Environmental Stewardship

Environmental stewardship is a guiding principle of our practice. Our team is committed to positively affecting the well-being of our communities and environments by helping our clients successfully adopt sustainable solutions and facility management practices. We understand that our work will contribute to the resilience of the built environment, natural environment, society, and economy. The decisions we make today will affect future generations.

We plan and design buildings to be economically and energy efficient by harnessing available resources and coupling them with technological advances. In some cases, the initial costs of environmentally friendly solutions and products may be higher but are often offset by long-term energy and maintenance savings. Our design team reviews all achievable options for zero carbon certification, zero energy certification, Green Building Institute’s Core certification, Living Building Challenge petal certification, and Living Building Challenge Full Certification. We work with our clients to establish feasible sustainability goals that fit within their vision and budget. Sustainable features that our team frequently uses include:

  • Rainwater harvesting

  • Graywater recycling

  • High-performance building envelope

  • Renewable energy

  • Solar hot water

  • Pervious Grasscrete

  • Operable windows

  • Landscaping using native plants

  • Bioclimatic architecture

  • Integrated design

  • Rain gardens for stormwater drainage

  • Building automation

  • Solar shading

  • Water efficient fixtures

  • Reflective roofs

  • High-efficiency equipment

  • Green roofs

LEED Certification

Studio Meng Strazzara has extensive experience with the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification process. We have several LEED Accredited Professionals on staff who develop achievable solutions to meet the sustainability goals of every project. Our LEED certification projects include:

LEED Platinum

  • Barto Hall at CWU

  • The Commons at Ballard

  • The Sylvie

LEED Gold

  • SMS Western Ave Office

LEED Silver

  • Snowy Owl Theater

  • SMS Elliott Ave Office

Additionally, every new school our team has completed since 2009 has met the Washington Sustainable Schools Protocol (WSSP), which has similar requirements as LEED Silver certification. To date, this includes 15+ PreK-12 facilities. We have also completed commercial projects using sustainable ratings systems such as Energy Star, Green Globes, Sustainable Sites Initiative, STARS, GreenMark, and more.