Lloyd Center for the Environment and the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational-Technical High School Join Forces for a Unique, Living Building Challenge

The Lloyd Center is excited to announce its partnership with the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational-Technical High School in the construction of the Lloyd Center’s new Welcome Center, a building project with a unique challenge. The Welcome Center is designed to pursue the most stringent of green building standards, the “Living Building Challenge™  (LBC™)” certification of the International Living Future Institute (www.living-future.org). The ultimate goal is that when completed, this building will become one of only a handful of “LBC” buildings in the world.

Site work has already begun and students from many departments will soon begin to work at the Lloyd Center, assisting with carpentry, electrical, plumbing, metal fabrication and joining, visual design, and media technology. “Partnering with the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational-Technical High School is a wonderful opportunity to help educate the next generation of builders and designers about sustainability and environmental responsibility,” says Rachel Stronach, Executive Director at the Lloyd Center. “This is a unique opportunity for building community awareness, support, and education of our valuable and limited resources.”

“We’re both pleased and excited to take part in the Living Building Challenge,” says Rob Gomes, the Community Outreach Coordinator for the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational-Technical High School. “Community collaborations like this provide a hands-on opportunity for our students to exercise the skills they have learned and exposes them to new practices and techniques. There will be a host of students from many different career tech programs who will ride the wave of the future by working on this project. I’m confident the experience will open doors for them in the work place one day.”

Far more stringent than other “green building” certifications, the Living Building Challenge (LBC) is currently considered to be the most comprehensive standard of sustainable buildings in the world. LBC buildings must not only be net positive energy, water, and waste, they must also be built without using any materials from the “Red List” of products that contain chemicals or chemical groups determined to be harmful to creatures, humans and the environment.

The second major distinction of this certification is that unlike others, building performance is carefully monitored after completion. Projects receive the distinguished LBC Certification only after they have met the strict performance requirements for twelve consecutive months.

To learn more about this building project, call the Development Office at 508 990-0505 x12.