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.