Tuesday, September 15, 2009

unLEED

For the record, I believe in global warming and if I knew how to save each individual polar bear, I'd do it in a heart beat. I think designing sustainably is one (of many) critical aspects to design. Not only for the sake of the environment, but also as a steward of your client's resources. They deserve a building that not only looks pretty, functions well, but also performs well environmentally.
For the record, I think LEED is a great idea. It has helped to promote the notion of sustainability within architecture, has brought it to the attention of many clients, and has created a system to help achieve a higher level of design.

But I have two problems with LEED. It's caters to elitism in it's execution and the very process of documenting LEED is unsustainable.

Enter my house: Our goal was to design a good, solid home that took sustainability into account and see how far we could go with LEED AT NO ADDITIONAL COST. LEED on a dime was how we discussed it. Could we make smart decisions and do the documentation without compromise to the home for the sake of the LEED documentation. I've just finished over 200 hours of documentation for LEED for Homes. This is where my story begins.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well if you want to save energy, you can get rid of the split door fridge in the photo ;-)
The are the least efficient of all refrigerators even more so if they have built in ice makers or water chillers.

MallaLubba said...

Is polar bear the new mac OS?

alleycatbabe said...

We were going to go for LEED for our new house but found out that it would cost more then $3000 to just have a nice piece of paper that says we're green. If it had been more like $300-1000 we might have actually considered it. We ended up deciding it was not necessary. We know our house is going to be sustainable and that's all that really matters in the end.

Mohka.co.uk said...

I thought polar bear was the new google update..?

http://www.mohka.co.uk