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Issues > Energy > Campus Sustainability > Green BuildingGreen Building Design Most likely many of the buildings on your campus were built decades ago, when “green design” wasn’t even a word in the architect’s vocabulary. Even new buildings, however, are usually built to minimize the up-front cost. This means that more expensive features, like energy-efficient lighting or water conservation devices, are often not included even though they would save the university money over the lifetime of the building. Why is green design an important issue? Consider these facts:
Holistically, a well-designed green buildings is often much more pleasant to live or work in. They generally have better indoor air quality, good natural lighting, and better temperature control. Green Building Standards The focus of a campus green building campaign is usually on getting your administration to adopt “green design” standards for all future construction projects. The United States Green Building Council has created the LEED (“Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”) green building standards. The LEED system ranks green buildings in 4 categories depending on how environmentally friendly they are: “certified,” “silver,” “gold,” and “platinum.” The system uses a diverse set of criteria in 6 different areas: sustainable site, water efficiency, energy & atmosphere, materials & resources, indoor environment quality, and innovation & design process. Your school can join the LEED program and have its new buildings officially certified under the LEED program. For more details see: usgbc.org. For example, the University of California has agreed that all of its new buildings will be built to the Silver level or higher. The advantage of LEED is that it is a nationally recognized program; participation ensures that your school is not “greenwashing” by pretending that its buildings are greener than they actually are. On the other hand, the LEED program has received some justified criticism; the ranking system is still a work in progress, and there have been complaints that some criteria are weighted too heavily and others have been overlooked. Another downside, from the perspective of your university, is that participation in the program costs money. Thus, some schools have elected to require that their architects design their buildings to some level of LEED certification without actually getting the buildings certified. If your university makes a written commitment to this effect and this commitment appears in the university’s official building design standards, this is probably an acceptable compromise. Even if you can’t get your administration to agree on a formal design policy, you may be able to influence them to add more green features to buildings that are currently being planned. When you meet with members of the administration, find out if any new buildings are in the planning stages; if you wait until the plans for the building have already been released, there’s very little chance that you’ll be able to influence the administration to change them. If your group can influence the administration to build incorporate green design principles into one new building, there’s a greater chance that they’ll be willing to design greener buildings in the future. Other schools have decided to create their own green design standards based loosely on the LEED model. If your school is very resistant to pursue the LEED program, this might be a good option. For examples of other school’s green design standards see: Additional Resources
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