GOOD Magazine, June 2008

Renzo Piano's New York Times building in midtown Manhattan is a glass-skinned tribute to one of the oldest and most prestigious newspapers in the world. It's also a thousand-foot-tall middle finger to the environmentally-friendly design establishment. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—you probably know it as LEED—sets the official standard for sustainable architecture. For most of today's high-profile projects, like the new Bank of America skyscraper going up a few blocks away from the Times building, certification is de rigueur. But Piano and the Times didn't bother, and they're not alone. More and more architects have realized that the old standby for certification, with its checklist approach to what's good for the environment and what's not, rewards rule-following and ignores the kind of big thinking that makes architecture worth caring about. Not only that, many architects have an alternative—one that scraps LEED altogether in favor of a holistic approach to sustainable design.

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