Awards

Hitchcock Center’s Building Receives Top Award

Amherst, MA – Executive Director Julie Johnson of the Hitchcock Center recently returned from an international sustainability conference in Seattle with a Certified Living Award presented by the Living Future Institute.

Hitchcock Center

The award is for the organization’s education center achieving the Living Building Challenge, considered the most rigorous standard for green building in the world.

The building was designed by designLAB Architects of Boston and built by Wright Builders of Northampton.

Completed in 2016, it has spurred a significant uptick in public interest in the center’s resilient, self-sufficient building systems that will provide energy and water security for decades to come.

The award was presented after the center’s building met a full year of strict performance metrics that not only included achieving net zero energy, water and waste, but also the use of locally sourced, nontoxic building materials, native plants for greater biodiversity, and promotion of alternative modes of transportation, among 20 of its Living Building imperatives.

Prior to receiving this award, there were only 22 other buildings in the world and three in Massachusetts to have successfully achieved this very high bar of sustainable development.