Architect shooting for green

• By JASON BROWN
• Advocate Acadiana bureau
• Published: Jun 17, 2009 - Page: 1BA

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CARENCRO — A local architect is aiming to build Acadiana’s first LEED-certified home, an international designation awarded to residential and commercial projects that meet the highest “green” building standards.

When complete, Stephen Ortego’s model home, on Arceneaux Road in Carencro, will be an energy-efficient, planet-friendly, two-story, 1,100-square-foot structure with a footprint of less than 600 square feet.

The modern-style home will then be used as a model to sell other homes like it.

The 25-year-old architect turned developer recently finished a stint working with actor Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation in New Orleans, a nonprofit group that is building LEED-certified homes in the city’s Lower 9th Ward.

This is Ortego’s first project as an independent developer, a move that brings him back to Acadiana where he hopes to develop other LEED projects like it.

Developments like this “are healthier for the person who is living in it and for the environment and future generations,” Ortego said.

The U.S. Green Building Council created LEED, short for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, as a certification system that recognizes and measures how well a structure or project uses green building standards and practices.

In Louisiana, only seven out of more than 80 LEED-registered commercial projects have achieved certification, according to figures provided by John Anderson, an LEED-accredited professional.

Figures for LEED-certified homes were not available.

A certified home is one that has been built for energy savings, water efficiency, lowered carbon dioxide emissions and improved indoor environmental quality, in addition to having used less resources and more environmentally sensitive materials during construction.

A project is graded on a complex point system that factors in such things as how sustainable the construction site is, how much waste was generated or saved and where the home is located.

Ortego is aiming for platinum, the highest certification LEED offers.

Features include the use of steel structural insulated panels, or SSIPS, for the exterior walls and roof.