Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 9 – Community Development – Part 1 Building differently

This first part of community development deals more with business aspects involved in the technology of buildings.  For a while back in the 1960s especially, everyone went into cheap efficiency buildings – concrete blocks basically.  But buildings are where we work and live, and if they are sterile, then the people who live and work in them inevitably remain uninspired.  The environment around us is where we draw our nourishment.  Buildings that are simply functional tend to have a sterile feel about them.  They don’t inspire or even make one feel mentally or physically good – they lack that certain energy that allows creativity to flourish.  For thousands of years, the Chinese referred to this as Feng shui, a traditional practice that claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment.  Psychological studies of people in their work and living environments have shown this to have a lot of validity.  Author Richard Louv (Last Child in the Woods) talked about the positive effects of natural environments in our lives.  In short, environment is everything.  A building is not just a building.  Modern designers and architects since Frank Lloyd Wright have long recognized this fact.  Many historic builders also seem to have been aware of this as well.     

In 1994, the Sanborn Principles were the conclusion of a wide-ranging group of experts to explore the relatively new concept of sustainability. Their goal was to develop a set of guidelines for those wishing to pursue sustainable development. To do this, they imagined an idyllic city wholly designed for sustainability that revolved around being ecologically responsive with Healthy, Sensible Buildings.  These building had to be set in a Socially Just society that was culturally creative and both beautiful and pleasing to live in.  It also had to be physically and economically accessible, evolutionary adaptable to changes, and included continuous evaluations of premises and community values.  Any buildings had to have a clear set of priorities:

• Buildings must recognize that environmental resources are limited, and be designed accordingly
• Buildings must contribute to all of its occupants’ health.
• Buildings must be equally accessible across socioeconomic classes.
• Buildings must allow different ethnic groups to keep individual identities even while integrating into other societies
• Buildings must be designed so they are esthetically pleasing and in touch with nature.
• Buildings must be accessible and rich in resources to everyone who uses it.
• The design of a building must be continuously evaluated and improved, and also designed with the future in mind.

Sounds like a mouthful, but building functionality must also be esthetically pleasing for maximum effectiveness and efficiency.  But how do you actually put this into practice and remain economically viable in today’s current systems?

In 1995, Van der Ryn and Cowan helped pioneer principles of ecological design that reflect much of the spirit within the Sanborn Principles: solutions grow from place; ecological accounting informs design; design with nature; utilize ecosystem services and work well within their limitations; everyone is a designer and should contributes their ideas, and; make nature and natural environments visible everywhere.   Even the way we manufacture things needs to change as emphasized by the groundbreaking 2002 book by Braungart & McDonough Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (much more on this in an upcoming post soon).  In an effort to standardize and encourage green building.  The U.S. Green Building Council developed the ‘Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).’  It is an internationally recognized certification system to measure how well a building or community performs across several metrics that affect environmental quality: energy savings; water efficiency; CO₂ emissions reduction; improved indoor environmental quality; stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts; and innovation and design processes.  Why this so important is much more than resources and utilities efficiencies, it is also more cost effective for builders and buyers (i.e. saves money and resources) and also contributes to a better standard of living and quality of life).  What’s not to like? 

In the USA, LEED’s primary goals are thoughtful designs of human habitats to promote more environmentally friendly habits. This is emulated throughout the world as seem in the UK, with the UK Green Building Council.  Their vision stipulates that green building should allow mitigation and adaptation to climate change, Elimination of all waste and maximized resource efficiency, all while embracing and restoring the natural world, promoting biodiversity, optimizing the health and wellbeing of people, and creating long-term value for society and improving the quality of life.  Throughout Europe there is the  Green Building Programme (GBP), which is a voluntary program started in 2005, to “enhance the realization of cost-effective energy efficiency potentials by creating awareness and providing information support and public recognition to companies whose top management is ready to show actual commitment to adopt energy efficient measures in non-residential buildings.”  All sounds nice and noble.  Even China’s Greenbuild China serves as the flagship system for sustainability professionals and is a celebration of the intersection of humanity and the built environment.  Is it working? 

I certainly see much more green building going on all around the world, especially with big buildings and major entrepreneurial investors, mostly because of its money saving aspects, but also because of a new ethic that is creeping in to this whole system.  But you will excuse me if I am not dancing around in celebration of the changes we have witnessed within the last 20 years.  Yes, I see big buildings and small intentional communities that have embraced the needed green building changes.  At the local level, I see cost effective small changes like efficient windows, more insulation, low flow water delivery systems, and more efficient heating and cooling systems being installed.  Yet, it all seems a bit piecemeal with bigger priced items and personal environmental behaviors still lagging far behind.  Every home could be self-sufficient in its own energy generation and resource maximization system.  I have asked builders and developers why every home is not automatically built with all these features plus solar panels (PVS and thermal), a small wind generator, and geothermal coils under the garden for heating and cooling.  While some builders and developers know what I am talking about, most seem oblivious and are focused only on ‘traditional’ building techniques with profit first mindsets.   If change is to come in this building system then we the end-users have to initiate it.  Builders will build whatever they are paid to build, and developers will only respond to market pressures.  Poorer people do not currently have the financial resources to invest in ‘green building.’ The rich with an ecological ethic are already doing it.  So, any big change has to come from the middle classes willing to invest and push policy to make it a societal norm and not just something green thinkers do.  We need more early adopters if change is to happen quickly (see my earlier post Adopting a new way of thinking and living – Adopter Theory).