Living Future Accreditation: Demonstrate your commitment. Deepen your knowledge. Display your expertise.

Earlier this year, ILFI announced some changes to the Living Future Accreditation process and requirements, including renewal!

The achievement of Living Future Accreditation (LFA) acknowledges your work toward making our communities socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative. Once accredited, you will be able to use the post-nominal initials “LFA” as well as the LFA seal for a period of two years after your accreditation date.

With the LFA, you’ll become an expert on all things Living Future and distinguish yourself as a leader in the regenerative design community. You’ll also be eligible to deepen your involvement with the Institute through Network volunteer opportunities as well as fulfill the LFA professional team member LBC 4.0 requirement under Imperative 20, should opportunities come your way. 

Living Future Accreditation helps to add a level of legitimacy as we advocate for incorporating regenerative design principles in projects, especially when we encourage our clients to pursue certification as well. 

Given the fact that we have a number of LFAs at various levels, from designers to architects and principals, we are able to benefit from everyone’s diverse experiences and roles to incorporate these principles at every level of our projects. 

[Achieving LFA] also allows us to join a community of other passionate and thoughtful people who share a similar vision. –John Byrd, Senior Architect | Overland Partners

In a nutshell, the LFA has been scaled to increase accessibility and now requires:

• 36 LFA CE credits of education (down from 70, nearly half)
  • 20 Foundational LFA CE credits (a set list of courses, outlined here)
  • 16 General LFA CE credits (choose from ILFI’s offerings or pre-approved, non-ILFI-delivered education*)
• Basic Membership (down from Premium)
• Reduced LFA Registration fee (now $125 USD)
• Still allows 2 years to complete education; still no final exam (instead, intermittent quizzes)
• Reduced LFA Renewal fee ($100 USD), reduced membership level maintenance requirement (Basic), and proportionately reduced CE requirement (16 credits)

*As an education provider, you may submit a request to offer LFA CE credits for an in-person educational event that you’ll deliver. Please fill up this form with details and the Education Team will be in touch.

Download the LFA ‘quick reference’ postcard for a concise summary of the process and requirements. For more details, check out our LFA webpage and our FAQ page.

Furthermore, we’ve recently introduced the opportunity for groups of colleagues, Ambassadors/Collaborative members, or university students to pursue LFA together. Groups of 3+ learners receive a 20% discount on individual registrations and resources for completing education together. Groups may also be eligible for membership discounts as part of a corporate membership package, or groups may receive complimentary membership(s) and LFA registration(s) as benefits of sponsorship/Network partnership. 

As a firm, excitement around both Living Building Certification and Living Future Accreditation began to spread as our project developed. Living Future Accreditation has helped spark a wave of interest in regenerative design within our office. 

It all started with a couple of us pursuing accreditation in association with an LBC project. Shortly afterward, groups began to organize to discuss incorporating biophilia and net zero energy design into other projects. Then a number of us began giving formal presentations to our office about various regenerative design concepts and what ILFI is all about. We brought in experts from other parts of the country as well to shed more light on topics like Red List materials, embodied carbon, living machines, and high-performance building design.  

Throughout all this, interest in ILFI grew to the point where our entire architecture team has become accredited … Our growing group of LFAs have become advocates for regenerative design within our office, among our clients, and within the community. This has put us in a position to be better equipped to actively advocate for certification on many of our new projects. Also, a couple of us have recently become Living Future Ambassadors and are starting a Collaborative in San Antonio. –Byrd

Think your group is ready to embark on this educational journey? Submit a request to register your group and find out more. Consider the conditions for success fostered at Overland Partners:

Stewardship is one of Overland’s core values … through our work, we try to lead by example and model how we should live through the practice of architecture. We like to say we design physical transformations that lead to human ones. 

By creating projects that are regenerative in nature, not only are we creating projects that are “more good” instead of “less bad”, but we are also influencing others… from everyone who touches the design process, including consultants, owners, building occupants, and other stakeholders. If we do our jobs well, we hope people will take their experiences home with them and begin to implement changes in their own lives.

Overland is a place that encourages everyone to follow their passions and be the best version of themselves. [In addition to providing professional development funds for LFA costs and attendance at ILFI events], we have an internal education series that we call “The Academy” that highlights a number of topics related to the profession. 

In a recent Academy session (photo below), we held a panel discussion for the entire office on the challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned to date on LBC & LCC Projects and the value of Living Future Accreditation. –Byrd

We look forward to supporting your pursuit of Living Future Accreditation. Tooled with expertise, ingenuity, and passion, you will be equipped to lead the transformation towards making our communities socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative.