For the first time in the history of the Green Building Festival, all three Lifetime Achievement Award winners are women.
The winners, Teresa Coady, Janna Levitt and Birgit Siber, will receive their awards in front of hundreds of colleagues on October 8th in Toronto.
The Lifetime Achievement Awards acknowledge green building initiatives through advocacy, research, innovation and design excellence across a range of building types.
“The awards signal exemplary devotion to the cause of greater sustainability in the built environment,” says Mike Singleton, Executive Director of Sustainable Buildings Canada.
Teresa Coady
Recognized for her innovative thinking and leadership in sustainability, Teresa Coady works closely with various agencies to create new policies and practices to benefit society. Coady was formerly the Chief Operating Officer of Kasian and President and CEO of Bunting Coady B+H. Her first book, Rebuilding the Planet, The 12 Principles of Conscious Construction will be distributed Spring 2020 by Random House.
Q: What does receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award mean to you?
A: All my life I have witnessed the goodwill and warm hearts of people in the construction industry, and this recognition ceremony is just one more example. In our age of accelerated busy-ness, it astounds me that there are so many generous people willing to take the time to celebrate others. We should all be inspired by those among us who care enough to support the outliers, and the change agents. I for one appreciate it more than you can know.
Janna Levitt
Janna Levitt co-founded LGA Architectural Partners (formerly Levitt Goodman Architects). She believes buildings can serve as a connector between culture and people. Her projects often involve implementing transformative cultural and environmental agendas, developed with diverse group of collaborators and communities.
Q: What does receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award mean to you?
A: Receiving the SBC Lifetime Achievement Award is extremely gratifying. Over the course of the last 25+ years that I’ve been practicing, there’s been a total sea change in the awareness of the design profession and the public regarding the importance of sustainable design and living. LGA has always been a vocal exponent of designing small, designing well and designing beautiful buildings and in that respect, we had an immediate kinship with the SBC. Its been gratifying to see how through their advocacy, the SBC and other like minded organizations has successfully raised the awareness about climate change and building, to the point that what was once a niche conversation has now become part of the general public’s consciousness.
Principal at Diamond Schmitt Architects, Birgit Siber led the design installation of the first large-scale living wall biofilter in Canada more than a decade ago at the University of Guelph Humber campus. Its success spawned dozens more in Diamond Schmitt projects in Canada and the U.S. She also spearheaded ecoMetrics, an energy-use benchmarking databank and analysis tool to highlight and inform strategies for energy-use reduction.
Q: What does receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award mean to you?
A: I am deeply moved to win the Lifetime Achievement award from Sustainable Buildings Canada. My efforts have always been based on teamwork and setting goals that strive to make architecture increasingly sustainable, for which The Green Building Festival has been a great source of inspiration. This award acknowledgement is shared with clients, colleagues and consultants I have had the privilege to work with over the years.