Quantifiable performance demonstrates commitment and transparency in design.

At Local Practice we recognize that an important aspect of sustainability is achieving recognition for benchmarked goals. Environmental rating systems have become an industry-wide architectural design standard for establishing social and ecological benchmarks, and are proving to be reliable tools for the assessment of a built project’s on-going performance.  Of all the various options, four have emerged as having the most relevance in the Cascadia Region and Western Canada: LEED, the Living Building Challenge, Envision and the Passive House rating system. Our team has completed over 25 projects utilizing these rating systems and many more currently on the boards. We are also aware of and are familiar with other systems, such as product life cycle analysis, Cradle2Cradle product certification, and the Sustainable Sites certification.

As co-founders of the Regenerative Design Lab at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, principals Matthew Woodruff and Michel Labrie are establishing themselves as industry leaders in this emerging field. As a framework-based approach Regenerative Design and Development has been developed to support balanced decision making and support project and community evolution towards a truly sustainable state. Through intensive industry collaborations Local Practice has developed the in-house capacity to apply this discipline to all of the firm’s projects.