LEDs Lightemitting Diodes
LEDs are a revolutionary new lighting technology that reduce energy consumption, allow lighting to be programmed by computer and permit wide variations in lighting color. LEDs use chips, not bulbs, so emit a lot less heat than incandescent or even fluorescent lamps. Made with computer chips, they are easily dimmable and programmable. A good example is a new product from Herman Miller that's winning design awards. Shown below, the Leaf personal light offers maximum lighting options with less...
Onsite Sewage Treatment
We live in a flush without fear society, in which most of us just flush away and presume that they will take care of it somewhere downstream. Of course, for most of us, our downstream is someone else's upstream Nevertheless, for the most part, this is a reasonable presumption, since modern sewage treatment systems have been perfected over the past 100 years, and flush toilets have been around since Thomas Crapper first popularized them in London in the 19th century.104 However, a basic...
Feng Shui
Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese system for the harmonious placement of buildings on a site and for the placement of rooms and objects within a building or office. The goal is to allow the free movement of a subtle energy called chi that permeates the world. Most martial arts systems are based philosophically on the movement of this subtle energy. In Feng Shui, cities and homes are seen as intimately linked with both the landscape and the cosmos. According to one expert, in China, Every activity...
Protect and Enhance Indoor Environmental Quality
Provide non-smoking buildings, or separate ventilation systems where smoking is allowed such as in high-rise housing . Monitor delivery of outside air ventilation so that it responds to demand by using sensors for carbon dioxide levels to adjust air flow. The Center for Neighborhood Technology, Chicago, Illinois, designed by Farr Associates, a LEED Platinum certified project, shows some of the elements that make up a green building project. Energy use is estimated to be 50 less than a standard...
Waterfree Urinals
Urinals waste more than 150 billion gallons of fresh water per year, equivalent to the water use of 1,500,000 homes, at an average use of 300 gallons per day per home.157 The average urinal installed since 1992 uses 1 gallon per flush, which is the code requirement, based on the 1992 federal Energy Policy Act. Overall, the average might be closer to 2 gallons per flush for all urinals now installed. Think of more than 78 million men at work,158 making an average of three flushes per day, five...
Design
Design is the mantra of our times. In architecture, celebrity designers such as Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano and Santiago Calatrava are international icons. Management guru Tom Peters began talking about the design decade several years ago he says, Design is the seat of the soul.41 In his view, every business needs to incorporate the essence of design thinking elegance with economy. With noted architect Michael Graves designing for Target and Martha Stewart for K-Mart, and stores such as Design...
Stormwater Management
A basic principle of sustainable design is that buildings should be able to supply all their water needs from the annual rainfall on the project site and from recycling the wastewater generated by a project, effectively getting several uses out of the same amount of rainwater. At the present time, it's not always possible for projects to use all of the rainfall on a site, so they need to reduce the impact of new development on downstream flows from stormwater running off a site. The problems...
Displacement Ventilation
Displacement ventilation is the name given to a number of techniques for letting natural forces distribute air in spaces by having cooler air displace warmer air in a space, much as filling a bathtub with cold water will eventually displace hot water flowing out the drain. Displacement ventilation has a number of virtues for the open-plan office environment, or cubicle farm. It uses far less energy than fan-forced ventilation the ubiquitous overhead air diffusers that put a cold draft right on...
Historic Preservation
Historic preservation and green buildings go together nicely. If green buildings are all about sustainability, what could exemplify this value better that reusing an older building, making it suitable for another 50 to 100 years of active use In Portland, the Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center is a great example of building renovation. Under the leadership of Ecotrust, a regional nonprofit, the ioo-year-old two-story warehouse was transformed into a modern office building. A partial third story...
New Urbanism
New Urbanism is a movement launched in the early 1980s by planners and architects such as Andr s Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk in Miami. One of the earliest projects to demonstrate the principles of the New Urbanism was the village of Seaside in the Florida panhandle, near Ft. Walton Conceptual design of a New Urbanist town center for Normal, IL,from Farr Associates, Chicago. Conceptual design of a New Urbanist town center for Normal, IL,from Farr Associates, Chicago. Beach. These...
Education
We shape our buildings thereafter they shape us, attributed to Sir Winston Churchill, aptly describes one of the more important aspects of green buildings what they teach the occupants and the public about how buildings should be designed, built, renovated and operated. Properly done, green buildings reflect designers' and builders' expectations about high-performance design and can teach the public what to ask for in their own homes and workplaces. The people who live and work in them can...
Microturbines
Microturbines are a relatively new technology with significant applications in green building design. By using natural gas as a fuel also diesel or propane , microturbines generate electricity and hot water, rather than just one or the other. In this way, about 80 of the energy value in the fuel is converted to useful work. Microturbines can range from 25 kilowatt kW output to 500 kW, have low emissions of nitrogen oxide, are about 20 to 30 efficient in producing electric power and can produce...
Native American and Native Canadian Ways of Living
If there is an underlying theme in green buildings that has a long history, it's that our contemporary civilization needs to learn the art of living in place for an extended period of time. For most North Americans, the Native American and Canadian way of life, with respect for the land, viewing the Earth as a Mother who gives all life, offers a way to live today to benefit seven generations into the far future. Most Americans would also agree that the attraction of this way of life is...
Living Buildings
One of the concerns of the green building movement is how to move toward a zero-carbon footprint for buildings in which people will still want to live, play and work. Current green building rating systems such as LEED focus primarily on reducing impacts from conventional building construction and operations, but do not guarantee an environmentally positive outcome. To meet this challenge, leading architects have begun designing positive impact buildings that actually produce more energy than...
Return on Investment
Green buildings eventually will compete in the marketplace with standard buildings, so it's reasonable to ask that they be evaluated financially and economically on the same basis. Return on investment also expressed as internal rate of return or net present value is fundamental to evaluating economic decisions. Simply put, return on investment is how much I plan to make, either annually or totally, from an investment, with all numbers expressed in today's dollars. If I'm going to take the risk...
Vastu Shastra
Similar to Feng Shui, a design philosophy and approach known as Vastu Shastra is based on teachings of the ancient scriptures of India. Introduced into the US by the American practitioners of Transcendental Meditation TM , Vastu Shastra aims to harmonize people, buildings and land. While individual homes have been built using these ancient principles, the largest commercial expression of this approach to creating healthy work and living environments is an office building in Rockville, Maryland,...
Locally Sourced Materials
About 20 years ago in Italy, the slow food movement began, with an emphasis on the sourcing of local foods with higher nutritional content and a less rushed way to eat, certainly as a reaction to the American fast-food movement sweeping the globe. In the US, many estimates have food traveling an average of 1,200 miles from farm or fishery to table. Think about this the next time you buy Alaska Copper River salmon in Arizona or grapes from Chile in midwinter in Chicago. In the same vein of...
Lighting Design
Lighting is one of the critical components of green building design, accounting for 23 of a typical office building's energy use.96 Lighting design is also an important factor in raising the productivity level of office workers. Over the years, recommended illumination levels have gradually come down, from the brightly lit fluorescent workplaces of the 1970s, where 100 foot-candles was the recommended luminance, to today's standard green building design of 30 foot-candles at the work surface....
Lowflush Toilets
The current plumbing code requires toilets that use no more than 1.6 gallons per flush. This standard was adopted in 1992 replacing the old limit of 3.5 gallons per flush and has not changed in 15 years, even as water problems in the US are escalating. Responding to the growing concern over excessive water use in buildings, many companies have begun to offer even lower-flush toilets and urinals. Two good examples are dual-flush valves for tankless toilets the kind you use in public places and a...