Platinum Promises

It’s official—Renzo Piano‘s just-opened California Academy of Sciences is so green it’s Platinum. Yesterday afternoon, the U.S. Green Building Council awarded the new San Francisco landmark 54 points, making it the first ever museum to be LEED Platinum certified. (Previously, the most points one had garnered was the Grand Rapids Art Museum‘s 42, good enough for Gold.) Read last month’s cover story on the Academy to find out how the architecture, landscape design, and engineering all came together to create a radically new model for the natural-history museum.