Building Green, 3-Dimensionally

Sometimes you just get stuck with a term. While we at 3-D wholeheartedly support the principles and concepts that drive “green building,” none of us has ever been particularly enamored with the term.

But then, the alternatives are not all that appealing either—“environmentally friendly,” “sustainable.” They seem to us more seductive and ambiguous than enlightening and focused. And aren’t all three of these ultimately a contradiction in terms? Isn’t building fundamentally an effort to separate us from our environment, and architecture one of our best efforts to make a lasting physical expression of human endeavor?

We like the definition that one branch of the Environmental Protection Agency has offered for a “green building:”

“…purposefully designed to reduce both the direct and indirect environmental consequences associated with its construction, occupancy, operation, maintenance and eventual decommissioning.” (www.epa.gov/region03/p2/building.htm)

We like this definition for three reasons:

1. It emphasizes design, not materials. We think that too often the concept of green building is limited to or is focused on of what buildings are built, rather than how they are built.
2. It uses the term reduce, strongly suggesting that all buildings have significant environmental impact, and the goal is to make that impact less, not zero.
3. It takes into account all phases of the building process.

So this definition is comprehensive, but is it helpfully focused?

By now you may be able to tell that we stay focused by thinking and doing in threes. We focus on the design, construction and operation of quality-built, high performance, durable buildings. This is what green building means to us.

We believe the best ways to reduce the environmental impacts of a building are to:

1. Design and build it right—focus on quality assurance and quality control.
2. Design and build for high performance—deliver functionality to the occupants and efficiency to the environment.
3. Design and build for durability—design/build/commission the structure and its functional components for the greatest service life.

Is this all that there is to “green building?” Certainly not¹. But we think it’s pretty hard to build green without them.

¹ Notably absent from this discussion of green building is the term indoor air quality. We believe that indoor air quality is very important (and is a significant part of number two above—high performance); but, it’s an important human, not an environmental, issue. Its absence in the EPA definition cited above is another reason we like this particular definition.

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