Examines 16 important qualities that green building materials should strive to achieve and that builders need to weigh during the materials selection process of a project. A well planned green building material selection process can help to ensure the best solution for a given project with given goals and constraints peculates up through the decision process.
Uses the metaphor of an energy fabric in order to discuss the perspective of viewing our lives, actions and the things in our lives from an energy point of view. The centrality of energy in our lives is explored through this metaphor and the importance for us to begin thinking more closely about our energy habits and how our lives depend on energy is examined. Energy and how we get it and how we use it is going to become a subject of increasing importance as the era of easy energy that has characterized the past century and a half draws to a close.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle… In this post Bob goes into some detail what this means in practice for building green; listing various practices that builders can use in order to achieve their these sustainability goals. The post covers such subjects as runoff, site disturbance, materials etc. as well as the importance of sustainable design practices that reduce the impact of the built space on the surrounding environment both during construction and during the buildings life.
What is the meaning and importance of embodied energy as a measure of sustainability and why we need to develop widely accepted standards for embodied energy? This article explores this somewhat arcane concept that seeks to measure how much energy is “embodied” in a product or service; in other words how much energy is used throughout the entire life cycle of the thing being measured including the energy required by decommissioning, disassembly and deconstruction.
