Some spaces like theaters or a patient exam room may not be appropriate for views. In such cases, your team may exclude a space and include justification for doing so with the credit documentation. The merit of excluding such spaces is reviewed and approved on a case by case basis.
Your project team must estimate, for all multi-occupant spaces and open office areas with individual work spaces, the actual square footage that has a direct line of sight. This is generally impractical if electronic floor plans are not available. The more practical option of simply counting workstations with views that was available in previous versions of LEED for Existing Buildings is no longer acceptable.
The entire floor area of individual private offices may be counted as compliant if at least 75% of the floor area has a direct line of sight to the outdoors. Individual workstations in open office areas cannot be assessed in this manner and actual compliant areas must be estimated.
You may also find it useful to assess your building’s compliance informally by sitting at various workstations throughout the building to see if there are views, defined as having a direct line of sight to the outdoors as measured at the seated position, and to get a sense of the viability of pursuing this credit.
