Omega Center for Sustainable Living: The First to Achieve Living Building Status?
The Omega Center for Sustainable Living aims at net-zero water use on an annual basis, one of the key requirements of the Living Building Challenge.Courtesy © 2009 Farshid Assassi.
The OCSL is a new 6,200-square-foot facility that serves not only as a laboratory classroom but also as a wastewater filtration facility. The heart of OCSL is a hydroponic biological wastewater treatment system, the Eco Machine, located inside the 4,500-square-foot-greenhouse. The Eco Machine consists of anoxic tanks, constructed wetlands, lagoons, sand filters and large dispersal fields that can process up to 52,000 gallons of wastewater a day. The treatment process is primarily gravity-fed and requires minimal energy to operate. Purified water output is used for irrigation and toilet flushing throughout the campus.
OCSL is aiming for both LEED Platinum certification and designation as one of the first projects to meet the Living Building Challenge (LBC). A restorative or regenerative building approach, LBC projects go “beyond LEED” and generate as much or more water and energy than they use, returning any excess back into the landscape and into the grid.
LBC has 16 prerequisites that a “living building” must meet, of which two deal with water: The first specifies that all occupant water must come from “captured precipitation or closed-loop water systems.” The second requires that all stormwater and building water discharge are managed onsite. LBC projects must demonstrate not only that they meet the rating system’s 16 design and construction criteria, but also that meet the criteria during actual operations for at least one year.
The OCSL is helping to pave the way for net-zero water and Living Buildings to enter the building stock. Let’s hope that the wisdom of what works and what doesn’t, along with the enlightened insights from these pioneering projects, will be incorporated into many more projects.
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