What's New:
American Institute of Architects Names
Legacy Center Among “Top Ten Green Projects”
Aldo Leopold defined conservation as a way of life in which land does well for its inhabitants, citizens do well by their land, and both end up better by reason of partnership. Sixty years after his death, the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center is helping to connect green building and conservation, carrying Leopold’s Land Ethic into the 21st century through its innovative design and construction.
"Through its demonstrable energy conservation and reduced heating, cooling and operating costs, this is an excellent example of how a building can achieve carbon neutrality," stated Marvin Malecha, American Institute of Architects juror. Carefully thinning the groves of pine that Leopold and his family planted in the 1930s and 40s was a third factor—sequestering carbon in the Legacy Center’s wood frame and stimulating formerly suppressed trees to grow faster. The harvest removed the weakest trees from the forest, and was intended to improve overall forest health.
In his seminal work, A Sand County Almanac, published posthumously in 1949, Leopold articulated his Land Ethic that would inform and inspire growing concern and care for the intertwined health of the land and people. “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise,” he summarized, providing a rule of thumb that has guided three generations of ecologists and a new generation of “green” innovators in green building, sustainable agriculture, and green industry. Leopold called on us to weave a Land Ethic into the fabric of our society in order to preserve the health and prosperity of communities. “That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology,” Leopold wrote, “but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.”
Learn more about the Legacy Center’s design
See all the AIA/COTE Top Ten Projects
Read about us in GreenSource Magazine's Case Study
Read the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article
View Top Ten Projects on MSNBC
(click here to visit the Legacy Center website)
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