SITES is back, but is it here to stay?

Last week, the Sustainable Sites Initiative™ (SITES™) released the SITES v2 Rating System. The comprehensive rating system evaluates the performance and sustainability of landscapes and offers benchmarks for designers, developers, and policy makers to achieve when creating and implementing designs. SITES™ is still in its infancy in comparison to programs like LEED, but does it have potential as a component of landscape design?

The SITES website contains galleries of all SITES certified projects around the country. Image via Sustainable Sites

SITES was developed with the idea that landscapes are the foundation of the built environment and can be designed, engineered, and managed to create resilient environments that have the capacity to mitigate and reverse the slow moving vulnerabilities and threats created by the development patterns and practices of modern society. By leveraging, supporting, and improving ecosystem services, SITES aims to improve the environment, quality of life for all stakeholders, and measure the economic value of the built environment.

The SITES v2 Rating System is the result of three reports published since 2007 that outlined performance benchmarks and guidelines. A two-year pilot program field-tested the rating system on over 160 projects throughout the United States. The results, along with public comment, culminated in the SITES v2 Rating System that will continue to evolve as more projects are studied and more data is collected. The rating system contains 18 prerequisites and 48 credits totaling 200 points measuring the sustainability of a project. The guidelines aim to foster creativity and innovation while being agile enough to adapt to the unique conditions of each site.

Mesa Verde Visitor and Research Center, a Two-Star SITES-Certified project. Image via Sustainable Sites

To achieve the intended results of a more resilient and sustainable built environment, the SITES v2 Rating System will require considerable support from the design and development community. The rating system presents several challenges to the current standard protocol of site design. Appropriate site selection and analysis is an essential (if not the most essential) aspect of the rating system. This will require the design team to become involved earlier in the design process than is currently typical. Well before a concept or schematic design is conceived, the design team will need to engage the client in site selection and analysis. A pre-design phase may be necessary to identify and analyze several sites before they are procured so that they can serve the needs of the client while achieving the SITES prerequisites. Additionally, the design team may need to be retained well after the project is complete to oversee maintenance and measure the performance of the site. This will require skilled maintenance and management firms that can adapt to the new technologies that will evolve to measure performance, conserve resources, and adjust to the unique concerns for each site and design.

The added costs of such services will need to be measured against the savings achieved through conservation and the overall health of the built environment. The design team must demonstrate to the client the benefits of higher upfront cost against the cost savings over the life of the project. The added time and the potentially higher upfront costs are probably the largest obstacles SITES needs to overcome to achieve market penetration. A critical mass of SITES-certified projects is needed to create the intended paradigm shift in the way we design, build, and manage the built environment.

Although challenging, the SITES v2 Rating System’s metric-based analysis offers data that can be leveraged to explain and educate the client, the public, and the policy makers on the real world benefits of sustainable design. As landscape architects, we've got our fingers crossed that the Sustainable Sites Initiative is able to succeed in a way that not promotes not only environmental sustainability, but also economic viability for our clients in the future.

UT - Sustainable Landscape Rating System Available for Worldwide Use

Wildflower Center - Sustainable Sites

ASLA - About the Sustainable Sites Initiative

We're sorry we weren't there to answer our phones.

This past Friday, the entire Studio Outside staff vacated our studio in Exposition Park and converged on the Trinity Audubon Center in Dallas for a full day of reflection on the company's growth in the past year, the state of the firm in the present, and the future of Studio Outside as the individuals that make up the company see it.

The third-annual staff retreat covered a wide range of housekeeping and state-of-the-union type topics including employee feedback (anonymously compiled from a survey), financial and budget reports for the firm, and an afternoon workshop focusing on the future of the firm.

Presenting visions for the future at the Trinity Audubon Center. Photo by Charlie Pruitt

bcWORKSHOP's Brent Brown presents to the Studio Outside team. Photo by Charlie Pruitt.

Meg Fitzpatrick, a strategy consultant with MMF Strategies, was the MC for the morning session which focused on comparing the state of the company today with the company a year ago, thorough feedback received through employee surveys. Everyone, from staff, to entry-level designers, to principals participated in the anonymous survey, the results of which were incredibly helpful both to see what we've improved on in the past year and also where we still have room to grow as a company.

The afternoon session was highlighted by a presentation from Brent Brown, the founder of the Building Community Workshop (bcWORKSHOP), a public design firm focusing on architecture and design that helps improve the quality of life for people within the community. Brent's passion for public design - as he explains it, design that takes into account the people and the community that it affects, even outside the project boundaries - is something that is shared by a lot of the people at Studio Outside. Much of the discussion during the afternoon was centered on this shared vision for design that impacts the Dallas community in a positive way - how can both bcWorkshop and Studio Outside participate in building and shaping a better quality of life for the citizens of Dallas in the future?

Studio Outside's Paul Freeland opens up the discussion for feedback. Photo by Charlie Pruitt.

Before we left, we were able to take a tour of the Audubon Center, a beautiful building constructed in 2008. Walking around the trails through the reconstructed blackland prairie and natural floodplain ponds, we learned that the site was formerly a trash dump - a forgotten patch of land next to the Trinity River in an area of Dallas that was less than desirable.

After talking all afternoon about becoming real stewards of our city and neighborhoods, the choice of location for the retreat couldn't have been more fitting.