"We wanted to make sure that people had a real say in how the office functioned and then balanced that with the LEED pursuit," remembers Don Crichton, vice president of workplace. "It was back and forth to ensure we weren't compromising on the design to reach our sustainable goal."

HOK Toronto leases two-thirds (25,000 square feet) of the fifth floor of a 10-story building in Toronto's business district. "What we liked about the space, aside from meeting a lot of the early LEED criteria, was that it was raw space," says Crichton. "There was no electrical or mechanical infrastructure on the floor so we basically got to start from a clean slate, which was important."

The initial investment for the space worked out to about a 10 percent increase, but with a 6 percent decrease in costs for moving glass walls and relocating furniture from the previous office, the net increase was about 4 percent. And the power consumption has dropped by about 45 percent compared to a standard design.

The office is one of the first in Canada and the first Toronto office space to achieve LEED-CI certification. The office also received the Commitment to the Environmental Special Award from the Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario. Many clients, real estate agents, and facility managers ask to tour the space to better understand the machinations of sustainable design.

Crichton believes the most important message is that a design still must be a holistic solution for the function of the space. "The fact that we have a LEED-CI sustainably designed space is a great bonus, but I think the common misconception that people have is that it's way too expensive and it has to look like a 'green space.' It's not like that. If we walked people through here without telling them it's LEED, they'd never know, and that's actually a really good thing for us."

Several photos and diagrams of the space accompany the article.

Source: "Designing for Yourself," Eco-Structure, December 2006, by Christina Koch. Download a PDF of the story.