The best green buildings are pleasant and healthy places for people. Truly sustainable design transcends mere technical, ecological, and economic issues.
Green architecture is an integration of environmental elements, spiritual and personal well-being, healthy household practices, architectural designs, and non-toxic building materials. The integration of all of these aspects creates the ideal, modern, nutritious home or work place.
Green architecture involves architects, clients, consultants, construction managers, and material suppliers, all of whom comprise the project green team, and all of whom possess the conviction that “it is highly desirable to live toxin-free in an increasingly polluted world.” Green architecture is for those who strongly believe that our planet is a precious commodity, something that should be greatly cared for through sustainable practices—such as recycling, non-polluting lifestyles, the focusing on restorative and healthy ways of living and harmonizing with the environment, and constructing buildings with hygienic materials and the organic designs of green architecture.
Architects who practice green architecture are not just designing projects that diminish energy consumption and pollution, nor are they simply creating homes with non-toxic plumbing, insulation, ventilation, and construction materials. Rather, green architects are inventing holistic designs for health-oriented clients—many of whom live invigorating, even evolved and sometimes spiritual lifestyles. Hence, these architects are creating projects that are fundamental to the green philosophy of living.
In green architectural buildings, you will find resources used more efficiency, lower energy consumption, improved and easier recycling capabilities, maximized natural light and outdoor views, diminished electromagnetic fields, and improved water and indoor air quality. Depending on the clients’ desires, a green home can include photovoltaics, wind power, solar water heating, thermal walls and floors, safe paints, varnishes, adhesives and finishes, and a healthy selection of furniture and furnishings. “There are numerous health benefits for clients who choose green architecture,” says Marilyn, who has served as Director of Sustainability and also as a member of the Board of Directors for the Monterey Bay Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “Green architecture is great for the environment, cost-effective, and best of all, everyone can do it. Architects, clients, and project consultants who consider themselves green are finding that a non-toxic living environment is compatible with beautiful architectural design. Green homes and offices are the future of architecture.”
The Green Template for Success:
Marilyn, as a lifelong resident of Santa Cruz, has seen firsthand all the teasing that the “organic, eco-mantra-spewing, granola-and-bean-sprout-eating” people of Santa Cruz have endured for over 25 years. But as she notes, “Santa Cruz has been a green, organic-lifestyle place for a long time, and now things are coming full circle. Currently, our way of living in Santa Cruz is something that many people want to emulate. Santa Cruzians are using what they were once teased about as a green region and turning it into their strength. Being green is a feather in the cap for Santa Cruz. We are leading the way for American cities in the pursuit of green architecture.” An example can be found in the City of Santa Cruz Green Building Program, the third mandatory residential green program in the United States.
In Santa Cruz, there is a budding awareness in regards to healthy homes. As Marilyn notes, “The world can be a happy, beautiful, and good place and you can have everything you want in life without creating any toxic effects if you pursue building your ‘dream-fantasy’ project with green and sustainable intent.” Marilyn is seeing an increase in the number of clients requesting green architecture and “non-toxic” green building materials. “There are no constraints on creativity due to green architecture, but rather, there exists a stimulus for clients and architects to find exciting, relevant, and health-affirming designs.”
Green building designs for larger-scale corporate, commercial, and industrial projects can involve meticulous surveys of the project’s ecology, local climate, and hydrology, plus state-of-the-art engineering analysis. The design process can occasionally be more detailed than for standard construction, involving computer studies and predictive modeling, as well as constant collaboration with environmental consultants. Projects are precisely engineered to facilitate a reduction (or elimination) of dependence on mechanical air conditioning and ventilation.
There are profitable advantages to green architecture in the business setting. The health of employees who work in green offices improves because they see working in a non-toxic environment, and psychologically, these employees will naturally experience a greater sense of well-being. Interaction between employees can improve noticeably as well. The end result of designing and building green offices is that absenteeism and staff turnover drop considerably, and productivity thereby increases.
Benefits to green architecture: Clients who choose green architecture can enjoy modern, attractive, healthy projects that exist in resonance with the environment. The best part about green architecture is that it can help create a soothing, natural and healthy non-toxic building in any “environment,” be it the woods, a coastline, rolling suburbia, or the corner of a busy intersection. Clients appreciate their newfound contact with the outdoors, especially if they have experienced the isolation of sealed and artificially lit and ventilated conventional buildings in the past. Well-designed green buildings immerse clients into the surrounding natural environment. Green architecture is sensually satisfying and emotionally fulfilling. There are financial benefits to green architecture in the form of state and federal government subsidies and tax credits for solar use. Utility companies offer property subsidies for buildings that use less energy than normal buildings.
With the environment becoming ever more fragile, green architecture should be a priority to anyone seeking architectural designs. In addition to environmentally centered buildings and designs that deliver lower fuel bills and reduced emission of pollutants green buildings also help clients acquire the reverential human aspirations of “fullness” and living peacefully within the natural world.