Design for Life: Is There Life After Buildings?
The best way to conserve energy is to do it in a way that enhances human energy.
January/February 2002
By Carol Venolia
What is the most important aspect of an ecological home? Is it green materials? Energy efficiency? Indoor air quality? Small size? I contend it’s none of these. All these aspects are important means to reaching the goal of living harmoniously with the rest of life on earth, but they only tangentially touch on the core issue.
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What is that issue? If the problem we’re trying to solve is planetary loss of vitality, then buildings are not the source of the problem. It’s true that creating, inhabiting, and demolishing buildings consumes a vast amount of natural resources, creates indoor and outdoor air pollution, and swells our landfills. But by blaming the buildings, we overlook the simple truth: Human choices drive those processes.
This may seem too obvious to mention. However, we often ignore the fact that it’s our mindset that needs to change. For centuries, the Western worldview has been that humans are separate from—and a cut above—other life forms, free to consume the earth’s resources at our whim without fear of backlash. Even those of us who consciously reject that view often find with embarrassment that our habits haven’t caught up with our beliefs. I had a very politically aware client who was crowing about the beautiful siding he’d bought for his passive-solar house—until he suddenly realized with dismay that he’d bought old-growth redwood. This type of compartmentalized thinking is woven so intricately into our culture and our buildings that it is virtually invisible. But this is not a natural way to think; it is learned, and we need to unlearn it.
Many green building programs appear to focus on replacing resource-consuming materials with more sustainably sourced materials, improving energy efficiency, recycling waste, and otherwise making as few waves as possible in the great American psyche. Numerous demonstration green homes make a point of proving to potential consumers that they don’t need to give up their existing lifestyle in order to live in an eco-home.
But this approach can lead to such rationalizations as, “Hey, I insulated my house and put in compact fluorescents; I can afford to go drive my SUV around the block until it drops.” Examples of such myopic behavior abound in green building. I’ve seen straw bale homes that used more wood than a conventional wood-frame house. One famous green builder bulldozed a perfectly good house and sent it to the landfill to make way for his demonstration “resource-efficient” home, only realizing later that he’d created more waste than he’d saved.
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