"Green" design, what do you think

[Andrewksu]

What are your views on what "green" design/lifestyle means and requires. As an architecture student, this is a major topic these days, but I wonder what everyone else thinks of this topic and it's importance. I am a conservative in a field of liberals, especially on this topic, and am interested in green design without the eco-freakishness. Comment away, and I will reply later with a little more on where i am going with this.

[Dog Gone]

Green design means incorporating uneconomic features into your design so that the inhabitants feel good about themselves, even though they are actually proving themselves to be morons.

[eagleye]

Andrew, What do you mean by "eco-freakishness?" So far as I am aware, green design means taking into consideration the environmental consequences of a project, both long and short term. Makes a lot of sense to me, both environmentally AND economically.

[LibWhacker]

It means equating humanity with the primordial ooze.

[KC Burke]

I have built some buildings using the type of systems you are refering to probably when you say "green design". They can have some intersting features, most of which impact first cost considerably and rarely have the features been pay-out sensible when life cycle costed.

But new systems never become feasible if some don't spend money on giving them a try to begin with.

[Andrewksu]

Do you work in KC? I am at Kansas State.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

When practical and economical I think it is a good idea. Otherwise I think it is more emotional hysteria on the environment...

[KC Burke]

You are aware of the Green Building Council Site and the Leeds systems etc?

[KC Burke]

I work all over the region and live in KC

[BigBobber]

If it means packing the middle and lower classes into Soviet-style dormitories in "transit villages" while the government workers and other elites enjoy the "open spaces", it is doomed to failure.

[Andrewksu]

Yes, I am considering taking the LEED cerification test in the near future. Check private reply, and I would like to get more information from you on client reactions and ways to sell sustainable arch.

[skr]

If a "green" approach is based on common sense, then fine. I doubt that there are any people who are all-out toxic freaks, as the Democrats would have everyone believe. Everyone has a stake in conserving our resources and looking for new ones. I heard just last week that recycling isn't going well and that they are even considering stopping it for a couple of years. It's too expensive and there aren't enough customers who are buying the recycled materials for manufacturing purposes. I wish we had a solar-powered home (or even a wind-mill although the home association would probably object mightily--not even allowed to have a clothesline in the back yard) and a hybrid car, but I certainly can't afford the initial cost.

[KC Burke]

I've done some work with William McDonough some years ago.

[tsomer]

Nothing wrong with stewardship--that's the ethos I grew up in. And there's nothing wrong with innovation either.

These were considered virtues in the past. The Green Revolution changed this; an ethic has become an ideology, force fed to us.

[Andrewksu]

BTTT

[Stefan Stackhouse]

I've always liked some of Christopher Alexander's writings. (A Pattern Language and The Timeless way of Building are his two best works.) He has a deep respect for traditional architecture that is the product of centuries, if not millenia, of human experience. In this, he might be considered to be somewhat analogous to Edmund Burke's political and social philosophy.

There is something to be said for building houses the same way that half-milennia-old-and-still-standing houses were built, both from a standpoint of plain old common sense (an important conservative value, by no means to be underestimated) and from the standpoint of this actually being an efficient -- and thus conserving -- use of resources. There is still room for progress, of course, but only for progress that is real and can prove itself to be genuinely "better", and not just "new" and "different".

Where Alexander tends to go wrong is that he seems to be too receptive to heavy handed central government land use regulation to implement his program, and this, of course, goes contrary to conservative ideals of minimum government and property rights. However, one can just ignore this aspect of his thinking, and be left with lots of good ideas that can certainly be implemented on a voluntary, free-market basis.

[KC Burke]

Principles of Architectural firms tell me their greatest concern is that they get few new graduates that are trained in the craft of architecture. The schools concentrate too much on theory, fringe trends and design flights of fancy. Many of the people they hire can't write a simple specification to CSI standards, can't run CAD and check their dimension strings, can't detail in the real world and instead, come out of school wanting to step right into the exotic end of the business. Therefore they can't be valuable staff in a productive business and help earn money.

By the time the new grad is really ready to be a project job captain, trends have changed, or OJT trained staff have left the supposedly brilliant grads in the dust.

That being said, Sustainable Materials and systems, sesitivity to envirmentally sensible products and the use of trends like Earth Coupled Mechanical Systems and Electrical Demand Off-Peak are very interesting techniques.

Many major companies have built projects examining the feasibility of these systems, even at major cost to themselves. Sometimes it is done for political correctness, sometimes for more sensible reasons.

[XLurk]

'Green Design' SHOULD mean, basically, Be as self-sufficient as possible, and Clean Up Your Own Mess (or preferably don't make a mess to begin with).

However, under current circumstances, it unfortunately means: enormous government intervention by the Behemoth Bureaucratic Despotism (BBD), and assorted sundry NGOs, therefore rendering life, production, business, and basic survival impossible.

I truly am an 'environmentalist' in the rational sense. But under the current regime of tyranny and junk-science, I am adamantly opposed to what now passes for 'environmentalism'.

Also, Self-Sufficiency is now, to a large degree, being zoned and regulated out of the realm of possibility.

[SR71A]

I can accept "Green Design", if you mean building fixtures and features that can save energy, like gold tint windows, limited solar, and so forth. Or anything that can conserve water. No silly fountains, if they don't recover 95%+ of the water. I also admire architecture that can blend in with a setting...like a southwestern theme in Sedona, AZ. But setting some sort of limitations on a building that does nothing for the place, or the costs of operating the building, are a waste, IMHO.

[Andrewksu]

I just read a couple of blurbs of McDonough's book, and plan on reading a little more.

For sustainable, or "green" design to be successful, it must APEAL to the mass market by way of cost efficency, asthetics, overall qualtiy and comfort, and finally ecological concerns. "Forcefeeding" the idea on people and buisnesses will only hurt the progress of responsible design. Many active solutions for sustainable design are on the verge of being cost effective, such as solar technologies. There are many aspects of sustainable design that are just good design, but have been ignored for various reasons.

A major problem I see is the permanance of things in out life. So many things are designed and purchased that are only temporary solutions and are a fix. For instance, power tools, they are cheaply made and last only a few years and then have to be thrown away and a new one purchased, but this wasn't always so. Here in our woodshop at KSU, we have tools dating back 60+ years, and they work beautifully.

This is also a problem in architecture, people and businsess want something right now, and for next to nothing. They really don't consider the lifespan of the building and the costs that come with it. A well designed building will be cheaper/easier to run will last longer and therfor be less expensive.

Sustainable design in many ways is just going back to principals that have been ignored recently because of our wealth and attitudes that come with that. One thing that has come with that is the decline of valuue of architectural services. I think that most people would be suprised with the average salary for recent architecture grads, here at KSU which is ranked fairly high, is about $28,000. This reflects the cheapest bidder competition that is going on in the field, which has led to the decline of quality in design. Now buisness expect a complex building for next to nothing, and it is hard to inject real quality of design and materials when you are fighting for every penny. Most buisnesses consider real estate in vary short terms, which I believe is a cost inefficent practice.