green building
Green Buildings are defined as “increasing the efficiency with which buildings and their sites use and harvest energy, water, and materials, and reducing building impacts on human health and the environment, through better site planning, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal, the complete building life cycle”. The Office of Federal Environmental Executive defines green building as “the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings and their sites use energy, water, and materials and reducing building impacts of human life and the environment, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal throughout the complete lifecycle.”
Another definition given by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency is as follows:
“Green building is the practice of creating structures and using processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle from site selection to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation and deconstruction. This practice expands and complements the classical building design concerns of economy, utility, durability, and comfort. Green building is also known as a sustainable or high performance building” (U.S Environmental Protection Agency, 2008)
But Green Buildings are also sometimes known as “sustainable buildings”, “environmental buildings”, “green home buildings” or just simply “green” which also leads to additional confusion. So, in simpler teams, the definition of a Green Building is the practice of designing, planning, and constructing buildings where the priority and emphasis is placed on the current and future environmental impact of the building.
Traditionally, the view has been that environmental awareness is of little concern in commercial building development, and the inclusion of sustainable design and features into the commercial property market is reluctantly performed; only as a reaction to expected future legislation (Birkeland, 2004). This view, however, has significantly shifted as developers and tenants have begun to see the exciting financial potential of ‘green’ design, development and management. (Corney, 2007)
This shift is a consequence of a common realization of the fact that incorporating environmental consideration into development creates buildings of superior quality and, ultimately, value (Cairns, 2004). Several studies of green buildings in the UK and US commercial markets have given evidence which suggests that green developments essentially enhance property value – they are healthier, less expensive to operate, more attractive to tenants and the public, and in the end, more profitable. (Corney, 2007)The introduction of an energy tax or ‘Carbon Tax’ for building occupiers is it seems, imminent, further stressing to businesses the importance of taking a responsible attitude to environmental issues. Senior managers and shareholders have become more aware of the potential impacts on the health of occupants from the working environment (Morris, 2007). Studies linking health, productivity, morale and absenteeism with the quality of the indoor environment have provided compelling evidence that good environmental sense also makes good business sense in investing in an organisation’s most valuable asset – its staff. In a study by the American Medical Association, it was shown that health problems resulting from poor indoor air quality cost 150 million workdays and about 15 billion US dollars in lost productivity every year (Corney,2007).
Green Commercial Buildings
Despite the evolution and development of ecological design theory and practices, for the most part sustainable ventures have been limited to small or medium scale undertakings. Furthermore, these ventures are occurring outside of urban areas on the rural fringe(Yeang,1999). While these projects are admirable in their intentions, it is large scale urban intensive buildings which command the greatest energy consumption, and thus require the largest degree of focus in environmental design planning. These buildings give the natural world the greatest problems and it should follow that the greatest efforts are concentrated on providing the preeminent ecological solutions for these buildings (Corney,2007).
Large commercial, residential and retail buildings consume vast amounts of energy but as cities continue to grow, so will the number and size of these environmental menaces(Corney,2007). Furthermore, rural-urban migration of the worldwide population is in escalation, with no evidence to suggest that this trend is slowing. Therefore urban developments will continue to swell in area and population. In order to cope with the demands of exponential urban expansion, developers can only resolve to create intensive urban developments in the form of high rise; multi-storey buildings (Yeang,1999).
This fact is irrefutable as long as land values increase and the concepts of urban land economics remain intact. i.e. build upwards, not outwards in order to save money (Yeang,1999). However, it has been argued that multi-storey developments are, in fact, ecologically desirable as they have a smaller ecological footprint due to smaller land coverage (Pitts,2004). In either case, the argument is rendered immaterial as the conclusion remains the same: Large scale urban intensive buildings are an imperative within the ecological design concepts and must be built with environmental objectives firmly in place (Yeang,1999).