Building Code and the USGBC
and their LEED rating system. I actually
believe that the cosmos is much more
complicated than most of our brains can
cope with so there is justification for a
certain amount of complexity when you are
trying to regulate and quantify buildings.
The trouble is that organizations are just like
organisms and the prime directive is always
self perpetuation. Hence we have new,
more complicating regulations as time
marches on. The back lash is sassy folks
like me who come up with rating systems
that fit on one sheet of a 4” x 8” notepad.
This exercise took place up around 30,000
feet with the ubiquitous Arturo Levenfeld as
my seatmate on the return flight from our
architectural weekend in Boston. We had
just seen a bunch of buildings and our little
grey cells were working hard to try and sort
them out. The result of trying to “reduce” The Nine Point Building Rating System
the buildings into mentally manageable
pieces are the rating systems you see at
right. We began with our old (very old)
buddy Marcus Vitruvius Pollio who, in 20
BCE, while sitting in a street side Roman
eatery, having a yummy hot drink of some
sort, (no espresso yet; can you imagine
Rome with out it?) penned the phrase
Firmitas, Utilitas & Venustas. This is also
known as Commodity, Firmness & Delight.
I paraphrase his words to mean Function,
Strength and “Oh Wow!” A good beginning
for sure, but, in the spirit of standing on the
shoulders of those who have gone before,
we wanted to break it down into a few more
categories. I took the liberty once the list of Sample Building Scores Using The
nine had been jotted down to go one step Nine Point Building Rating System
further and prioritize the items in the revised
list you see at right. eschews the brick vernacular of its
neighbors but embraces ground floor retail
A good architect realizes that without cities
and respects the street wall as an ordering
we are nothing, so I put urban context at the
principal. I would give this building about a
top of my list and say, with my New
8.5 on context, which some of you might
Urbanist buddies, that the first responsibility
argue with, due to all that glass seeming to
of a building is in shaping the public realm.
thumb its nose at the context. I say the
This is more than putting brick on the
form and the aliveness of the building are
outside of your building if you are working
far more important than the two inch thick
on a street with zero setback buildings right
veneer finish . I also believe there is plenty
next to Harvard University such as the one I
of room for brick on twenty-first century
have shown on the following page. It
buildings and if the architect had found a
means understanding the value of creating
The Revised Nine Point Building way to make brick work elegantly with his
a quality experience for those who walk
language, I might be scoring this a 9.7.
down that street. The building I have shown Rating System

Mixed Use Building Near Harvard , Architect Unknown
Denver Art Museum Model By Daniel Libeskind
Denver Art Museum Pedestrian Experience
Now look at the urban model of Daniel
Libeskind’s Denver Art Museum. Ouch! I
give this building a three on urban context.
Yes, we need honorific buildings in the city
to stand out and distinguish themselves.
But does it have to mean disrespecting the
form and order-making quality of the city?
Look at the street level photo and tell me
that is a pleasant experience for
pedestrians. It feels like there should be a
couple of astronauts peering out the
window, getting ready to hook up their air
hoses to the mother ship. I once heard
someone say that Modern Architecture was
an attack on the city. This project
epitomizes that statement to me.
With all that said on category one of the
rating system, either of these buildings
could go on to score quite well or very
poorly in other categories. You might be
wondering where all this rating system will
ultimately take us. For me it is a process
and a tool for deeper discussion and
analysis of what we value in buildings. Until
Mr. Obama reads this article, having a
building that scores 86 out of 90 will not get
you any tax breaks.
Next up is the spiritual, ethereal category.
This is the one we all went to school for
right? To create a structure, a place for
people, that adds up to more than the sum
of its parts. It is more than a shelter, an
engine for business, or something to sell for
profit. This chapel at MIT by Saarinen says
it just right on this category. Score; 9.8.
For sure the intangible qualities that make a
space feel alive don’t have to be religious .
MIT Chapel By Eero Saarinen
 Front Yard On Beacon Hill In Boston
Look at the garden pictured above and
please agree with me that this gets a high
score in this category. How about the
lovely space below that makes such a
wonderful use of light filtering through a
finely textured window? This space is
more than the architecture. It is created by
the person who lives there taking it from
the architect and making it their own. Not
the sort of photo you would see in Archi-
tectural Record.
A Room From A Pattern Language
Category three, beauty, can be controver-
sial and quite personal. I say this quality is
truly more objective and not so much in
the eye of the beholder. We mostly agree
on the ugly stuff such as the fueling station
at right. Yes, there is a subjective aspect
to this category but when you get down to
it, there is a lot of common agreement and
the arguing takes place in shades of grey.
The beauty is not so obvious in the image,
upper right, of Aalto’s Baker House Dorm
entry, but I think it gets a 7.5 for beauty.
Saarinen’s MIT Chapel scores an easy 10.
You see; lots of room for robust arguing
here. Also, we don’t say beautiful too
much. It does not feel like a word us cool
architects use. We do say cool, interest-
ing, awesome and tough. All words that
are a bit sloppy in my opinion.
Aalto’s Baker House Dorm At MIT
MIT Chapel By Saarinen
Sustainability comes next at number four.
Today this is a hugely relevant subject and
the proper place to give the USGBC its
rightful praise. Buildings and the process
of creating them is massively complex and
I totally support the concept and most of
the practice of the LEED rating system.
Assigning a 1-10 number is a pathetic
simplification of what really goes into de-
termining sustainability. However I do rail
a bit against building tours, like the one I
just took of the new Cal STRS building,
being reduced to technical, gold, platinum
and percent reductions this and that dis-
cussions of a building. That is the point of
this rating exercise; to take a balanced
view of architecture.
I am going to leave functionality, timeless-
ness, timeliness and innovation for another
day and go to technical execution. My first
example is the Jewet Art Center at
Wellesley College by Paul Rudolph. I
absolutely love the richness and compli-
cated construction system of the façade.
For having been built in 1958, I think the
combination of delicately fluted concrete
A Building We All Agree Is Ugly
Jewet Art Center At Wellesley College
By Paul Rudolph
Stata Center At MIT By Gehry
columns, brickwork infill and steel shade
screen is pulled off very successfully.
Score; 9.7. Gehry’s Stata Center is a
mixed bag. The drawing and construction
effort to achieve this collage of building
elements must have been huge. They
succeeded if it only leaks a bit (which ap-
parently the lawsuit says it does). Score;
7.2
Arturo and I continued on after the first 9
categories were listed. There was plenty
of fist pounding on the airplane’s tray ta-
bles and more than a few “You can’t be
serious?” exclamations with the occasional
“Ok, I agree with you this time.” concur-
rences as Arturo and I went through scor-
ing some of the buildings we had visited
(see score sheet on page one). There is
one little problem I am left with. We did
not come up with a tenth category. My
charge to readers this month is to chime in
with your revisions to the rating system
and a suggestion for the tenth category. Is
it a balanced list? How would you dare to
change it? Send me your suggestions to
the email below. But be warned, I am very
righteous about the thinking (and arguing )
I do at 30,000 feet.
Saxon Sigerson is a sole practitioner in
Fair Oaks, California. He can be reached
at saxon@sigersonarchitects.com