The Skyscraper Museum is devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. The Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. This site will look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
LEED - An acronym for Leadership
in Energy and Environmental Design. LEED is a point-based rating system
developed by the US Green Building Council that evaluates the environmental
performance from a “whole building” perspective over its life
cycle, providing a definitive standard for what constitutes a green building
according to six categories:
Energy and Atmosphere
Indoor Environmental Quality
Innovation and Design Process
Buildings evaluated by LEED are rated as certified, silver, gold, or platinum. There are a total of 69 LEED credits available in the six categories: 26 credits are required to attain the most basic level of LEED certification; 33 to 38 credits are needed for Silver; 39 to 51 credits for Gold; 52 to 69 credits for the Platinum rating.
Life-Cycle Cost (LCC) - The total cost of acquiring, owning, operating and disposing of a building or building system over its entire useful life. LCC includes the cost of land acquisition, construction costs, energy costs, the cost to maintain, service and repair the building and its systems, costs of system replacement, financing costs, and residual or salvage value at the end of the building’s useful life.
Light Shelf - A horizontal device positioned (usually above eye level) to reflect daylight onto the ceiling and beyond. The light shelf may project into the room, beyond the exterior wall plane, or both. The upper surface of the shelf is highly reflective, i.e. having 80 percent or greater reflectance. Light shelves are also effective shading devices for windows located below them.
Low-e Glass - Low-e (Low emissivity) glass has an invisible thin-film metallic or oxide coating which allows the passage of short-wave solar energy into a building but prevents long-wave energy produced by heating systems and lighting from escaping outside.