The New Trophy Home, Small and Ecological

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For the high-profile crowd that turned out to celebrate a new home in Venice, Calif., the attraction wasn’t just the company and the architectural detail. The house boasted the builders’ equivalent of a three-star Michelin rating: a LEED platinum certificate.

An environmentally friendly, LEED-certified home in Venice, Calif., designed by Tom Schey, a homebuilder in Santa Monica, and his business partner, Kelly Meyer, an environmentalist.

The actors John Cusack and Pierce Brosnan, with his wife, Keely Shaye Smith, a journalist, came last fall to see a house that the builders promised would “emit no harmful gases into the atmosphere,” “produce its own energy” and incorporate recycled materials, from concrete to countertops.

By FELICITY BARRINGER

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/us/22leed.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1214108533-qBSKgOa4VBMYf89pvKiyCA