GreenBuild Blog

Friday, November 24, 2006

Living buildings go beyond LEED

Last week’s Greenbuild 2006 conference in Denver firmed up the link between green buildings and broader environmental sustainability concerns through the focus on carbon dioxide reductions and the introduction of the Living Buildings concept. Beyond carbon reduction, the “living buildings” concept builds on five years of work by a number of architects and visionaries, to go beyond green buildings toward more “restorative” and “regenerative” buildings. There is now a “Living Buildings Design Challenge” from the Cascadia Green Building Council, which the USGBC will conduct over the next year, and announce the results at Greenbuild 2007, in Los Angeles, October 15-19, 2007.

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Wednesday, November 22, 2006

A Sudden Cessation of Stupidity

Founded in 1937 by inventor Edwin Land, Polaroid Corporation embodied American ingenuity for many decades. Land is famously reported to have said, “Every creative act results from a sudden cessation of stupidity.” I love this phrase and have certainly seen it at work in my own life on many occasions. In terms of the green building movement, it seems particularly apt.

For many decades, it’s been fair to characterize building design and construction as an exercise in collective stupidity. The objective often has been to build space that could be thrown away in a few decades, as long as it was cheap today; to see how much energy and water buildings could consume, without regard to the consequences; to see how much construction and demolition waste could be thrown away cheaply, without consequence; to conduct an uncontrolled experiment in how well people function when deprived of fresh air, daylight and views of the outdoors. P

Now, we are engaged in a race against time to reverse five decades of damaging trends, based on a linear, “throw away” economic model and an unlimited supply of cheap energy. In this respect, perhaps we can now characterize the green building movement properly as “a sudden cessation of stupidity.” Certainly the 13,000-plus attendees at the 2006 Greenbuild conference in Denver earlier this month, along with the nearly 500 exhibitors at the trade show, are leading the way in envisioning a new future for building design, construction and operations.

This is the most exciting time to be in the building industry, in terms of innovation, in many decades, if not ever. We are collectively beginning to cease stupidity and seek wisdom. New products, methods, tools and visions will collectively change the building industry within this decade, more than it changed in the 30-year period from 1970 through 2000.

But as architect and visionary William McDonough often says, our objective is not to be “less bad,” in terms of the environmental, society and economic effects of our buildings and urban settlements, but to be “positively good,” even “restorative.” It’s one thing to stop being stupid, another to seek out and practice real wisdom. Looks like we may be on the way!

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Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Rocky Mountain High, Colorado

Greenbuild 2006 was a “watershed” event, not only in terms of attendance, but in the rapid acceptance of green building into the mainstream of design, construction and development practice. Yet, much needs to be done to realize the potential of the green building movement. There is no doubt that a conference whose size is growing over 30% per year is symptomatic of a broader-based movement toward planetary responsibility for the green building movement. Yet, as I wrote in an October 18th column, Educated Incapacity, archived at IGreenBuild, much needs to be done to enhance conventional architectural and engineering practice before design professionals are able to deliver 50% more energy-efficient buildings, at LEED Silver ratings or better, on conventional budgets. The U.S. Green Building Council’s partnership with Autodesk promises to introduce green building and energy efficiency into AutoCAD’s Revit platform for Building Information Modeling (BIM), a modeling tool now being used increasingly by design professionals. Another sign of the times is the growing partnership between USGBC and the Clinton Foundation’s global climate change initiative. USGBC will benefit as former President Bill Clinton uses his influence to bring the 40 largest cities in the world into line with the “carbon neutral” future most experts envision as necessary to eventually halt global climate change. In my estimation, it won’t be but 12 to 24 months before the 100 largest cities in the U.S. line up behind programs to promote “carbon neutrality” in their projects, programs, policies and regulations.

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Monday, November 20, 2006

USGBC Announces Major Initiatives at Greenbuild Show

The U.S. Green Building Council announced several major initiatives at the Greenbuild show held in Denver last week. These include a requirement, subject to member balloting in early 2007, that all LEED-NC projects acquire at least two energy optimization (EA credit 1.1) points. All new LEED for new construction (LEED-NC) and LEED for Core and Shell (LEED-CS) projects will be automatically registered for the LEED For Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) program, so they will be encouraged to track continuing environmental benefits throughout the life of the building. USGBC’s new “Portfolio Performance” Program will help companies seeking to achieve LEED Certification on multiple buildings of the same prototype, such as bank branches and retail outlets. Further initiatives are in the works to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from LEED buildings, including incentives and requirements to meet the 50% reduction in 2005-average new building energy use by 2010, specified by the policy direction of the American Institute of Architects.

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