GO GREEN WITH ‘GREEN BUILDINGS’
With our society leaning toward a healthier environment and inventing ways to help save the earth, the term green now takes on a whole new meaning. One way to support an environmentally conscious lifestyle is with GREEN BUILDINGS.
WHAT ARE GREEN BUILDINGS?
Green Building refers to a comprehensive approach to designing, constructing and renovating buildings that prioritizes human and environmental health, while also taking into account aesthetics, comfort, economics, and performance on multiple levels. It is a form of environmentally sensitive design and construction. Energy-saving, sustainable development and natural materials are all hallmarks of this form of construction. It explores a relationship between architecture and ecology.
Green building, also known as high performance or sustainable building is characterized by innovative design and construction practices that reduce or eliminate the negative impacts of buildings on the environment and the building occupants.
Green building focuses on five main areas:
- sustainable site planning & use
- efficient and ecological water use & management
- energy efficiency & renewable energy
- conscious choices of materials and resources
- healthful indoor environmental quality
THE PROCESS
Green building begins with an Integrated Design Process. Unlike a conventional design process, where architects, engineers, designers, builders, and owners fulfill their roles in isolation from one another, Integrated Design emphasizes a team approach that involves joint performance goal setting, collaboration, and creative “outside the box” solutions. This approach optimizes the potential for designs that reduce costs, maximize efficiency, comfort, and functionality and minimize the negative impacts of construction on public health and the environment.
ELEMENTS OF GREEN BUILDING
Green Building is essentially about recognizing and better understanding the relationship building design has with the environment, and building occupants; and then ensuring that design maximizes human and environmental health. Green building practices that can be followed are:-
Site Selection - a building’s orientation to the sun, wind, and weather can significantly alter building energy use. Treating building sites with care can help improve or restore stressed eco-systems, improve drainage and quality of life for building occupants.
Energy Efficiency
The following strategies contribute to this goal:-
- Passive design strategies can dramatically affect building energy performance. These measures include building shape and orientation, passive solar design, and the use of natural lighting.
- Develop strategies to provide natural lighting.
- Install high-efficiency lighting systems with advanced lighting controls
- Use a properly sized and energy-efficient heat/cooling system in conjunction with a thermally efficient building shell.
- Maximize light colors for roofing and wall finish materials; install high R-value wall and ceiling insulation; and use minimal glass on east and west exposures.
- Minimize the electric loads from lighting, equipment, and appliances.
- Renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and geothermal can dramatically reduce the buildings’ impact on the environment
Materials Efficiency
- Select sustainable construction materials and products by evaluating several characteristics such as reused and recycled content, zero or low off gassing of harmful air emissions, zero or low toxicity, sustain ably harvested materials, high recyclables, durability, longevity, and local production. Such products promote resource conservation and efficiency.
- Use dimensional planning and other material efficiency strategies. These strategies reduce the amount of building materials needed and cut construction costs.
- Reuse and recycle construction and demolition materials.
Water Efficiency
- Design for dual plumbing to use recycled water for toilet flushing or a gray water system that recovers rainwater for site irrigation.
- Minimize wastewater by using ultra low-flush toilets, low-flow shower heads, and other water conserving fixtures.
- Use re-circulating systems for centralized hot water distribution.
- Install point-of-use hot water heating systems for more distant locations.
- Meter the landscape separately from buildings. Use micro-irrigation (which excludes sprinklers and high-pressure sprayers) to supply water in non turf areas.
- Use state-of-the-art irrigation controllers and self-closing nozzles on hoses
Occupant Health and Safety
Buildings with good overall environmental quality can reduce the rate of respiratory disease, allergy, asthma, sick building symptoms, and enhance worker performance. .
- Choose construction materials and interior finish products with zero or low emissions to improve indoor air quality.
- Provide adequate ventilation and a high-efficiency, in-duct filtration system.
- Heating and cooling systems that ensure adequate ventilation and proper filtration can have a dramatic and positive impact on indoor air quality.
- Prevent indoor microbial contamination through selection of materials resistant to microbial growth.
- Provide effective drainage from the roof and surrounding landscape, install adequate ventilation in bathrooms, allow proper drainage of air-conditioning coils, and design other building systems to control humidity.
BENEFITS OF GREEN BUILDINGS
- 30 to 40% reduction in operational costs
- Green corporate image
- Efficient use of energy, water, material and other resources.
- Health & safety of building occupants
- Improve productivity of occupants
- Reduces the overall impact on the environment.
- Reduces pollution
- Imbibe best operational practices from day one
- Incorporate latest techniques & technologies
GREEN BUILDING RATING SYSTEM
LEED
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a rating system devised by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) to evaluate the environmental performance of a building and encourage market transformation towards sustainable design. The system is credit-based, allowing projects to earn points for environmentally friendly actions taken during construction and use of a building. LEED was launched in an effort to develop a “consensus-based, market-driven rating system to accelerate the development and implementation of green building practices.”
Why Use LEED?
LEED is a voluntary program; however, obtaining a LEED certification projects a positive environmental image to the community. Additionally, using many green building practices can result in energy and cost savings over the life of the structure. Also, it is a certification used worldwide to rate a building as a Green Building and enhances the corporate image & marketability of a project.
With the building industry in India poised for major growth & stiff competition, Green building is the mantra for the building industry today. Green buildings squarely addresses ecological & environmental impacts in a holistic manner & at the same time offers tremendous economic benefits, SO-GO GREEN.
Anju Sharma
www.dfa.in
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Great Article!!