What is Sustainable or Green Building?
Building to green or sustainable principles involves the re-evaluation of building technologies and procedures of procurement, not a tabula rasa, but a reorientation, driven by the realisation that the fossil fuel economy has set us onto a path of self destruction as we poison ourselves and destroy the ecosystems of our planet.
In our approach to low energy and low environmental impact buildings we focus first and foremost on the fundamentals of the physical envelope of the building, its orientation and planning, its materials, before investing, where appropriate and affordable, in nascent alternative energy generation. We favour conventional means of user operated and passive environmental control and eschew the use of building control systems that are not intuitive and often high maintenance. Priority should be given to good draught proofing, excellent ventilation and adequate thermal insulation, the use of low embodied energy materials, durable and recyclable and encourage the use of so called 'Cradle to Cradle’ technologies and materials.
