Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [121]
Each project I do deserves this attention and passion for the challenge. When I graduated from school I knew that I had a choice; the green architecture movement at that time represented only 1 percent of the profession. I could feel part of a self-righteous minority while rebelling against the profession from the outside, or I could become part of the professional organization American Institute of Architects (AIA) and help change it from within. I chose the latter and in doing so joined a small wave of designers committed to rediscovering a balance and symbiotic relationship between the man-made and the natural environment. Our goal was not just to be less bad, it was to find a way to make buildings good, even regenerative. We are still a long way from that goal, but we are racing faster than anyone could have imagined in the right direction.
About a decade ago, the AIA changed its charter to include ecological sustainability as one of its principal tenets. There is not an AIA design award in the country that now fails to make it a priority. The AIA and virtually every other allied professional group (including builders, developers, planners, landscape architects, engineers, and interior designers) are waging an enormous education campaign to help research and promote sustainability. And it has had an effect. The U.S. Green Building Council has exploded onto the national scene with a green certification program called LEED (Leadership in Environment and Energy). It has proven wildly popular, with the number of projects using it increasing exponentially every year since the program’s inception.
What is a green building? Does it really make a difference?
A typical American home creates about thirty thousand pounds of carbon dioxide per year, which directly contributes to global warming. Additionally, carbon dioxide emissions have a general correlation to a host of other environmental impacts including pollution, resource consumption, and environmental degradation. Consider a house or commercial building that is carbon-neutral, meaning one that is “net-zero” for energy use and carbon dioxide emissions, putting as much back into the system as it takes out. This would be one of the key elements of a truly sustainable world.
Is it possible?
We’re doing it right now.
We recently completed a LEED Platinum, net-zero, carbon-neutral home. But would an average American really want that? Doesn’t it mean that we would have to live in teepees or in desert caves made of recycled tires? Not anymore. This house is beautiful, modern, full-sized, and mainstream. It has geothermal heat and cooling, solar electric panels and solar hot water, super-insulated windows, walls, and roof, grey water recycling, native landscaping, natural day-lighting, non-toxic finishes, sustainably harvested lumber, and a host of recycled components. Modern energy-efficient buildings can be indistinguishable from their conventional counterparts.
Banks like loaning on energy-efficient buildings. Realtors like selling sunny, thermally comfortable houses with small utility bills. Businesses like the higher retail sales and greater employee production that green buildings support, which lead to higher tax revenues, which can help fund things like healthy schools. Administrators like telling parents that their kid’s schools have great indoor air quality and natural day-lighting (which both contribute to lower absenteeism and substantially higher test scores). And parents like telling their neighbors about how their bamboo flooring saved a grove of trees that their better-educated and healthier kids will now have the pleasure of playing