"Sustainable" is a claim. LEED is a score. The difference matters because a score can be verified, compared and – if the project starts well – improved over time.
LEED: a credit-based system
LEED awards credits across six assessment areas: energy efficiency, indoor air quality, thermal and visual comfort, materials and resources, water management, innovation. The total determines the level – Certified, Silver, Gold, Platinum. Every credit has requirements that can be verified by third parties; every level corresponds to a precise score threshold. This makes the result comparable across different projects and updatable throughout the building's life cycle.
Comfort and performance: the link the numbers make visible
Temperature, ventilation, natural lighting and acoustics govern people's typical working day even before their agenda does. An office with verified air quality, controlled thermal comfort and lighting suited to the different support areas – meeting rooms, focus workstations, informal spaces – reduces the conditions that limit concentration and increase fatigue. The ARCHIlabs survey captures these needs at the start of the project; LEED credits translate them into measurable objectives to design for.
Sustainability built into the project: the Marlegno case
The Marlegno headquarters (Calcinate, BG), certified LEED Gold and awarded the KNX Award 2025, shows what happens when certification objectives enter the process from the space planning phase. Energy efficiency, indoor air quality and acoustic and visual comfort were defined as design requirements, then verified at the end of the works through the certification procedure. The final result is measured.
A certification like LEED is not achieved with good intentions: it requires building-systems expertise, measurements and commissioning tests. ARCHIlabs brings these together in an established team – architects, mechanical and electrical engineers, urban planners – and follows the project through to delivery, with the works supervision and the testing needed to secure the result.
How ARCHIlabs brings LEED into the project
The frequent mistake is layering certification onto an already defined project: credits get chased instead of designed. The ARCHIlabs method starts from each team's typical working day – captured through interviews and surveys – and defines the environmental requirements for every work setting from the outset. Material, systems and layout choices are assessed against LEED credits before they become executive. The ESG project for the workplace grows out of this integration; exploring the link between ESG and workspaces and measured space quality clarifies the context it sits in.
Sustainability in the factory too
LEED certification is not just for offices. In Calcinate, for Marlegno, we designed a timber Innovation Building Center certified LEED Gold: a fully sustainable production building. We discuss it in Industrial architecture: the production building as a project.