As climate change and environmental impacts become increasingly pressing issues, the world of architecture has responded through an emphasis on sustainability and energy-efficient building design. Green architecture, also known as sustainable or high-performance architecture, aims to lessen the overall impact of the built environment on human health and natural habitats by efficiently using energy, water, and materials, and working with instead of against natural systems.
Green Building Materials
When envisioning a green building, it’s easy to focus on additions like solar panels or green roofs. But sustainability in architecture begins with the materials used to construct the building itself. Green materials include natural and renewable sources like bamboo, straw, and wood. They may also encompass recycled products like metals, concrete, brick, and aggregates salvaged from construction and demolition sites. Even insulation materials play a role through offerings like dense-packed cellulose from recycled paper waste.
Beyond sourcing, certain materials are greener than others for attributes like durability and energy efficiency. For example, insulation made from sheep’s wool offers carbon storage as well as excellent insulting properties to enhance a building’s performance. Green materials also aim to reduce waste in production processes and eliminate harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found in items like paints, adhesives, and varnishes. Especially when locally-sourced, green materials minimize the environmental costs associated with transportation while benefiting local economies.
Energy Efficient Building Design
Energy efficiency is a key tenet of green architecture and influences all aspects of building design. Strategies like building orientation, window placement, insulation use, space allocation, and systems design all impact how much energy a structure demands.
Passive solar building design takes advantage of sunlight’s heating and lighting abilities through orientation along an east-west axis and concentrated fenestration on the south face. This allows solar energy to offset a portion of heating and electricity needs, lowering the building’s overall energy requirements. Strategies like solar shading, overhangs, insulation, thermal mass, and high-performance windows prevent overheating while retaining wanted solar gains during colder months.
Incorporating vegetation via green roofs and walls also contributes to energy efficiency. Plants help insulate buildings from temperature extremes, reduce heating and cooling demands, and lower urban heat island effects.
Integration with Nature
Beyond green roofs and walls bringing nature to occupants, green architecture emphasizes buildings’ connections to surrounding ecosystems through site design and holistic systems thinking. Constructing on already degraded sites, orienting structures to maximize opportunities from sunlight and winds, managing stormwater sustainably, and enabling natural ventilation reflect this priority.
Minimizing light pollution also allows occupants to maintain their circadian rhythms in sync with daylight. And framing views of nature enhances biophilic design.
Overall, green architecture aligns the built realm with the living one through conscientious siting, ecosystem enhancements, habitat creation, and marrying engineering with ecology.
Notable Examples of Green Buildings
Innovative projects around the world bring green architecture to life in beautiful and functional ways:
*** The Change Initiative Building, Dubai***
The Change Initiative in Dubai is the first fully net positive energy commercial building in the Middle East and one of only a dozen worldwide. The structure generates 103% more energy than it uses yearly. In servicing the structure’s energy demands, various features like solar PV and solar thermal systems, energy recovery ventilation systems, and LED lights all contribute. Greywater recycling and drip irrigation further enhance the building’s impressive environmental report card.
*** Pixel Building, Australia ***
With a net zero energy design, Melbourne’s Pixel Building serves as a leading example for sustainability in Australia. The project includes a 130kW photovoltaic system, a 45kW solar hot water system, and a high-performance double glazed façade system.
Pixel’s “breathing” façade opens and closes in response to indoor air temperatures and humidity levels. This system eliminates the need for traditional air conditioning in the six-story office block while allowing ample fresh air and daylight. A smart building management system integrates with the façade to support indoor comfort levels as external conditions change.
*** The Spheres, Seattle ***
As an iconic expansion of the Amazon Seattle headquarters, the trio of glass domes known as The Spheres represents green architecture’s potential when paired with ample financial resources. At a construction cost of over $110 million, the Spheres encompass over 60,000 plants from 400 species filling a 4-story greenhouse. The project includes collaborative, nature-oriented spaces for Amazon employees complemented by cafes and meeting areas.
Sustainable strategies like high-performance insulation, radiant heating and cooling, underfloor air distribution, and reliance on indirect sunlight combine in support of this corporate green space’s mission. And the Spheres achieve net zero energy use through rooftop solar panels.
Leading Architects Championing Sustainability
Behind green architecture’s stunning implementations stand the innovative architects making sustainability an artistic endeavor:
*** Bjarke Ingels ***
As founder of the BIG group, Bjarke Ingels has brought sustainable design into popular imagination through visually stunning, nature-integrating forms combined with extreme functionality. Examples include
- The Mountain Dwellings residential complex in Denmark, famed for its integration of a parking garage roof slope as a climbing wall/open space for residents.
- The LEED Gold-certified Via 57 West building in New York integrates a south facing courtyard that naturally draws light and air into apartments while providing stunning Hudson River views.
*** Elizabeth Diller ***
Founding principal of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Elizabeth Diller is the first woman to receive the Architectural League of New York President’s Medal, architecture’s highest honor. Alongside partner Ricardo Scofidio, Diller blends sustainability and cutting-edge design through projects like:
- The Broad art museum in Los Angeles features a perforated concrete veil filtering daylight to galleries through skylights while reducing solar gain.
- The Berkeley Art Museum overhangs incorporate solar cells laminated between glass panels serving as guardrails to generate onsite solar power.
*** Jeanne Gang ***
MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang leads Studio Gang Architects in designing functional and sustainable architecture reflecting site, culture, and community identity. Notable green projects include:
- The Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo integrates vegetation-covered pathways and rammed earth viewing platforms while rehabilitating native habitat.
- Aqua Tower’s iconic wave-like Chicago form emerges from passive solar design strategies, heating/cooling load reductions, and water conservation measures.
Green architecture will only continue gaining prominence as environmental priorities steer the building sector toward ambitious efficiency targets and comprehensive conceptions of sustainability.
Green Building FAQs
What are the benefits of green architecture?
Green architecture provides environmental, economic, and health benefits through enhanced energy and water efficiency, smarter material sourcing, healthier indoor environments, ecosystem protection, cost savings, and future-focused value.
How much more expensive is a green building?
While sustainable design features and systems may increase upfront costs around 5-10% on average, the investment pays off through 40+ year lifespans and decades of operational savings from energy, water and maintenance reductions. Most green buildings achieve cost parity with conventional buildings within several years.
What makes a building green?
Building aspects like siting, materials, water use, energy sources, waste management, indoor air quality and access to nature all contribute to a structure’s “greenness.” Rating systems like LEED, the Living Building Challenge, and ENERGY STAR benchmark different sustainability metrics. Generally, green buildings use resources efficiently, are healthy to inhabit, and have minimal environmental impact.
Do green buildings increase property value?*
Yes - numerous studies reveal certification under rating systems like LEED consistently correlates with increased building value. As climate change impacts intensify, green real estate’s higher resale potential also lowers risk relative to conventional buildings.
How popular is green architecture?*
The green building market expands yearly as sustainability concerns drive development and benefit bottom lines. There is rising policy support and adoption of net zero standards as well. Green building now accounts for over 40% of all construction starts in the U.S.
Conclusion
Green architecture offers enormous potential for the building industry to lessen environmental damage while enhancing quality of life through beautiful, high-performance structures integrating sustainability and design. As climate change necessitates transitioning to post-carbon economies, the scalability and visual nature of architecture positions the field well to communicate shifting cultural priorities through renewed conceptions of buildings’ role relative to ecosystems and communities.
