We are pleased to announce the James Mandell Building at Boston Children’s Hospital has earned LEED® Gold Certification as established by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) verified the certification. LEED is the nation’s preeminent program for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings.
The 116,000 SF building addition was designed to optimize energy use, which resulted in 53% less energy use than a typical hospital (equal to 160 northeast homes annually). An important design goal for the building was to create exterior places of respite for staff and patients within the dense, urban hospital campus site. While the interior courtyard and street front Pocket Park successfully provided a connection to the exterior environment, the building also sought a high standard of quality on the interior. The project scored 13 out of 15 points under Indoor Environmental Quality by achieving points in Construction IAQ Plan for before and after occupancy, low-emitting materials, controllability of lighting/thermal systems and thermal comfort verification.
The design team also submitted serval Innovation in Design credits, including reduced mercury content in lighting and exemplary performance in access to public transportation. The detailing and specification of the walls enclosing the patients’ rooms yielded recognition by LEED for improving the acoustic environment within the inpatient unit.
The project was also able to achieve points in water use reduction and recycled materials.
less energy than a typical hospital (equal to the energy of 160 northeast homes annually)
less water than a code baseline (equal to 6,500 bathtubs of water annually)
of the materials have recycled content
of the construction water was recycled
of the building used low VOC materials
of open space/healing gardens provided
Related:
Integrating Art into Healthcare Spaces
Embedded Nature: Boston Children’s Hospital Mandell Building
We are honored to share PAYETTE has received two 2026 Green Good Design Awards from The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies—Land’s Sake Farm and The Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard.
“Green GOOD DESIGN identifies and emphasizes the world’s most important examples of sustainable design and works to develop a public awareness program that informs the general public about which global companies are doing the best job in ecological and sustainable design for our world. Architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning projects, as well as product, packaging, and graphic design projects from over 30 nations were honored with the 2026 Green GOOD DESIGN Award.”
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