Questions, Queries, and Cogitations: Sustainable Buildings, Inside and Out

By Anne Youngdahl

New week, new name. I am proud to introduce Sustainable Buildings: Pauley Pavilion.

This week, in spite of our new identifier, a consideration that came up time and time again was actually external to the building: how does one define building boundaries for a structure like Pauley Pavilion? Many like in the picture here (shout-out to a gorgeous Los Angeles sunset moment on campus), a smattering of trees and shrubs surrounds Pauley Pavilion. LEED standards apply to some exterior elements of the building as well, such as water used for landscaping. However, with a building like Pauley that is integrated into the larger campus, there is an extra layer of information to dig through in our efforts to understand what conditions and practices pertain to Pauley alone. This challenge is reinforced by questions about which of UCLA’s sustainability practices are being applied to Pauley’s operations and maintenance.

Exploring these questions has been an outcome of this week’s product: a distillation of our credit-by-credit breakdown of the LEED v4 standards into a more succinct list of materials and documentation we need in order to demonstrate Pauley’s eligibility for certain credits. From this point, we are looking forward to reviewing these materials as an early step in shaping our recommendations for Pauley Pavilion’s operations and maintenance. Future goals still on the horizon include conducting an energy audit and discussing best practices with other groups working toward LEED certifications at UCLA. Stay tuned!