Meet the Nominees

Full information about all nominations will be released in the European Leadership Awards booklet, available after the announcement of the winners.

Hellenic American Educational Foundation Preschool and Kindergarten, Athens, Greece

The HAEF Preschool and Kindergarten was certified in October 2014 with LEED Platinum, thus becoming the first LEED Platinum building in Greece. The Foundation decided to build the new educational building within the existing campus. The proximity of the new building to existing facilities provides the new project with opportunities for interactive relationships with the other existing organisations on campus as well as existing community facilities outside the campus. Moreover, the exposed roof area is covered with a green roof in an effort to provide a seamless integration of the new building to the existing environment and thus enhancing local biodiversity. Taking this into consideration, rainwater harvesting was introduced as a sustainable solution to reducing potable water demand, not only for irrigation of the extensive landscape areas but also for toilet flushing. The creation of high quality indoor spaces has been of top priority. Thanks to the project design that allowed sufficient daylight penetration in all regularly occupied areas, the project not only eliminates lighting loads but creates a high‐quality indoor environment for the school. To sum up, the integration of LEED sustainability rating method of this project has been a great challenge for the Foundation since the HAEF Preschool and Kindergarten is a real case‐study of a sustainable project enabling the provision of specific lessons to the students of the entire campus.