The Haas Lilienthal House, owned by San Francisco Architectural Heritage, is the only painted lady in San Francisco opened as a house museum. Christopher Davis’ blog “If Betty White Were A Green Building…” compares this grand landmark to the great lady of comedy.

This week I find myself back home in Washington, DC for the AIA Convention. And I’m happy to report that more and more, sessions on sustainable preservation can be found.  The United Nations team will be presenting a panel on their $2 billion green rehabilitation, and I will be moderating a session entitled “From House Museums to the Empire State Building: Greening What’s Already Here with LEED EB.”  Unfortunately both the UN session and ours are scheduled at the same time, Friday at 2:00, but the AIA assured us that both panels can be found on their “virtual conference” website.

Our session will examine how LEED EB: Operations & Maintenance might be one of the best tools available (certainly in the LEED family of products) for integrating historic preservation and green building practices.  We’ll be discussing the thinking behind using LEED EB to “rethink” a classic Victorian house museum in San Francisco and the recent LEED Gold certification of the iconic Empire State Building.

My colleague and co-panelist, Christopher Davis, Team Lead for Existing Buildings at GBCI, posted a terrific blog yesterday entitled “If Betty White Were A Green Building…”, as a way to get people thinking about whether the “greenest building is the one that’s already built”.  Read it and enjoy!! And hope to see you Friday at Room 145A in the DC Convention Center!

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