Will This Be the Greenest Residential Building in the World?

• January 30th 2014

by Lark Turner

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A Sri Lankan city is getting the country’s first sustainable high-rise, and the building is literally wreathed in green.

Every apartment in the 46-story Clearpoint Residences near Colombo will have giant gardens watered by a centralized irrigation system that will help shield residents from sunlight and pollution while bringing down the building’s cooling costs during hot summers. The building’s common electricity will be sourced in part by solar panels on the roof. The sky-reaching project was designed by Milroy Perera Associates and Maga Engineering, according to designboom. The scheduled completion date for the building is 2016.

While both in terms of energy-efficiency and height, this building will look quite foreign to DC residents, our city does have its outsized share of LEED-certified buildings. And a few new residential projects are making energy-efficiency a priority:

• Skyhouse DC, a recently-opened two-tower renovation of the EPA’s former headquarters in Southwest DC, aims to achieve a certification of LEED Silver or better.

• 17 Solar is a project of 26 glassy, solar-powered, modern-looking homes from District Development Group (DDG) planned near 17th Street NE between D and E Street.

• Rhode Island Row, a 274-unit rental building on Rhode Island Avenue NE, offers energy-saving appliances and water-saving fixtures in each of its apartments. The development also has a green roof and offers electric car-charging stations for its tenants, according to the building website.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.production.logicbrush.com/articles/blog/forget_green_roofs_this_entire_high-rise_is_green/8062.