LBC – The Beauty Petal
Dear Readers,
Welcome to the seventh and final Petal of the Living Building Challenge. These blogs have been long and many, and we appreciate you sticking with us as we navigate the twenty Imperatives. The past six Petals of Place, Water, Energy, Health and Happiness, Materials, and Equity have shown just how challenging building this home is going to be. To freshen your memory on those petals and their imperatives, we’ll show you that chart one last time.

The Seven Petals of the Living Building Challenge and their Imperatives
The Beauty Petal
I know what you may be thinking, how can the Living Building Challenge judge a building’s beauty? ‘Tis it not in the eye of the beholder? Well, I think they navigate this Petal well – they don’t require that your building is beautiful necessarily, but they require that you spend time to integrate natural aesthetics and develop a plan to share your building with others. If you’re required to spend time looking at beauty, your building should be beautiful to you; and if you’re required to share your building with others, you’ll probably look into making it beautiful for them, too (no one wants to share an ugly building).
You might also ask why beauty needs to be part of the challenge, how can beauty be sustainable? Quite a simple explanation actually: which buildings tend to stand the test of time? The beautiful ones! Beautiful buildings are the most desirable ones, and if we want humanity to work towards a more sustainable future, we need to show that efficient, healthy, and accessible buildings can also be passionate works of art.

Beauty Petal and its two Imperatives
The moon in all her beauty…
Thank you for following along through these past couple of blogs! We know some of them were quite dense (cough…materials-petal…cough), but in creating this dialog for you to read, we ourselves have learned a great deal about what it takes to meet this standard. Aaaaannnnddd…we have our work cut out for us!
Honestly, the most surprising aspect after having done these blogs, was to find that the Living Building Challenge aligns extremely well with a lot of the intentions we were already developing for our home before even knowing the Challenge existed! I mean, we were already talking about a low carbon footprint, a composting toilet, rainwater collection, biophilic design, net zero energy usage, accessible living, healthy spaces, natural light everywhere, etc, etc (check out our very first blog if ya don’t believe me)…and then along comes this certification that we find and we’re in love! Alright, I’m getting excited, but really…It’s awesome to find out that we aren’t the only people to be thinking the way we are – that there are other people out there who were inspired to make this certification, and that there are other people out there who are dedicated to meeting this certification. It gives us hope in our future, and it inspires us all the more to create this crazy house!
Thank you for your support, dear readers!
William Aldrich
1. International Living Future Institute. Living Building Challenge, Version 4.0, Seattle, 2019. Page 66.
2. Living Building Challenge, Version 4.0, Page 67.
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© 2020 Sustaining Tree
© 2020 Sustaining Tree
This has been an amazing journey with both of you. Now you need to come up w/a way to keep us informed with your progress! Love you both, and oh yes, I am so very proud of you.
Aunt Rose