Case Study: Arch Nexus (architecture firm) achieves Living Building certification and a power‑positive, Red‑List‑free retrofit with Ceros (solution provider)

Arch Nexus is a people driven design firm. Through purposeful design,people are inspired to achieve greatness and become active stewards of the built and natural environments

Arch Nexus, a multidisciplinary architecture firm committed to regenerative design, set out to retrofit its Sacramento office (Arch | Nexus SAC) to meet the Living Building Challenge. The aim was to convert an existing warehouse into a power‑positive, water‑independent, Red List–free workspace that promotes health and stewardship — a goal complicated by the time‑consuming task of vetting materials and sourcing enterprise‑grade low‑voltage cabling that met strict chemical transparency requirements.

Working with Valley Communications, Arch Nexus chose Superior Essex Cat6+ LSHF cabling, supported by EPDs, HPDs and Living Product Challenge transparency, which met performance and low‑smoke/halogen safety standards while eliminating Red List chemical risk. The cable now powers workstations, offices, conference rooms and building systems and helped accelerate certification; Arch | Nexus SAC became the first Living‑certified adaptive‑reuse project, earned LEED v4 Platinum, produces 170% of its energy needs and uses just 23.8% of the water of a code‑minimum building.

Arch Nexus

Patty Karapinar

Director of Sustainability