Houston Building Wins Highest LEED Score in Texas (Second in the Nation)

Houston and MetroNational celebrated Earth Day this morning with a record—the Treehouse at Memorial City was named double LEED Platinum, earning the highest LEED score in Texas and second-highest in the country.

This morning, USGBC president Roger Platt awarded the plaque to developer MetroNational—the 15k SF facility serves as its development office, meeting space and showroom for Memorial City projects. It scored 95 points on the core and shell platform, and 80 points on the commercial interiors rating. The two-store building was designed by Studio RED and features geothermal cooling and heating, daylight harvesting, solar panels, rainwater collection, and a rooftop garden. Energy efficient measures reduce energy costs to nearly 50% of a baseline building, and water efficiency features reduce irrigation requirements by almost 70% (earning Treehouse an innovative technology credit award by the USGBC). Pictured at this morning's ceremony: Roger with MetroNational VP Glenn Fuhrman and president Loc McNew.

Roger says Houston is an important city to recognize when it comes to sustainable building—we have 17 LEED Platinum commercial projects in the metro. Houston's booming job growth and population growth (twice as fast as New York since 2010) is leading to a lot of new construction, and Roger stresses that owners should continue to focus on efficiency. He says buildings are like people in that both can perform at their peak when attention is paid to their performance every day. He feels the attention to thousands of little details is what makes Treehouse Memorial City a shining example of sustainable design and construction.