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Written by Golda Velez

Tuesday, 24 March 2009 15:34

Architects make choices - a lot of choices, applying a sort of precise creativity that balances environmental sustainability and asthetics with engineering principles and cost. So it seems natural that architects are taking a lead role in the Green Building movement, which addresses factors from energy conservation to recycled building materials, to toxicity of chemicals, to native plantings and more. The relative importance of the various factors - that "How Green is Green?" question - is addressed by a point system published by the US Green Building Council. Its called LEED, standing for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and encompasses a growing suite of standards updated regularly by committee with an open public approval process.

While LEED isn't new - it began in 1994 - it is gaining prominence along with the environmental movement. I first learned about LEED in my interview with Tom Kapusta, a leading Chicago architect who landed perhaps the dream green job of building the resource library for the US Green Building Council itself! Kapusta has been doing green architecture for the last two decades and has been deeply involved in the evolution of the field.

I asked Tom Kapusta how innovations become established, how people in the field communicate, and if there is still room for the garage inventor. According to Kapusta, scattered innovations by small companies and individuals have been adopted and standards have emerged so that the market has 'changed format in the last 8 years - within the last 8 years there is new compliance in the marketplace." Thus, energy efficient ratings, product transparency is now available from the bigger suppliers. New innovations are still coming out constantly, however, and "very often, the things really making a difference are not yet embraced in a mass market way."

Thus the architects job includes constantly evaluating new suppliers, sorting the true new innovations from the hype. It means sifting through the mass of information that is out there, to make sure it is accurate and statistics are coming from reliable third party sources such as GreenGuard and EnergyStar. Then the options must be presented to the client in a summarized way showing the ROI - return on investment - of the different choices. Some of the ROI is clearly quantifiable, such as specific amount of energy saved per year; and some is quantifiable as environmental factors by the LEED point system. But the architect has more to offer - such as Kapusta's 'light shelf' innovation that reflects natural light up to the ceiling to diffuse it throughout the space - harder to quantify but perhaps key to the feel of the final building space.

Being a programmer tuned into the open source movement, I also asked Kapusta about how innovations propagate and are improved upon in the green building arena. Sometimes the answer is publishing in magazines, or just explaining new innovations to colleagues in open forums. While there is some tendancy to 'own' new designs and keep intellectual property private, ther eis also a fair amount of sharing. He's spent the entire last year telling the story of the innovations developed for the US Green Building project, and in this case "you don't think twice about sharing information...it would be good to look back over the last 15-20 years and document the climate change that we've influenced, to say 'here's the difference our project made'".

Perhaps this site can help serve as a repository for such open content type materials. Another idea that appeared in the conversation - the need for a clearinghouse of recycled building materials available form soon to be demolished structures. Although many times materials are recycled by organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, or found uses for by networking, in other cases valuable material ends up in landfills. For example, Kapusta is involved in renovating the reptile exhibit for the Brookfield Zoo - but most glass recyclers won't take the large sheets of plate glass that will be available.

We are looking into the possibility of having bGreenSmart serve as such a clearinghouse, possibly starting by use of simple classified ads. Feedback or partners welcome in this effort! As Kapusta said, recycling the material is not just a 'win-win' - its a 'win-win-win' for the renovator, the recycler, and the environment.

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