Green building practices across a building's life cycle

Green building practices are environmentally responsible, resource efficient processes across a building's life cycle, from planning and design through demolition, aiming to conserve resources, protect the environment, and create healthy, comfortable spaces. What makes buildings work as integrated systems, and how can their design, use, and upkeep support these aims? The lessons connect design choices, life cycle thinking, maintenance, and public planning.

2 articles, 1 book · about 52 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   

   green building practices · Wikipedia · 37 min read

   Green building practices often use passive solar building design in low-energy homes. Designers orient windows and walls and place awnings, porches, and trees to shade windows and roofs during the summer while maximizing solar gain in the winter. In green building, a life cycle assessment evaluates environmental, social, and economic impacts across a process's stages, from raw-material extraction through use and disposal or recycling. It can account for embodied energy, global warming potential, resource use, air and water pollution, and waste. Green building features can reduce peak electricity demand when designed, constructed and operated efficiently, easing pressure for electricity network expansion and reducing impacts on carbon emissions and climate change. These features include good insulation, photovoltaic panels, energy storage systems and smart building energy management systems.

2. Read
   Green Building Practices | Planning for Complete Communities in Delaware · completecommunitiesde.org · 15 min read

   Green building, as defined by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), is an integrated approach to designing and building healthy, comfortable, cost effective, and environmentally friendly living and working environments. Green building practices are primarily focused on sustainable sites, greater water and energy efficiency, reduced waste and emissions, eco-friendly materials, and improved indoor environmental quality more efficiently than conventional designs. Green building practices give local governments an integrated way to change how buildings operate while fostering economic development, protecting the environment, and promoting a sustainable community. States and local governments are incorporating green building techniques into planning and policy as a foundation for resource efficiency, a green economy, and sustainable development.

3. Book
   

   Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things · Bookshop.org

   Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart describes biological nutrients as materials that can re-enter the environment and technical nutrients as materials that remain within closed-loop industrial cycles.

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