Green Building Tour: Ten Shades of Green — Book Review

Photo Credit: Architectural LeagueThe book Ten Shades of Green: Architecture and the Natural World documents the exhibition of the same name assembled by Peter Buchanan at the Architectural League of New York in early 2000. The book was published in 2005, after the exhibition had traveled widely across the country.

With the buildings assembled here, the book could be construed as a small, self-contained Green Building Tour all its own.

The projects contained in the exhibition and the book all were built in the 1990s. All but one (an Australian housing project) are from Europe. There are also four residential projects - single family houses - at the end, and all of these are North American examples (though widely drawn from Nova Scotia, Texas, California, and Arizona). The projects include a museum in Switzerland, a skyscraper bank headquarters in Germany, and academic buildings in the Netherlands and England.

The buildings range in style and approach, as well. One of the points Buchanan makes in his introduction is that there is no one green style. "Instead there are countless ways design can address and synthesize green issues." Green design integrates all aspects of the building. Results can be widely varied, and different conditions, different uses for the buildings, different clients and users, all contribute to a widely varied set of conditions, and the results are buildings that vary in their configuration, appearance and incorporation of technology. However, despite all of these differences, they all share commonalities that can be identified in all of them as being green buildings.

Buchanan also lays out ten elements that are important in green design, although he does not look for all of the projects to address all of these criteria. Some only address a few of the ten points, while some others incorporate more than half of them. The ten facets of green architecture which Buchanan identifies include:

• Photo Credit: Architectural League Low Energy/High Performance
• Replenishable Sources
• Recycling: Eliminating Waste and Pollution
• Embodied Energy
• Long Life, Loose Fit
• Total Life Cycle Costing
• Embedded in Place
• Access and Urban Context
• Health and Happiness
• Community and Connection

While some of the ideas may not seem as radical and groundbreaking as they may have been a decade ago, the buildings that are featured are still fresh and exciting.

Some of the ten concepts are not given the importance they deserve within the framework of LEED and Green Globes and other product-oriented rating systems. For example, the concept of "Long Life, Loose Fit" recognizes that buildings need to be adaptable over time. A building will not be used by people in the same way as it was 50 years ago, nor will a building built today meet the exact needs of users a century from now. Buildings that have enough flexibility in their design that they can adapt to programmatic changes over time will be rehabilitated, renovated, and will continue to be useful, rather than becoming outdated and unworkable derelicts that must be demolished and replaced.

Photo Credit: Architectural LeagueRather than reflecting a design to meet a checklist of expectations, in some ways, these buildings offer a purer vision of what it takes to be a green building. They may not be as tightly constrained in order to meet a LEED Platinum rating as some more recent buildings are. But they offer a more expressive and varied approach to the possibilities of buildings that merge excellent design and green principles.

The Architectural League has a website with the different case studies, and it is well worth spending some time to visit the site and see what Buchanan is talking about. But the real eye candy is in the book itself, which, though a slim volume, offers a lot of photographs of green buildings that were green before the USGBC had even begun the LEED program.

Link:
Ten Shades of Green Website

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