2024 Planet Positive Awards > People > Firm of the Year > Winner

 In June 2024, the University of Florida’s Student Health Care Center, designed by CannonDesign, became the first higher education building in the United States to attain WELL Platinum certification. It joins CannonDesign’s always-growing roster of sustainable, healthy buildings created through an advisory and consultative relationship with clients—the WELL- and LEED Platinum–certified Toronto headquarters for LinkedIn, SUNY Albany’s LEED Platinum ETEC Building, and the beautifully engineered mass timber Resnick Sustainability Center at Caltech that’s pursuing LEED Platinum. At the time of writing, 74 projects by the firm are aiming for LEED certification, and one is targeting the Living Building Challenge.

“We’re actively cultivating new partnerships, directing resources toward research and embracing new technologies, all geared toward amplifying our positive impact,” writes the firm’s director of sustainability Eric Corey Freed in its 2023 Sustainability Impact Report. Recent developments include tracking embodied carbon on every project with Tally and EC3 for envelope, structure, and major interior elements; developing a firmwide Building Material Database of products with ingredient certificates and EPDs; and updating the firm’s energy reporting process for a higher degree of tracking and accountability on energy use intensity (EUI) reduction. As it is, in 2022 the firm’s whole building projects did 54 percent better on average than the AIA 2030 EUI reduction benchmark. 

As the firm’s 14 full-time sustainability team members continue to improve both internal process and project outcomes, they share actionable advice that is aimed at clients but accessible to their professional peers through CannonDesign’s Planet 2100 initiative. 

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