Making it Easier to be Green
Green design includes energy conservation, but that's not what it's all about. It's about having good air quality both indoors and outdoors, making the environments in which we work, live, study and play healthier and more comfortable and conserving all of our natural resources.
This site will provide a balanced, holistic view that includes advice about saving energy, water and other natural resources, improving indoor air quality, using environmentally responsible design and construction techniques and minimizing waste.

I will be focusing on interiors for three reasons:

  • We spend about 90% of our time indoors.
  • Buildings in the United States annually consume about 30% of our total energy and 75% of our electricity.
  • As a New York State Certified Interior Designer and a LEED Accredited Professional, I want to share my knowledge and expertise with you.
Sustainable design and construction can be done in many different styles and using a wide variety of materials. There are examples of healthy, sustainable, comfortable and inviting interiors for commercial, not-for-profit and residential clients on the web site for Interior Design Solutions.
You can use the labels on the sidebar to locate entries that you want to read. For instance, most people might want to look at the entries for "Green Homes," but "Green Finance" would be of more interest to professionals involved in the design, construction, management, financing and marketing of buildings.

Monday, August 17, 2009

GSA Study Shows Benefits of Building Green


There's good news for proponents of sustainable design and construction who have been questioned about the validity of statistical analyses of benefits that are based upon modeling, rather than actual data. A comprehensive post-occupancy study of twelve green buildings by the Federal Government's General Services Administration using actual performance data has confirmed some of the benefits of green building. Eight of the buildings in the study were LEED Certified and the rest were built to other standards such as Energy Star or CA Title 24.

The graph above shows some of the results of the study, which was based upon a minimum of twelve months of operating data for each building beginning no sooner than six months after occupancy.

There is additional information on this subject on this eco-structure blog:

http://www.eco-structure.com/green-building/sustainable-proof.aspx

The entire study, “Assessing Green Building Performance,” is available in this section of the GSA site:

http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?contentType=GSA_DOCUMENT&contentId=24609&noc=T
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