Here are just a few “LEED firsts” that I have found while surfing the internet.  My favorites are “first”.

Favorites

• First LEED Platinum Single Family Residence in Western Puget Sound – Puget Sound, Washington
• First Ever LEED Certified Floating Green Building - Lake Mohave, NV
• World’s First LEED Certified Pizzeria – Fort Lauderdale, Florida
• First LEED Certified Parking Garage – Santa Monica, California
  • Here is more information on the project from the Santa Monica website. And a bonus…Their LEED Scorecard!!
• First Female, LEED Accredited Attorney in North Carolina – Charlotte, North Carolina

Restaruants

• First LEED Platinum Restaurant – Greensboro, North Carolina
• First LEED Certified Restaurant (McDonald’s) – Chicago, Illinois

Commercial Buildings

• Citi’s Frankfurt Data Center Earns First-Ever Leed Platinum Certification – Frankfurt, Germany
  

  The first flight ever from Kittyhawk to Kittyhawk

• Canadian Triple-A Office Building Aims for LEED First – Oakville, Ontario, Canada
• Broadway Launches First Ever LEED-Certified Theater! – New York
• First LEED Platinum Data Center – Sacramento, CA
• First Ever LEED Gold Certified Automobile Manufacturing Facility – Lansing, Michigan
• First LEED Factory – Grand Rapids, Michigan
• First Ritz-Carlton LEED Certified Hotel – Charlotte, North Carolina
• First LEED Platinum Skyscraper – New York, New York
• First (maybe second) LEED Gold Skyscraper – New York, New York
• First Certified Med Spa in the Country – San Francisco, California
• San Francisco’s First and Only LEED Certified Green Hotels – San Francisco, CA
• First Office Building in LA to Receive LEED Gold EB O&M – Los Angeles, California
• Waco Debuts Nation’s First ‘Green’ Chamber Building – Waco, Texas
• Florida’s First LEED-EB Gold Building – Tampa, Florida
• Africa’s First LEED Platinum Structure – Rwanda, Africa
  

Residential

• First LEED Platinum Home in Virginia – Arlington, Virginia
• New York City’s First LEED Platinum Certified Condominiums – New York, New York
• First Platinum LEED-Certified, 100% Solar Powered, Affordable Housing – San Diego, California
• Lansing’s First LEED Home – Lansing, Michigan
• Chattanooga’s first LEED Certified Residential Properties – Chattanooga, Tennessee
• First Gold LEED for homes certification in region – Baltimore, Maryland
• First LEED-for Homes Platinum Home in Arizona – Bellemont, Arizona
• First Student Build LEED-Certified Modular Home – Bel Air, Maryland
• Nation’s First LEED Platinum Affordable Housing – Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
• First Home in State to Receive LEED Platinum – Washtenaw County, Michigan
• First in LEED for Neighborhood Development Pilot Program – Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
• Project First in Nation to Complete Stage 1 Certification, begin Stage 2 of LEED ND – Hawaii
• First LEED Project in Oklahoma – Tulsa, Oklahoma
• Community gets Md.’s first LEED gold rating – Baltimore, Maryland
• Nation’s First Multi-Unit LEED Certified Building – Cambridge, Massachusetts
  

Government

• Chicago’s FBI Building Earns First Platinum LEED-EBOM Certification – Chicago, Illinois
• First City Hall in the Nation to Achieve LEED Gold (pdf) – Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
• Science and Technology Facility is first LEED Platinum Federal Building – Golden, Colorado
• First LEED Silver Pump Station at Clean Water Services Facility – Hillsboro, Oregon

Healthcare

• Dell Children’s First LEED Hospital in World – Austin, Texas
• Florida’s First LEED Silver Certified Healthcare Facility – Port St. John, Florida

Education

• First LEED-Certified Laboratory Renovation – San Francisco, California
• Univ. of Florida First LEED Platinum Stadium with Green Power – Florida
• Chicago’s first LEED-built green school – Chicago, Illinois
• Vermont’s first LEED platinum building – Middlebury, Vermont
  

Religious / Museum

• World’s First LEED Museum Complex – Grand Rapid, Michigan
• World’s First LEED Platinum Religious Center – Chicago, Illinois
  
• First LEED Certified Art Museum in New York- New York, New York

The first visualization I could obtain without much effort is the number of LEED Accredited Professionals by state.  California leads the nation with over 11,300 LEED APs. New York comes in second with over 4,900 LEED APs.

However, when I normalized the data to display number of LEED APs per million people (based on 2007 census information), the picture changes quite a bit.

Washington, DC has a small population, but a relatively large LEED AP population with almost 2,300 LEED APs for every million people. California, on the other hand has 311 for every million people. A couple of things come to mind for why DC is so high:

• The USGBC keeps its headquarters in Washington, DC.  In 2006 they had 70 employees.
• Government LEED APs could skew the numbers.  GSA, US Dept of Interior, lobbyists, etc.
• A number of large architecture firms have offices in Washington DC (Gensler, HOK, Perkins + Will, RTKL, URS, etc.)

For the rest of the data, I am going to try and take this slow and dig through over the next couple of weeks.  I am interested to hear what type of charts you would like to see.  Make sure to leave a comment and I will see what I can do.

That is why I was very excited to find ECOTECT.  Through reading one of the Revit blogs, I came across an announcement that Autodesk had acquired ECOTECT.  From the ECOTECT website:

ECOTECT is a complete building design and environmental analysis tool that covers the full range of simulation and analysis functions required to truly understand how a building design will operate and perform.

I downloaded a free trial for a number of their products.  They have weather and analyzer tools, as well as a number of other visualization and modeling tools.  I have been playing with the weather tool for a little bit.  The tool allows a user to plot all sorts of weather related graphs for a certain region: temperature, wind direction, humidity, etc.

When I tried to find weather data for Reno, it wasn’t in the program.  A quick look on the ECOTECT website gave me a link to the US Department of Energy website that houses loads of weather data.  Now I have a way to not only find elusive weather data, but also a way to plot it.  This kind of data is necessary for the next step in green design.  Incorporating sun angles, temperatures, prevailing wind direction, etc. into building design is uber-green and something I would love to learn about.

If you have any references for this level of design, please share them in the comments.

As an example of the data, I have embedded average temperature data for the three BJG offices.  As it is July, I am glad I am in Pleasanton and not Las Vegas; I can’t handle the heat!  I plotted this in Excel.

Happy plotting!