Virtualities and contradictions in the space under global patterns: LEED® and corporate architecture in São Paulo

Author(s)

Raphael Grazziano

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU/SBI)
• Defense date: 2019-11-08

Examining board members

Luiz Antonio Recaman Barros; Laura Machado de Mello Bueno; Denise Helena Silva Duarte; Lúcia Zanin Shimbo; Nadia Somekh

• Advisor: Luiz Antonio Recaman Barros

Abstract

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) is a North American system launched in 1998 to assess sustainability parameters in buildings. It is managed by a non-governmental organization, the US Green Building Council (USGBC®), that was formed in the early 1990s. The system has obtained global relevance, and for this reason it has been a case study for several authors, who discuss the system\'s technical performance and sustainability impact. Nevertheless, as this research is developed in the field of history and tenets of architecture and urbanism, other debates and scientific instruments arise. LEED®\'s technical aspects are examined in order to clarify its operation premises, following the research hypothesis that these premises would have impact in the disciplines of architecture and urbanism, especially in their design strategies. Therefore, the thesis inquires the system in five parts. In the first part, it is reported the system\'s history by means of identifying the agents involved in its formation and the positions disputed at that time. In the second part, it is carried out a conceptual elucidation of LEED® by means of establishing the references used by its founders, including it in the discussion of ecological modernization and ecocapitalism. In the third part, LEED®\'s architectural and urbanistic impacts are formulated. On the one hand, the impacts are virtual - that is to say, they are related to the horizon of design potentialities implicit to LEED® -, while on the other hand they are empirical, an aspect that is detailed using two clusters of buildings located in marginal Pinheiros, in São Paulo, certified by LEED® Core & Shell. In the fourth part, the same methodology is applied, but this time to LEED® for Neighborhood Development. At last, in the fifth part, the connections between patterns and the architectural and urbanistic production of global cities are formulated. The research findings revealed how LEED® Core & Shell may support certain features of the North American corporate tower, how LEED® for Neighborhood Development sets the New Urbanism in a technical pattern and how the market may stress architectural and urbanistic questions in order to fulfill non-environmental design criteria. LEED® is read as a technology of neoliberalism, as it underlies global financial exchanges by offering parameters for the comparability between projects and mensuration of their features. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 16/21407-0 - Green certification and city building: LEED® and architecture in São Paulo, 2006-2015
• Grantee: Raphael Grazziano
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate (Direct)