Green Building For Life

2009-02-20

Mark Darrall – February 19, 2009 – The Star Press – Muncie, IN

We here in Indiana take a certain pride in the fact that we have been behind the times as we buck the latest trends and styles from “the coasts.”

Frankly, some of those trends are probably worth bucking, but others certainly are not.

We continue to do so at our peril.

Green building – that is, designing and making buildings that use less energy, less water, are more healthy for their users and surrounding communities – is a trend we can no longer mock as being only for granola-munching tree-huggers. When one of the world’s largest developers receives awards from the U.S. Energy Star program and a major U.S. bank owns more green buildings than anyone else in the world, it’s safe to say green design is no longer a fad or a buzzword.

It will increasingly become the standard. In fact, it already has become the standard in quite a few communities where green building certification is required for public sector, and in some cases private sector, buildings.

Late last year, Governor Daniels issued an executive order requiring that certain new and renovated State-owned buildings be capable of being certified as green buildings. The Indiana legislature has been working on bills with similar goals for the past few years.

We currently take a building’s safety for granted; we use a building in confidence that in the event of fire or other damage we will be able to escape safely. This has been due to life safety science working in concert with the development of building regulations. Similarly, building science is making it possible to create buildings that are not only healthier for their users, but more efficient for their owners and therefore more profitable for the organizations that use them.

In short, green building should not be seen as a passing fad, or something that is borne of altruism. Of course, it can be done for these reasons, but more and more, green buildings are becoming the standard because they are a reasonable and logical response to the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

In future articles, I’ll explore some of the issues driving green building and how the industry is responding. I’ll share some of the work we do at our firm, A2SO4, as we work to design buildings and neighborhoods that act beyond their boundaries to do more than just save energy and water but also actually enhance the lives of not only their occupants but their communities.

Mark Darrall is a LEED Accredited Professional and a project manager at A2SO4, an Indianapolis architecture, interiors and design firm. He is Secretary of the Indiana Chapter of the US Green Building Council. Mark also specializes in historic preservation and was involved in several façade restorations in Muncie as well as the award-winning restoration of Muncie’s Cardinal Greenway C&O Depot on Wysor Street. Mark lives in Yorktown.