Imajineer Studio
Posts tagged LEED
Notes on architecture, product development and brand work from the studio.
Wood in Tropical Buildings: When It Works, When It Warps
At 80 percent relative humidity, kiln-dried wood absorbs moisture until it buckles. The failure is almost always a specification problem, not a material one...
What a Building Management System Actually Controls
A building management system controls between 40 and 60 percent of a building's energy load, but most developments spec it like an afterthought. The systems it...
Vernacular Khmer Architecture and the Modern Tower
The traditional Khmer house has a five-centimeter gap along its roofline that most people never notice. It is a ventilation system, and it points to a design...
Greywater Recycling in Mid-Rise Residential
Greywater is more than half of what a residential building discharges, and it arrives at almost exactly the volume needed to flush the toilets. Recycling it...
Embodied Carbon Comes Before Operational Carbon
A building emits much of its lifetime carbon before anyone moves in. Operational carbon can be improved for decades. Embodied carbon, the emissions locked into...
What Solar Can Really Do on a Tropical Rooftop
Phnom Penh gets a strong solar resource, so the sun is never the limit on a residential building. The roof is. One roof plate sits above dozens of stacked...
The Real Cost of Not Certifying a Building
Green building certification fees are small, and the design premium to meet the standard is often under three percent. So owners ask the wrong question. The...
What the WELL Building Standard Actually Measures
The WELL Building Standard does something no other major green certification does. It comes to the finished building and tests air, water, light, sound, and...
How an Architectural Brief Is Actually Developed
An architectural brief, developed properly, takes four to eight weeks and produces a fifteen to thirty page document. Most projects spend ten days on it. The...
The LEED Certification Pathway for Tropical Buildings
LEED v5 went live in April 2025 with a new scoring logic. Half the points sit in decarbonization. A quarter in quality of life. A quarter in ecological...