Healing Ground, Living Values
The book explores our collaborative approach to designing and constructing a biophilic and regenerative building aspiring to meet the most robust building standard in the world, known as the Living Building Challenge.
Healing Ground, Living Values details how the Stanley Center and our design partners—beginning with Neumann Monson Architects—went about the arduous and unique challenge of adapting a 1970s-era public library building into a fully regenerative and accessible headquarters. It further documents how the integrated project team approached various logistical and design challenges related to site ecology and hydrology, urban agriculture, embodied emissions, equity and inclusion, and other critical considerations enroute to realizing this future Living Building in America’s heartland.
The book also explores the rich and complex history of the City of Muscatine, from pre-settlement up to present day. This unassuming town on the banks of the Mississippi is in fact a place of great historical consequence, having played a decisive role in the history of industrial manufacturing, engineering, civil rights, social justice, philanthropy, and much more.
Healing Ground, Living Values is a story of design innovation and sustainability best practices. More so, it is a book about healing the physical and spiritual wounds inflicted upon the land and the Indigenous peoples who nurtured it for centuries prior to the arrival of American settlers. Lastly, it is an examination of what is possible when creative and conscientious minds come together to produce a building that gives more than it takes.
Order Healing Ground, Living Values from the International Living Future Institute.